This book is the first biography in 42 years of the priest and educator whom
historians have called “the most important anticommunist in the country.”
Edmund A. Walsh, as dean of Georgetown College and founder in 1919 of its
School of Foreign Service, is one of the most influential Catholic figures of the
20th century. Soon after the birth of the Bolshevik state, he directed the Papal
Relief Mission in the Soviet Union, starting a lifelong immersion in Soviet and
Communist affairs. He also established a Jesuit college in Baghdad, and served
as a consultant to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.
A pioneer in the new science of geopolitics, Walsh became one of Truman’s most
trusted advisers on Soviet strategy. He wrote four books, dozens of articles, and
gave thousands of speeches on the moral and political threat of Soviet Communism
in America. Although he died in 1956, Walsh left an indelible imprint on the
ideology and practical politics of Cold War Washington, moving easily outside the
traditional boundaries of American Catholic life and becoming, in the words of one
historian, “practically an institution by himself.” Few priests, indeed few Catholics,
played so large a role in shaping American foreign policy in the 20th century.
Price: $66.00
Pages: 302
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Imprint: Fordham University Press
Publication Date:
01 May 2005
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780823224593
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Religious, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Political
Jesuit priest Edmund Walsh, a founder and longtime director of the influential Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, is remembered primarily as the man who allegedly suggested to Senator Joseph McCarthy in early 1950 that the latter take up anticommunism to win his forthcoming reelection race. McNamara (St. Francis College) casts doubt upon the McCarthy story, but argues that Walsh was the "most important and influential Catholic anticommunist in the United States" concerning US foreign policy toward Russia for 30 years, beginning in the mid-1920s. In his well researched and documented (footnotes and bibliography constitute over one third of this volume), if rather plodding, account, McNamara demonstrates that Walsh, primarily as the result of his experience in directing Vatican famine relief efforts in Russia in the early 1920s, developed a black-and-white "evil empire" view of the Soviet Union, contrasted with a "city on the hill" interpretation of the US. Stressing the need for a religious-moral basis for US policies and even advocating preemptive nuclear attack on Russia, Walsh propounded his views in numerous publications and an estimated 1,500 lectures, and was often called upon by high executive and legislative officials to share his views. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students/faculty.
Patrick McNamara is an Archivist at the diocese of Brooklyn and teaches history at St. Francis College, St. Joseph's Seminary, and the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception.
