Lindbergh spent the rest of his life uncomfortably in the glare of public attention, by turns a figure of admiration, sympathy, and controversy. He and his wife, the writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, found themselves at the center of a media frenzy in 1932, when their baby son was kidnapped from the family home in New Jersey and killed. Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant, was convicted of the crime during “the trial of the century” in 1935 and later executed.
To escape the publicity, the Lindberghs moved to Europe. Lindbergh spent time in Germany and became an ardent noninterventionist, accused of being an anti-Semite and a Nazi sympathizer. A key figure in the growth of commercial aviation, he became a dedicated conservationist late in life.
Written with unprecedented access to the Lindbergh family papers, Berg’s Lindbergh won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Berg’s other books have chronicled the lives of some of America’s most notable figures, including legendary editor Max Perkins, Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn, actress Katharine Hepburn, and President Woodrow Wilson. He is currently working on a biography of Justice Thurgood Marshall.
In this conversation, Berg explains how a shy kid from an unhappy family became the world’s most famous aviator; how obsessive attention to detail and a paper cup helped Lindbergh make his successful transatlantic flight; and how his fame helped create the lifelong focus by the media on everything Lindbergh—a focus that Lindbergh largely abhorred.
Berg also delves into Lindbergh’s controversial political stances, including his links to the America First movement, the perception of his anti-Semitism, how he served the country in World War II (despite President Franklin Roosevelt’s ban on his serving in the military), his role in the growth of commercial aviation and space exploration, and the complicated private life of a man who lived most of his life in the public eye.
For those who did not live in the era of Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight, it may be hard to understand how a solo flight of thirty-three and a half hours between New York and Paris could create the world’s greatest celebrity ever (and, for a long time, its most admired person). The first men to climb Mount Everest or to circle the globe from space or to land on the moon, while celebrated, never came close to Lindbergh’s global and enduring fame.
In the interview, Berg explains the phenomenon this way: there had been a well-known cash prize available to individuals who could make the flight between the two cities; several had died trying; Lindbergh seemed like the perfect hero: young, handsome, unmarried, shy, and polite; he decided to do the flight solo; the world was at peace and seemed unconcerned about national bragging rights (and so the French were just as excited as if the prizewinner had been from France); and, perhaps most important, this time period was essentially the first time that the world was linked instantly through electronic communication. Everyone essentially knew everything at almost the same time, producing a snowball effect of fame.
Berg also discusses something that surprised him even after he had spent ten years researching and writing the book. Lindbergh managed to keep secret from the world, his family, and his biographer that he had fathered seven children with three German women. Berg discovered this only when one of those children, having read his book, wanted him—and presumably others—to know that there were seven other heirs to the Lindbergh name.
A final note on the interview: Scott Berg is essentially a writer, and clearly a gifted one. But his ability to tell a story orally, with enthusiasm and detail and suspense, is rivaled by few biographers I have ever interviewed. I think that is apparent here.
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MR. DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN (DR): Why did a thirty-three-and-a-half-hour flight from New York to Paris make Lindbergh the most famous person in the history of the world? He got more adulation than anybody had ever gotten. Why was such a big deal made of something that wasn’t like going to the moon?
MR. A. SCOTT BERG (ASB): It was so much bigger than going to the moon. It represented the convergence of so many things in the world in that moment, not the least of which were advancements in communication. This was the first moment in which sound footage was attached to newsreels, in which radio reached the entire civilized world, in which photographs could be sent by wire across the ocean.
And so, in May of 1927, when Charles Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris, it was the first moment in history that could be shared instantaneously and simultaneously around the globe.
The second factor is that he was impossibly handsome. He looked like a movie star. And in that moment, he became the first modern media superstar.
Third, and perhaps most important, this was a moment in which the entire world was all on one team. Everybody in the world loved Lindbergh. Nobody had a disagreement about Charles Lindbergh in 1927. This surpassed nationality. It surpassed any beliefs anybody had about anything.
The entire human race, for the first and maybe the last time unless and until we’re attacked by Mars, was interested, was rooting for this one man. As one, people on earth looked hopefully at the sky.
DR: Five years later, he’s married, has a child, Charles Lindbergh Jr. That child is kidnapped and murdered. They caught the person they said did it—Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant—and it became the trial of the century, before the O. J. Simpson trial. What happened? Was the right man caught and executed?
ASB: Not forgetting O. J. Simpson, I think it is still the trial of the century—for several reasons. First of all, the Lindbergh baby was the most famous baby since Jesus Christ. Everybody in the world knew about the most beautiful baby of the most beautiful pilot, the most famous man alive.
Lindbergh was, in fact, the most celebrated living person who ever walked the earth. Now, his baby was kidnapped and killed, almost certainly as the kidnapper was descending the ladder [at the Lindbergh home] in Hopewell, New Jersey. The ladder broke, the baby fell two stories to the concrete and died.
