Fifth column

Based on Wikipedia: Fifth column

In the autumn of 1936, as Nationalist forces closed in on Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, a phrase entered the political lexicon that would haunt democratic societies for nearly a century. Someone—historians still argue about who—claimed that while four military columns marched toward the Spanish capital, a "fifth column" of secret sympathizers waited inside the city, ready to strike from within.

The phrase spread like wildfire. Within weeks, it appeared in newspapers across Europe and the Americas. The concept it described—enemies hiding among us, traitors wearing the face of neighbors—tapped into something primal. It remains one of the most potent and most dangerous ideas in political rhetoric.

The Mystery of Who Said It First

Here's the strange thing: nobody can prove who actually coined the term.

The earliest documented appearance comes from a secret German diplomatic telegram dated September 30, 1936. Hans Hermann Völckers, the German chargé d'affaires in the Spanish port city of Alicante, reported to Berlin about a "supposed statement by Franco" that was circulating in Republican-controlled territory. According to this rumor, Francisco Franco had boasted that four Nationalist columns were advancing on Madrid while a fifth column waited inside to attack from within.

Three days later, on October 3rd, the term burst into public view. The Madrid Communist newspaper Mundo Obrero ran a front-page article by Dolores Ibárruri—the legendary "La Pasionaria"—referencing almost exactly the same claim. But she attributed it to General Emilio Mola, not Franco. That same day, a Communist activist named Domingo Girón made a similar claim at a public rally.

The story spread rapidly, mutating as it went. Some newspapers credited General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano. Soviet propagandists later attributed it to José Enrique Varela. By mid-October, Republican media was warning about "the famous fifth column" as though everyone already knew what this meant.

But here's the puzzle that historians have never solved: no one has ever found the original statement. Researchers have combed through transcripts of radio addresses by Franco, Mola, and Queipo de Llano. Nothing. An Australian journalist named Noel Monks attended a Mola press conference on October 28, 1936, and claimed the general used the phrase—but by then it had already been circulating in Republican newspapers for more than three weeks.

Some scholars believe Mola said it, even if they cannot verify exactly when or where. Others suspect the whole thing was invented by Communist propagandists, either to rally Republican morale or to justify the brutal repression of suspected enemies within their own territory. The truth is that we simply don't know. The most influential political phrase of the mid-twentieth century may have been born from rumor, propaganda, or a statement that was never actually made.

Why the Idea Proved So Powerful

The concept of a fifth column spoke to deep anxieties that transcended the Spanish conflict. The fear of hidden enemies—of treachery from within—is ancient. But the fifth column gave this fear a modern, military-sounding name. It suggested something organized, coordinated, and deadly.

The idea exploded across Europe when World War II began. In the spring of 1940, Nazi Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France with a speed that shocked the world. How could such powerful nations fall so quickly? For many, the answer seemed obvious: they had been betrayed from within.

When the French Premier Paul Reynaud announced that "the bridges over the Meuse had been betrayed," the explanation seemed to confirm everyone's worst fears. A BBC employee wrote at the time: "I have no doubt that German thoroughness has succeeded in planting a fifth column at vulnerable points."

In Britain, fear of internal enemies led to dramatic action. On May 23, 1940—just weeks after Germany invaded France—Prime Minister Winston Churchill's government banned the British Union of Fascists under the Treachery Act. Churchill told Parliament that the government had been given "the powers to put down Fifth Column activities with a strong hand."

Across the Atlantic, Life magazine ran a photo spread in June 1940 warning of "signs of Nazi Fifth Column Everywhere." By July, Time magazine described fifth column talk as "a national phenomenon." The New York Times that August mentioned "the first spasm of fear engendered by the success of fifth columns in less fortunate countries."

Quisling: When a Name Becomes an Insult

The Nazi invasion of Norway gave the world a lasting example of what fifth column activity actually looked like—and a new word for traitor.

Vidkun Quisling led Norway's small fascist party. When German forces invaded on April 9, 1940, Quisling announced the formation of a new government with himself as Prime Minister before the first day of fighting had even ended. He had coordinated with the Nazis and helped facilitate their conquest.

The betrayal was so brazen that Quisling's name immediately became synonymous with collaboration and treachery. Within weeks, "quisling" entered the English language as a common noun meaning a traitor who aids an occupying enemy force. It remains in dictionaries today, a permanent monument to one man's infamy.

