Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten History of the Christian Front.

• Author: Carletta, David M.

Gallagher, Charles R. Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten History of the Christian Front. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021. viii + 313 pages. Hardcover, $29.95.

In 1939, Father Charles E. Coughlin, the Roman Catholic radio broadcasting priest who attracted one of the first devoted mass audiences on U.S. airwaves, called for the creation of a Christian Front to thwart atheistic Communism. Historian Charles R. Gallagher relays the troubling tale of the American Catholics who responded to Father Coughlin's call to form the Christian Front. In Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten History of the Christian Front, Gallagher reveals the many dreadful origins of the Christian Front's activism and paramilitarism, including "the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, clerical anti-Semitism, religious anti-Judaism, Mystical Body of Christ theology, Catholic Action, and priestly shadow leadership" (p. 70). Emphasizing the importance of the theology of the Mystical Body of Christ and the doctrine of Catholic Action, Gallagher argues that rather than altering the era's universal Catholic teaching, the Christian Front merely harnessed it for their own nefarious ends.

Gallagher begins by explaining the peculiar source of the idea of a Christian Front. Born in India while his medical doctor father was serving as a Methodist missionary, the British athlete Arnold Lunn was knighted for his service to British skiing and Anglo-Swiss relations. Lunn converted to Roman Catholicism before heading to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War, which he portrayed as a holy war being fought by his Roman Catholic coreligionists under General Francisco Franco against Spain's leftist Popular Front government. Lunn conceived the idea of the Christian Front to counteract the Popular Front. After adapting Lunn's ideas in America, Charles Coughlin inspired John F. Cassidy to head the Christian Front in New York and Francis P. Moran to head the Christian Front in Boston. The predominant features of the Christian Front were anti-Communism and anti-Semitism, stirred by the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, the idea that Communism was a Jewish machination, and that Jews were thereby guilty for the exploits of communist organizations and governments.

John F. Cassidy earned an LLB from St. John's University Law School, but he failed the bar examination. Unable to find work during the Great Depression, he devoted his days to anti-Communism and anti-Semitism. Gallagher adeptly describes...