Fifth column

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 distinction between internal and external enemies to a people or government was a topic of discussion in antiquity, mentioned most notably in Plato's Republic.

Its first known appearance is in a secret telegram dated 30 September 1936, that was sent to Berlin by the German chargé d'affaires in Alicante, Hans Hermann Völckers [de].

[21] 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.

[a] By the late 1930s, as American involvement in the war in Europe became more likely, the term "fifth column" was commonly used to warn of potential sedition and disloyalty within the borders of the United States.

In a speech to the House of Commons that same month, Winston Churchill reassured MPs that "Parliament has given us the powers to put down Fifth Column activities with a strong hand.

[28] 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".

[29] 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".

[30] 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.

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.

Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942) features Robert Cummings asking for help against "fifth columnists" conspiring to sabotage the American war effort.

[citation needed] 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).

[non-primary source needed] 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.

[non-primary source needed] There is an American weekly news podcast called "The Fifth Column",[70] hosted by Kmele Foster, Matt Welch, Michael C. Moynihan, and Anthony Fisher.