In which war did the term Fifth Column originate?
Fifth column "traitor". John Langdon-Davies, a British journalist who covered the Spanish Civil War, popularized the term "fifth column" by publishing an account called "The Fifth Column" in 1940. The "New York Times" published three editorial cartoons that used the term on August 11, 1940. In November 1940, Ralph Thomson, reviewing Harold Lavine's "Fifth Column in America," a study of Communist and fascist groups in the U.S., 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." In the US an Australian radio play, The Enemy
Fifth column used in Spain. Ernest Hemingway used it as the title of his only play, which he wrote in Madrid while the city was being bombarded, and published in 1938 in his book "The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories". 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. By the late 1930s, as involvement in the war in Europe became more likely, the term "fifth column" was frequently used to