It seems to me impossible to overpraise this Pulitzer Prize winning biography. I would urge every American to read it. There are not simply subplots in the life of The Lone Eagle, there are at least three totally separate major plots, a leit motif or even two and then various subplots:
THE PLOTS
1) First, of course, is the solo flight from New York to Paris on May 20-21, 1927. Beyond the historic nature of the achievement, is the fact that Lindbergh himself was involved in every step of producing the airplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, and planned the entire thing virtually by himself.
2) The Kidnapping. To a generation grown weary watching Court TV, OJ, the Killer Nanny, etc., it may be hard to remember that there once was a real Trial of the Century. The disappearance of the Lindbergh Baby, the search for the killers, the trial and subsequent conspiracy theories all blend together in a horrifying sequence of events.
3) America First: Many people still recoil at the mere mention of Lindbergh's name and mistakenly remember him as a Nazi. His leadership of America's isolationists did tremendous and lasting damage to his reputation. I'll return to this topic.
THE LEIT MOTIFS
1) Lindbergh achieved his fame at a moment in time which made him both one of the last heroes of the age of Exploration and the first celebrity of the Media Age. Only the astronauts remained to be placed in the pantheon of explorers and their accomplishments were so much driven by technology and bureaucracy, that they were inevitably somewhat diminished. And noone had ever had to face the glare of media attention that greeted Lindbergh after his flight. He was famous in a sense that had never been seen and was, perhaps, never seen again. Parisians spontaneously flooded the field where he landed. One in three New Yorkers turned out for the parade that greeted him. He was made offers totaling some $5 Million at a time when the country was plunging into Depression. His every move was news. Every word was scrutinized; every action analyzed. For the remainder of his life, this celebrity would be a boon and a bane, but it would always be inescapable.
2) Throughout his whole life, from college to the grave, Lindbergh was one of the prime movers in the field of aviation. Besides his historic flight, he served on numerous Corporate, Government and private boards and committees to foster and improve aviation speed, safety and efficiency.
3) His marriage to Anne Morrow was complex, tragic, glorious, productive--you pick an adjective, it probably fits. Just the story of the relationship between these two remarkable people could fill a book
THE SUBPLOTS
Along the course of this incredible life, Lindbergh
also won a Pulitzer for his book The Spirit of
St. Louis, developed a pump that revolutionized
major organ surgery, shot down a Japanese
fighter plane, met Presidents, royalty, dictators,
etc. and due to the unique combination of his
celebrity and his mobility he saw Hiroshima from
the air, Holocaust remains, the Apollo 11
launch, and so on.
All of these things make for fascinating reading. Sections like the flight and the kidnapping are as exciting as any novel. But, of course, the section that grips our attention is the America First period. Was he or wasn't he? A Nazi that is.
There is something truly perverted about the fact that this question even arises. Recently there have been a number of stories about how labeling Milosevic, or Saddam for that matter, a Hitler and making charges of genocide, removes our capacity to reason about and discuss events. In the same way, the viscious and baseless charges of Nazi sympathizer, anti-Semite, traitor, and so on, ad nauseum, that were lodged by men like FDR and Harold Ickes and many others, have long made it impossible to discuss Lindbergh, America First and the isolationist movement logically. Berg remedies this unfortunate fact in an even handed and straight forward account of the events.
A number of factors combined to push Lindbergh in the direction of isolationism.
His father had been an isolationist congressman during WWI. His parents
chaotic marriage and his own wanderlust lead him to place an elevated premium
on order and he thought that he had found a well ordered society in Nazi
Germany. His tours of their airbases and plane factories had impressed
him and left him believing that they would be a more formidable foe than
anyone else realized. He always expressed bewilderment at the Nazi
obsession with the Jewish problem, but he never understood the degree to
which it would overtake them and lead to the Holocaust. In fairness,
who did realize it then? Finally, he perceived the Soviet Union as
a significant and permanent threat to Europe and the West. He felt
that destroying Germany would leave an exhausted Europe prostrate at the
feet of the Communists.
For all of these reasons, he called upon Americans to stay out of the
War, rearm America into an impregnable fortress and let the Nazis and the
Communists tear away at one another.