The crime was solved a few years later. The trial of the century occurred, trying the man for the crime of the century.
There is no doubt in my mind that this man received an unfair trial. There is also no doubt in my mind that they got the right man—Bruno Richard Hauptmann.
DR: Lindbergh was very, very popular. But before World War II, he was seen by some as a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-Semite. Was he either of those?
“One of the greatest of crimes!” Cartoonist Clifford Kennedy Berryman pictured the scene in the Lindbergh baby’s nursery after the kidnapping.
ASB: Everyone knows two and a half things—or should know at least two and a half things—about Charles Lindbergh: the flight, the kidnapping, and his political position. In the last twenty years especially, a couple of things have been conflated.
Here’s the thing: Charles Lindbergh was not a Nazi sympathizer.
He did spend time in Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1938. What most people didn’t realize then, and what most people don’t realize now, is that he was there doing reconnaissance for the United States government.
He had been asked by the air attaché at the American Embassy in Berlin, an army colonel named Truman Smith. Colonel Smith had been there throughout the thirties, and he saw the Luftwaffe building up, and he thought, “But they’re being very secretive. We don’t know how big the German air force is, how powerful it is. If there were just some way we could learn.”
He had read that the Lindberghs were then living in England. And he thought, “If I were able to reach Charles Lindbergh and bring him over here to Germany, they would be so happy to have Charles Lindbergh, the greatest, the most celebrated living human being on the planet, the greatest pilot who ever lived. If we could get him to Germany, they will show off everything they have.”
And that’s exactly what happened. Lindbergh came, and the Germans guided him through their factories and showed him their airfields. And Lindbergh was sending detailed reports to the White House and to Whitehall in London as well. This was really the extent of his connection to Germany.
He even thought of living there for a moment—until November of 1938 and the Night of Shattered Glass, Kristallnacht [November 9–10, 1938, when the Nazi Party set off violent riots that destroyed Jewish businesses and homes in Germany].
The next morning, he said to his wife, “We’re not moving to Germany. We’re going home because there’s a problem, and I must warn Americans.” Almost like Paul Revere, he said, “I must tell the Americans that Germany is building an air force that can wipe out any country, and we’ve got to start defending America first.”
DR: He did come back, and he did defend the idea of not going to war. When war did break out, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, what did Lindbergh want to do, and why did President Roosevelt prevent him from doing it?
ASB: There’s a little backstory. Charles Lindbergh and FDR had squabbled in the earliest days of the New Deal over the U.S. Air Mail. Lindbergh lived for aviation. His first job, really, was delivering the airmail.
FDR, when he came into office, rather arbitrarily canceled all the airmail contracts with the major aviation companies. Lindbergh thought this was a huge mistake and got into a huge public fight with Roosevelt. After Roosevelt assigned airmail delivery to the army, there was one plane crash after another delivering the mail.
Once again, Lindbergh emerged a great hero in the public eye. And this made FDR crazy. So there’s been bad blood simmering on the back burner for several years.
Now, after war has broken out in Europe, FDR every day wants to get us into this war, moving us closer. And Charles Lindbergh became the leading spokesman for what became known as the America First movement. He was giving speeches on the radio and participating in large rallies. Every time Lindbergh spoke, the majority of the country embraced his point of view.
The next week FDR would give a fireside chat, trying to move the people back. But as late as September of 1941—three months before Pearl Harbor—the United States backed Charles Lindbergh most decidedly.
The day after Pearl Harbor, Charles Lindbergh volunteered. He was in his early forties at that point, so he was a little old; but he was still America’s greatest pilot. And when he asked to serve, FDR said that he could not, that he would not let him, thus keeping him from becoming a hero all over again.
DR: Let’s go back to the beginning of Lindbergh’s life. His father was a member of Congress for ten years.
ASB: Charles Lindbergh was born in 1902 in Detroit, Michigan. His mother was a schoolteacher.
Lindbergh’s father was an attorney in Little Falls, Minnesota, then Minnesota’s Sixth, now Eighth, Congressional District. He became a congressman—elected in 1906 and serving until 1917. He was a very progressive and, I would say, eccentric Republican.
So that’s Lindbergh’s background, except to say this: his parents were a badly matched pair. It was a deeply unhappy marriage.
[Lindbergh split his childhood between Little Falls and Washington, D.C., where he briefly attended the private Sidwell Friends School and worked as a congressional page. He also spent a year at Redondo Union High School when his mother briefly moved them to California.]
DR: He ultimately applies to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He goes there to be an engineering student. Is he a good student?
ASB: He’s a terrible student. I cut him a little slack, because he’s one of the few college students I’ve ever heard of who left home, went to college… and his mother went with him. And they shared an apartment.
I once asked Anne Lindbergh about Charles’s mother, and Mrs. Lindbergh said to me, “Well, why do you think he flew to Paris? It was to get away from that mother.”
