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A fifth column is a group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation. The activities of a fifth column can be overt or clandestine. Forces gathered in secret can mobilize openly to assist an external attack. The term is also applied to organized actions by military personnel. Clandestine fifth column activities can involve acts of sabotage, disinformation, espionage or terrorism executed within defense lines by secret sympathizers with an external force.
The exact origins of the term are not clear. Its first known appearance is in a secret telegram dated 30 September 1936, that was sent to Berlin by the Nazi Germany chargé d'affaires in Alicante, . In the telegram, he referred to an unidentified "supposed statement by Francisco Franco" that "is being circulated" (apparently in the Republican zone or in the Republican-held Levantine zone). This "supposed statement" held that Franco had claimed that there were four Nationalist columns approaching Madrid, and a fifth column waiting to attack from the inside.Ruiz, Julius (2014), The 'Red Terror' and the Spanish Civil War, Cambridge, , p. 187. The telegram was part of the secret German diplomatic correspondence and was discovered long after the civil war.
The first identified public use of the term is in the 3 October 1936 issue of the Madrid Communist daily Mundo Obrero. In a front-page article, the party propagandist Dolores Ibárruri referred to a statement very similar (or identical) to the one that Völckers had referred to in his telegram, but attributed it to General Emilio Mola rather than to Franco.This edition of Mundo Obrero is not available for consultation online. Many authors claim that in the article Ibarruri referred to an unidentified radio broadcast of Mola, see e.g. Preston Paul (2011), La Guerra Civil Española: reacción, revolución y venganza, Madrid, . However, other scholars quoting Ibarruri do not refer to the broadcast detail, see e.g. Ruiz 2014, pp. 185–186. On the same day, the PCE activist Domingo Girón made a similar claim during a public rally.Domingo Girón was a Madrid mid-level Communist activist. In his speech he referred to "cierta declaración hecha por el general Mola a un periodista extranjero", Un gran mitin del Socorro Rojo internacional, in: Hoja Oficial del lunes 04.10.1936 During the next few days, various Republican papers repeated the story, but with differing detail; some attributed the phrase to General Queipo de Llano,Ruiz 2014, pp. 186–187 while later some Soviet propagandists would claim it was coined by General Varela.Mijail Koltsov, Diario de la guerra de España, Barcelona 2009, ISBN 9788408088707, p. 208 By mid-October, the media was already warning of the "famous fifth column". Informacion radiotelegrafica, in: El bien publico 13.10.1936.
Historians have never identified the original statement referred to by Völckers, Ibárruri, Girón, de Jong, and others. The transcripts of Francisco Franco's, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano's, and Emilio Mola's radio addresses have been published, but they do not contain the term,Preston Paul (2012), The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain, London, . and no other original statement containing this phrase has ever surfaced. Australian journalist Noel Monks, who took part in Mola's press conference on 28 October 1936, claimed that Mola referred to quinta columna on that day,Preston Paul (2011), La Guerra Civil Española: reacción, revolución y venganza, Madrid, . but by that time the term had already been in use in the Republican press for more than three weeks. Prensa Historica service, Hemeroteca Digital service.