America's Fifth Column Panic

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, triggered America's own fifth column hysteria. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox declared that "the most effective Fifth Column work of the entire war was done in Hawaii with the exception of Norway." This was, quite simply, false. Postwar investigations found no evidence of Japanese American sabotage or espionage in Hawaii.

But the accusation had devastating consequences. On February 12, 1942, the influential columnist Walter Lippmann published a piece in The Washington Post titled "The Fifth Column on the Coast." He warned of imminent danger from Japanese Americans along the West Coast, conjuring scenarios of attacks coordinated with Japanese naval and air forces.

Within weeks, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. More than 120,000 people—the majority of them American citizens—were imprisoned in internment camps for the duration of the war. Decades later, the U.S. government formally acknowledged that the internment was based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership" rather than any actual threat.

Similar accusations flew about the Philippines. When Japanese forces invaded in December 1941, newspapers alleged that Japanese immigrants in Davao had welcomed the invaders as fifth columnists. Postwar analysis of both Japanese and American military records found no evidence to support these claims.

The Cold War's Fifth Column

After World War II, the fifth column concept migrated seamlessly to anti-Communist rhetoric. A 1945 State Department document compared Nazi Germany's use of sympathizers abroad to "the superior efforts of the international communist movement." The document argued that "a communist party was in fact a fifth column as much as any [German] Bund group, except that the latter were crude and ineffective in comparison with the Communists."

The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in 1949 that "the special Soviet advantage—the warhead—lies in the fifth column; and the fifth column is based on the local Communist parties." This framing helped justify the Red Scare, loyalty oaths, and the broader McCarthyist atmosphere that gripped America in the late 1940s and 1950s.

The Term as Political Weapon

What makes "fifth column" so dangerous is its flexibility. The accusation can be leveled at almost any group deemed insufficiently loyal. Throughout history, it has been wielded against minorities, political opponents, and dissidents of all kinds.

Consider some examples from across the globe:

In 1979, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein claimed to have discovered a fifth column within his own Ba'ath Party. He forced a party official to publicly confess and name 68 alleged co-conspirators. Twenty-two were executed, including the man who gave the forced confession. The "fifth column" accusation provided cover for what was actually a political purge.

In Japan, ethnic Koreans—particularly those affiliated with Chongryun, an organization linked to North Korea—have faced accusations of being a fifth column. These accusations intensified after North Korea acknowledged abducting Japanese citizens and began testing missiles near Japanese territory. The accusations have led to harassment and physical attacks against Korean residents, including schoolchildren.

In Israel, some politicians, journalists, and religious leaders have described Israeli Arabs—who make up roughly twenty percent of the population—as a fifth column because many identify with the Palestinian cause rather than with Zionism. The accusation transforms a political disagreement into a question of fundamental loyalty.

Muslims as the New Fifth Column

In the twenty-first century, the fifth column accusation has been directed most prominently at Muslim populations in Western countries.

After the 2015 attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris—carried out by French-born Muslims—Nigel Farage, then leader of the UK Independence Party, declared that Europe had "a fifth column living within our own countries."

This was not a new argument. In 2001, the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn called Muslim immigrants a "fifth column" on the same night he was dismissed as leader of the Liveable Netherlands party. (Fortuyn was later assassinated, though by an animal rights activist rather than an Islamic extremist.)

Counter-jihad literature has portrayed Western Muslims collectively as agents of an international Islamic movement seeking to establish a caliphate in Western countries. This framing transforms millions of individual citizens into a single conspiratorial bloc, erasing distinctions between devout believers and cultural Muslims, between recent immigrants and families who have lived in Western countries for generations.

Russia and the Reversal

In 2022, as Russian forces invaded Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin provided a striking example of how the fifth column accusation can be turned inward. He called Russian citizens who opposed the war "fifth columnists" and "national traitors."

The inversion is revealing. Originally, a fifth column meant enemy agents hiding within your population. Putin's usage flipped this: now anyone who disagreed with the government's military adventure became, by definition, an agent of foreign enemies. Dissent itself became proof of treachery.

Meanwhile, in the United States and Europe, critics began applying the fifth column label in the opposite direction. They pointed to the American and European far-right, arguing that Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and subsequent events revealed pro-Russian sympathies that amounted to fifth column activity. The conservative commentator Tucker Carlson faced particular scrutiny after traveling to Moscow to interview Putin, with critics accusing him of serving Russian propaganda interests.