DR: So he flunks out of the University of Wisconsin and decides to get involved in flying. How did he decide to get involved in flying?
ASB: This was a lonely boy, an only child, with two half sisters from his father’s first marriage. When he flunked out of college, the dean sent a letter to his roommate—his mother—and essentially said, “Your son Charles is very immature.” He was not socialized at all.
DR: He’d never had a date.
ASB: Never had a date, not even a friend. He was moving all the time. So there was really never anybody in his life. This is a boy who lived in his thoughts, head in the clouds. He was mechanically minded, and he began to read about aviation, became intrigued, and went out to Nebraska, where he learned how to fly.
DR: He turned out to be a reasonably good flyer.
ASB: Reasonably good.
DR: But he almost killed himself four different times, is that right?
ASB: Four different times. He became a barnstormer for several years, working throughout the South and the Midwest. Then, looking for a steadier job, he became one of the first airmail pilots in this country in 1926 and 1927. He flew the airmail between St. Louis and Chicago. It’s one of the worst places to fly in the country because the weather is so changeable, so fickle. And he became a highly skilled pilot.
DR: But he was a barnstormer, which meant he would show off in flying. He would do things like stand on the wings.
ASB: He was a wing walker. He did all sorts of crazy stuff.
DR: How do they actually walk on the wings without falling off?
ASB: Well, somebody else is flying the plane while you’re walking on the wing. But even so, it’s still risky business.
While flying the mail—and performing stunts—he did jump from an airplane with a parachute four times and lived. [In addition to his barnstorming experience, Lindbergh trained as a pilot with the U.S. Army Air Service, the precursor of the U.S. Air Force, in 1924–25. When he graduated, he earned a commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Service Reserve Corps.]
DR: So he was a pretty accomplished pilot.
ASB: Accomplished, fearless, and really knew the plane. He knew the machinery.
DR: Somebody came up with the idea that if you flew across the Atlantic either way, you would get $25,000, which was a lot of money then. Whose idea was it, and how did Lindbergh decide he should be involved in that?
ASB: A Frenchman named Raymond Orteig, who owned hotels in New York City and in Paris. Now, you have to remember, this is just a few years after World War I had ended.
An experienced barnstormer and airmail pilot, Lindbergh was well acquainted with the machines he flew. In this 1927 photograph, he examines the cylinder of the Spirit of St. Louis.
Orteig was so filled with pride about Franco-American friendship, he said, “We are going to make the world a little smaller. We’re going to unite these countries. And I will offer $25,000”—$25,000, that was a lot of money—“to the first person or persons who can fly nonstop in either direction between New York and Paris.”
So here’s this prize that’s been sitting there since 1919. Several men vied for it and lost their lives.
DR: Had anybody flown across the Atlantic between lesser cities?
ASB: Some people had done the Atlantic incrementally. Famously, Alcock and Brown [British pilots John Alcock and Arthur Brown, who flew from Newfoundland to Ireland in June 1919] had flown from the northern tip of Europe to the northern tip of North America. So there were some asterisked flights of people who’d made it. But nobody had flown nonstop from New York to Paris.
DR: There were many people trying to win this $25,000 prize, but they were much better known than Lindbergh, and they were thinking of doing it as a tandem, two people in a bigger plane. What made Lindbergh think that he could do this by himself, and why would he want to do it by himself?
ASB: There were teams with big, expensive planes, big $100,000 luxury planes with leather seats and three motors. They all went down or failed for one reason or another. And they were all famous pilots. And don’t forget, Lindbergh is a twenty-five-year-old airmail pilot. He so
understands the machinery, so understands the capabilities of an airplane and of himself at age twenty-five, that he came up with an idea: that the key to this is the number one. “I want a monoplane, one set of wings, one engine, one pilot. That’s the way to do it. I don’t have to worry about anybody else. I’ll be responsible for everything.”
DR: He designs this plane, gets somebody in San Diego to help build it. Where does he get the money for it, and how much did it cost?
ASB: Because he was then flying the airmail in and out of St. Louis, he went to the civic leaders of St. Louis—the half dozen men who ran the Chamber of Commerce, who ran the newspaper, who ran a bank—he went to them all and said, “I think I can win this Orteig prize. What do you think?”
And the civic leaders of St. Louis thought, “Oh, this is a wonderful commercial for our city. Yes, we can help you with that money if you put our name on the plane,” basically. And that’s what he did. And so, for $10,580, six or seven guys chipped in. Lindbergh himself put in $1,000. And then he found somebody who would build the plane for him.
There were a few people in New York who would sell him a plane, but they insisted somebody else would have to be the pilot, somebody famous and somebody with more experience. Lindbergh said, “No. One pilot… and I’m the one.” He went out and found a manufacturer in San Diego, Ryan Aircraft, and they built the plane according to the specifications he had envisioned to make the flight.
The American Story Page 19