Historiographic works offer differing perspectives on authorship of the term. Many scholars have no doubt about Mola's role and refer to "fifth column" as "a term coined in 1936 by General Emilio Mola",Kennedy, David M. (ed.) (2007), The Library of Congress World War II Companion, New York, , p. 79; also Lejeune Anthony (ed.) (2018), Concise Dictionary of Foreign Quotations, London, ; also Romero Salvadó, Francisco J., (2013), Historical Dictionary of the Spanish Civil War, London, , p. 199. though they acknowledge that his exact statement cannot be verified.Preston Paul (2011), El holocausto español: Odio y exterminio en la Guerra Civil y después, 2011, . In some sources, Mola is named as a person who had used the term during an impromptu press interview, and different—though detailed—versions of the exchange are offered.One version is , Carrillo Alejandro (1943), Defensa de la revolución en el Parlamento, s.n. 1943. Other version is , Pérez de Oliva, Fernán (1991), Historia de la invención de las Indias, Madrid 1991, , p. 22. Probably the most popular version describes the theory of Mola's authorship with a grade of doubt, either noting that it is presumed but has never been proven,Barros Andrew, Thomas Martin (2018), The Civilianization of War: The Changing Civil–Military Divide, 1914–2014, Cambridge, , p. 49. or that the phrase "is attributed" to Mola,Loeffel Robert (2015), The Fifth Column in World War II: Suspected Subversives in the Pacific War and Australia, London, . who "apparently claimed" so,Beevor, Antony (2006), The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, London, . or else noting that "la famosa quinta columna a la que parece que se había referido el general Mola" (the famous fifth column that General Mola seems to have referred to).Cierva, Ricardo de la (1996), Historia esencial de la Guerra Civil Española: todos los problemas resueltos, sesenta años después, Madrid, . Some authors consider it possible if not likely that the term has been invented by the Communist propaganda with the purpose of either raising morale or providing justification for terror and repression; initially it might have been part of the whispering campaign, but was later openly floated by Communist propagandists.Ruiz Julius (2014), The 'Red Terror' and the Spanish Civil War, Cambridge, , p. 185. The opposing view is that the Republican repression was inadvertently triggered by Mola, who did not realize what effect his alleged statement would have, Laguna Reyes Albert, Vargas Márquez Antonio (2019), La Quinta Columna: La guerra clandestina tras las líneas republicanas 1936-1939, Madrid, . There are also other theories afloat.A British correspondent in the Republican zone claimed after the Civil War that "many weeks" before October 1936 he had used the term in The Daily Telegraph when discussing the Nationalist advance towards Madrid. Allegedly the term was picked up by Republican journalists and in turn somehow filtered out to the Nationalist zone; Mola liked it and started to use it. The alleged reference in The Daily Telegraph has never been identified. Thomas, Hugh (2018), La guerra civil española, Madrid, .
Some writers, mindful of the origin of the phrase, use it only in reference to military operations rather than the broader and less well-defined range of activities that sympathizers might engage in to support an anticipated attack.
In August 1940, The New York Times mentioned "the first spasm of fear engendered by the success of fifth columns in less fortunate countries". The New York Times: Delbert Clark, "Aliens to Begin Registering Tuesday," August 25, 1940. Retrieved June 27, 2012. One report identified participants in Nazi "fifth columns" as "partisans of authoritarian government everywhere", citing Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, and the Netherlands. During the Nazi invasion of Norway, the head of the Norwegian fascist party, Vidkun Quisling, proclaimed the formation of a new fascist government in control of Norway, with himself as Prime Minister, by the end of the first day of fighting. The word "quisling" soon became a byword for "collaborator" or "traitor".
The New York Times on 11 August 1940, featured three editorial cartoons using the term. John Langdon-Davies, a British journalist who covered the Spanish Civil War, wrote an account called The Fifth Column which was published the same year. In November 1940, Ralph Thomson, reviewing Harold Lavine's Fifth Column in America, a study of Communist and fascist groups in the US, in The New York Times, questioned his choice of that title: "the phrase has been worked so hard that it no longer means much of anything".
Immediately following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, US Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox issued a statement that "the most effective Fifth Column work of the entire war was done in Hawaii with the exception of Norway". In a column published in The Washington Post, dated 12 February 1942, the columnist Walter Lippmann wrote of imminent danger from actions that might be taken by Japanese Americans. Titled "The Fifth Column on the Coast", he wrote of possible attacks that could be made along the West Coast of the United States that would amplify damage inflicted by a potential attack by Japanese naval and air forces. Suspicion about an active fifth column on the coast led eventually to the internment of Japanese Americans.