The Enemy Within

The language of internal enemies has resurged in American politics with striking force. Former President Donald Trump has made repeated references to "the enemy from within" and "the enemy within," using these phrases to describe political opponents including Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff. He has characterized these internal enemies as "the crazy lunatics that we have—the fascists, the Marxists, the communists, the people that we have that are actually running the country."

In September 2025, Trump addressed an assembly of U.S. generals and called for the use of the military against "the enemy within." The statement represented a significant escalation: the fifth column concept, born in the context of civil war in Spain, was being invoked to justify potential military action against American citizens.

Art Imitating Paranoia

The fifth column concept has threaded through popular culture since its emergence. Ernest Hemingway wrote his only play while staying at the Hotel Florida in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. He titled it "The Fifth Column"—a direct translation of Mola's alleged phrase la quinta columna. Hemingway had been reporting from the loyalist side and helping produce the documentary film The Spanish Earth. His play, written in 1937 and first performed in 1938, dramatized the atmosphere of suspicion and espionage in besieged Madrid.

Hollywood embraced the theme enthusiastically. In Frank Capra's Meet John Doe from 1941, a newspaper editor warns the naive protagonist about a businessman's political manipulation: "Listen, pal, this fifth-column stuff is pretty rotten, isn't it?" The line connected anti-democratic scheming at home with the foreign threats dominating the headlines.

The following year, Humphrey Bogart starred in All Through the Night, playing a gambler who uncovers a Nazi fifth column plot to sink a U.S. battleship. The film mixed comedy with thriller elements, reflecting how the fifth column concept had become part of everyday entertainment.

An Australian radio drama called The Enemy Within proved enormously popular—in part because audiences believed its stories of fifth column activities were based on real events. The Australian censors eventually banned the series in December 1940, apparently concerned that it was generating more fear than the actual evidence warranted.

Agatha Christie's 1941 mystery novel N or M? depicted British turncoats working for the German government. British reviewers used "fifth column" as shorthand to describe the plot. The phrase had become so ubiquitous that by November 1940, one reviewer complained it "has been worked so hard that it no longer means much of anything."

The Danger of the Concept

The fifth column idea carries a fundamental danger: it is almost impossible to disprove. How do you demonstrate that a hidden network of enemies does not exist? The absence of evidence becomes evidence of the enemy's cunning. Every failure to uncover the fifth column only proves how well they have concealed themselves.

This logical trap has justified some of history's worst abuses. The internment of Japanese Americans proceeded despite a complete lack of evidence of sabotage or espionage. McCarthyism destroyed careers and lives based on accusations that could never be adequately answered. Authoritarian regimes have used fifth column rhetoric to justify purges, repression, and murder.

The phrase carries another danger: it transforms complex questions of identity, loyalty, and political disagreement into simple categories of friend and enemy. A citizen who opposes a war becomes a traitor. A religious minority becomes an invasion force. A political opponent becomes a foreign agent. Nuance vanishes. Debate becomes impossible. The only remaining question is how to neutralize the threat.

What Really Happened in Madrid

Ironically, there actually was significant fifth column activity in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War—just not quite in the way the term's popularizers imagined.

As Nationalist forces besieged the city, networks of sympathizers did operate within Republican territory. They gathered intelligence, spread defeatism, and waited for the moment when they might act. Some were caught and executed. The fear of internal enemies was not entirely paranoid.

But the term quickly outgrew any connection to actual events. It became a weapon for political mobilization, a justification for repression, and eventually a free-floating accusation that could attach to almost anyone. The Spanish context that gave birth to the phrase was soon forgotten. What remained was the concept itself: enemies among us, waiting to strike.

Nearly ninety years after its murky origins in the Spanish Civil War, the fifth column remains one of the most powerful—and most abused—ideas in political rhetoric. It speaks to real fears about loyalty and belonging, about who counts as "us" and who threatens from within. But it has been used far more often to suppress dissent and persecute minorities than to address genuine security threats.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the fifth column is the mystery at its heart: we don't actually know who first said it, or whether anyone said it at all. The most influential political phrase of the twentieth century may have been nothing more than a rumor, amplified by fear until it seemed like fact. That should give us pause every time we hear someone invoke the enemy within.