Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Charles R. MorrisApril 13, 2009

In 1938, America’s comparison of the terrors of Nazism with those in Spain was probably accurate. Fulton J. Sheen estimated that 12,000 clerics and 200,000 noncombatants had been murdered by the Spanish Republicans. Those numbers are too high, but not wildly so. Hugh Thomas, in his 1986 update of The Spanish Civil War, reports that contemporary estimates of about one million deaths in the war are now considered about twice too high. Thomas estimates 7,000 murders of clerics at the hands of Republicans, which is still pretty horrific. Ultimately, the Nationalists’ murders outnumbered those of the Republicans’, but not by huge margins, and the bulk of them occurred during their post-victory “White Terror.” If the Republicans had won, they would surely have indulged in their own “Red Terror.”

In late 1938, the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis was probably still considerably lower than even the modern estimate for Spanish Catholics. (Policy had concentrated on their segregation and impoverishment.) The Nazis had not yet invaded Poland, and the industrialized death camps were still several years away. The America article, however, was published just weeks after Kristallnacht, which marked a clear ratcheting up of anti-Jewish terrorism.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

A community gathers in resistance. Photo by Dany Díaz Mejía. Photo courtesy of Rene Aleman Resistance Camp.
“We are alive only through the grace of God. At one point, I got messages saying someone had offered 1 million lempiras [$38,000] to have me killed.”
Dany Díaz MejíaJuly 02, 2025
Workers unload food commodities from Catholic Relief Services and USAID in the village of Behera, near Tulear, Madagascar, Oct. 22, 2016. (OSV News Photo/Nancy McNally, Catholic Relief Services)
The end of U.S.A.I.D. will result in the loss of a “staggering” 14 million lives by 2030, including the deaths of 4.5 million children under age 5.
Kevin ClarkeJuly 02, 2025
Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, by Father Terrance Klein
Terrance KleinJuly 02, 2025