During the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in December 1941 said the indigenous Moro people were "capable of dealing with Japanese fifth columnists and invaders alike". Another in the Vancouver Sun the following month alleged that the large population of Japanese immigrants in Davao Region in the Philippines welcomed the invasion: "the first assault on Davao was aided by numbers of Fifth Columnists–residents of the town". However, postwar analysis of both Japanese and American military records, including the interrogation of surviving Japanese officers, fail to support the claims of a Japanese fifth column existing in the Philippines prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
In the US, an Australian radio play, The Enemy Within, proved to be very popular, though this popularity was due to the belief that the stories of fifth column activities were based on real events. In December 1940, the Australian censors had the series banned.
British reviewers of Agatha Christie's 1941 novel N or M? used the term to describe the plot's depiction of two British turncoats working on behalf the German government in Britain during World War II. The Times Literary Supplement, November 29, 1941 (p. 589); The Observer, December 7, 1941 (p. 3)
In Frank Capra's film Meet John Doe (1941), newspaper editor Henry Connell warns the politically naïve protagonist, John Doe, about a businessman's plans to promote his own political ambitions using the apolitical John Doe Clubs. Connell says to John: "Listen, pal, this fifth-column stuff is pretty rotten, isn't it?", identifying the businessman with anti-democratic interests in the United States. When Doe agrees, he adds: "And you'd feel like an awful sucker if you found yourself marching right in the middle of it, wouldn't you?"
In the film All Through the Night (1942), "Gloves" Donahue (Humphrey Bogart) tries to stop a secret nazi fifth column trying to sink a battleship in New York.
Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942) features Robert Cummings asking for help against "fifth columnists" conspiring to sabotage the American war effort. The film was also released under the name Fifth Column in Dutch (Die van de 5de kolom), Finnish (Viidennen kolonnan mies) and French (Cinquième colonne). Soon the term was being used in popular entertainment.
Several World War II–era animated shorts include the term. Cartoons of Porky Pig asked any "fifth columnists" in the audience to leave the theater immediately. In Looney Tunes' Foney Fables, the narrator of a comic fairy tale described a wolf in sheep's clothing as a "fifth columnist". There was a Merrie Melodies cartoon released in 1943 titled The Fifth-Column Mouse. Comic books also contained references to the fifth column.
Graham Greene, in The Quiet American (1955), uses the phrase "Fifth Column, Third Force, Seventh Day" in the second chapter.
In the 1959 British action film Operation Amsterdam, the term "fifth columnists" is used repeatedly to refer to Nazi-sympathizing members of the Dutch Army.
The V franchise is a set of TV shows, novels and comics about an Alien invasion. A group of aliens opposed to the invasion and assist the human Resistance Movement is called The Fifth Column.
In the episode "Flight Into the Future" from the 1960s TV show Lost In Space, Dr. Smith is referred to as the fifth columnist of the Jupiter 2 expedition. In the first episode, he was a secret agent sent to sabotage the mission who got caught on board at liftoff.
There is an American weekly news podcast called "The Fifth Column", hosted by Kmele Foster, Matt Welch, Michael C. Moynihan, and Anthony Fisher.
Robert A. Heinlein's 1941 story "The Day After Tomorrow", originally titled "Sixth Column", refers to a fictional fifth column that
In Foyle's War, series 2 episode 3, "War Games", one line reads: "It's the Second salvage collection I've missed, they've got me down as a fifth columnist."
In , a total conversion mod for the 2015 Bethesda Softworks action role-playing game Fallout 4, there is a populist faction known as the "5th Column" whose declared aim is to tear down the existing government and rebuild it. Their propaganda style and black uniforms are a likely reference to the British Union of Fascists, which was founded in 1932 by Oswald Mosley and banned by the British government in 1940 after the start of World War II amid suspicion that its supporters might form a pro-Nazi Germany "fifth column".
An Infamous Minecraft griefing group active on the anarchy server 2b2t is known as The Fifth Column.
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