But along with these sentiments, he also perceived the world in racial terms. He feared the Communists more than the Nazis because in the end, the Nazis were German and Western and when Hitler was gone they would return to their senses. But the Communists were Russian and semi-Asiatic and were fundamentally Eastern, not Western. In the same sense, he spoke of Jews as a race and inevitably, he eventually became entangled in verbal thickets that he could not escape. In the speech that forever marked him as an anti-Semite, when he was trying to describe what groups of people were pushing the U.S. towards war, he said the following:
It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people
desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The
persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient
to make bitter enemies of any race. No
person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can
condone the persecution of the Jewish race in
Germany. But no person of honesty and vision
can look on their pro-war policy here today
without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy,
both for us and for them.
Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in
this country should be opposing it in every
possible way, for they will be among the first to
feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that
depends upon peace and strength. History shows
that it cannot survive war and devastation. A
few far-sighted Jewish people realize this, and
stand opposed to intervention. But the majority
still do not. Their greatest danger to this
country lies in their large ownership and influence in our
motion pictures, our press, our radio and our Government.
I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British
people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying
that the leaders of both the British and Jewish
races, for reasons which are understandable from
their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours,
for reasons which are not American, wish to
involve us in the war. We cannot blame them
for looking out for what they believe to be their own
interests, but we must look out for ours.
We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of
other peoples to lead our country to destruction.
This sense of Jewish otherness was seized upon by interventionists in politics and the press, and, along with his use of the classic anti-Semitic theory about inordinate Jewish influence in the media and government, enabled them to smear him as a Nazi.
To our eyes, the easy reference to races of people seems odd. Noone considers the British a race anymore. But this racialism was common at the time. Indeed, few men have ever written and spoken about race as vehemently as Winston Churchill. But the implication that somehow Jews weren't Americans was simply too inflammatory and with Roosevelt and the Eastern establishment champing at the bit to get into the war, Lindbergh had handed them a weapon with which to pummel him. They gladly used it.
Now, it should give us some pause to consider that:
1) Woodrow Wilson set us on the course to having ethnicity be the determining
factor in statehood.
2) FDR, within a year, was rounding up Japanese Americans and sending
them to Concentration Camps.
3) FDR's Democrat party oversaw the venomous system of Jim Crow laws
in the South
4) Following the war, Israel was founded as a Jewish homeland and even
today, Israel does not consider a person Jewish unless they are borne of
a Jewish mother, making Jews a de facto race.
5) Today, in Europe NATO is bombing Slavic Christian Serbs to benefit
Albanian Moslems. And in America, race is once again a determining
factor in getting a job or a government grant.
None of this excuses Lindbergh's ill considered language about Jews. But it does raise the question of why he is the one who is dogged by the reputation of being an anti-Semite and a Nazi. When you think of FDR, your first thought is not: "He was an anti-Japanese, anti-Black racist". But he actually wielded power and helped to oppress these peoples. Lindbergh never had a chance to violate anyone's civil rights, but his entire life seems to indicate that he would not have been capable of these actions. (For a long time he prayed for the soul of the Japanese pilot that he shot down.) It is completely unfair that this reputation will always follow him.
Moreover, his reasons for being an isolationist turned out to be prophetic. He foresaw a brutally destructive war that would leave Europe in ruins and at the mercy of the Soviet Union. He feared that having become involved in the war, America would be mired in Europe for generations. After fifty years of Cold War and crippling military expenditures, who will argue that he was wrong?
Topping it all off, as soon as the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he endorsed our entry into the war and sought to join up. A bitterly vindictive FDR made sure that he could not return to active duty, but Lindbergh found ways around this and eventually flew fighter and bomber missions in the South Pacific, in addition to helping with aircraft design, devising ingenious ways of conserving fuel in flight, serving as a human guinea pig in high altitude flight experiments, and many other unheralded contributions to the war effort.
I implore you to get this book and read it. Charles Lindbergh,
for all his flaws and frailties, was a great American and a great
human being. He deserves to be remembered as such.
See also, our review of:
The Spirit of St. Louis (1953)
(Reviewed:15-May-99)
Grade: (A+)
