This work examines the origins of the Cold War from the perspective of domestic American politics. Specifically, the role of the so-called "Catholic vote" in the New Deal coalition built by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. Catholics comprised roughly one-quarter of the population and were concentrated in the major urban and industrial areas of the country. These were the same areas that dominated the electoral college and thus were of primary importance to anyone seeking national office or proposing national policy. FDR frequently modified his position on national issues if it appeared this "Catholic vote" might be jeopardized. Throughout the 1930s, as charges of Communist influence on FDR and the New Deal increased in intensity, the official position of the Catholic Church was hardening into a strict anti-Communism. The potential, then, existed for widespread defections of Catholic voters from the New Deal coalition over the issue of Communism. Using a variety of primary sources but especially the presidential papers located at the Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York, and the archives of the Archdiocese of Boston in Brighton, Massachusetts, this work will demonstrate the impact of Catholic opinion on national policy, especially foreign policy, as it was reflected in the attempt to keep the Catholic vote in the Democratic Party. The response of first FDR and then Presidents Truman and Eisenhower to Soviet domination of largely Catholic Eastern Europe following the war suggests that religion, especially Catholicism, is the overlooked paradigm of the Cold War.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-4196 |
| Date | 01 January 1996 |
| Creators | Moriarty, Thomas Michael |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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