by Philip Roth
A True Chronology of the Major Figures
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT 1882–1945
NOVEMBER 1920. After serving as assistant secretary of the navy under Wilson, Roosevelt runs as vice president on Democratic ticket with Governor James M. Cox of Ohio; Democrats defeated in Harding landslide.
AUGUST 1921. Stricken with polio, which leaves him badly crippled for life.
NOVEMBER 1928. Elected to first of two two-year terms as Democratic governor of New York, while national ticket, headed by ex-governor Alfred E. Smith, loses to Herbert Hoover. As governor, Roosevelt strongly establishes himself as a progressive liberal, an advocate of government relief for Depression victims, including unemployment insurance, and a foe of Prohibition. After landslide 1930 gubernatorial victory, becomes Democratic presidential front-runner.
JULY–NOVEMBER 1932. Selected as presidential candidate by Democrats at July convention; in November, defeats President Hoover with 57. 4 percent of vote, and Democrats sweep both houses of Congress.
MARCH 1933. Inaugurated as president March 4; with nation paralyzed by Depression, proclaims in inaugural address that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Quickly proposes New Deal recovery legislation for agriculture, industry, labor, and business, and relief programs for mortgage holders and the unemployed. Cabinet includes Harold L. Ickes, secretary of the interior; Henry A. Wallace, secretary of agriculture; Frances Perkins—first ever woman cabinet appointee—secretary of labor; and Henry Morgenthau, Jr.—the country's second Jew ever to be a cabinet member—secretary of the Treasury (to replace the ill secretary, William Woodin, on November 17, 1933). Begins brief national radio broadcasts from White House, known as fireside chats, and engages reporters in informative press conferences.
NOVEMBER 1933–DECEMBER 1934. Recognizes Soviet Union and soon starts rebuilding the U.S. fleet, in part owing to Japanese activities in Far East. By ' 34 black voters have shifted political loyalty from Lincoln's Republican Party to Roosevelt's Democratic Party in response to president's programs for the underprivileged.
1935. Burst of reform initiatives, referred to as "second New Deal," results in the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations Act, as well as the WPA (Works Progress Administration), which employs two million workers a month. Signs first of several neutrality measures in response to unsettled European situation.
NOVEMBER 1936. Defeats Kansas Republican governor Alfred M. Landon, winning every state except Maine and Vermont; Democrats enlarge congressional lead. In inaugural address asserts, "Here is a challenge to our democracy. . .I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." By 1937, economic recovery well under way, but economic crisis follows and, along with labor unrest, leads to Republican congressional victories in 1938.
SEPTEMBER–NOVEMBER 1938. Apprehensive over Hitler's intentions in Europe, appeals to Nazi leader to accept negotiated settlement in dispute with Czechoslovakia. At September 30 Munich conference, Britain and France capitulate to German demand for Czech Sudetenland and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia; German troops, led by Hitler, enter in October (and, five months later, conquer the entire country, granting Slovakia independence as a German-backed fascist republic). In November Roosevelt orders enormous increase in production of combat airplanes.
APRIL 1939. Asks Hitler and Mussolini to agree for a period of ten years to refrain from attacking weaker European nations; Hitler replies in a Reichstag speech by heaping scorn on Roosevelt and boasting of German military might.
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 1939. Telegrams Hitler asking him to negotiate settlement with Poland over territorial dispute; Hitler responds by invading Poland on September 1. England and France declare war on Hitler, and World War Two begins.
SEPTEMBER 1939. European war prompts Roosevelt to seek changes in Neutrality Act to allow Britain and France to obtain arms from U.S. When Hitler invades Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France in first half of 1940, Roosevelt significantly increases U.S. arms production.
MAY 1940. Establishes Council of National Defense and, later, Office of Production Management, to prepare industry and armed forces for possible war.
SEPTEMBER 1940. Japan, at war with China and having invaded French Indochina (and having already annexed Korea in 1910 and occupied Manchuria in 1931), signs triple alliance with Italy and Germany in Berlin. At Roosevelt's urging, Congress passes first peacetime conscription bill in U.S. history, requiring all men between twenty-one and thirty-five to register for the draft and arranging for the induction into armed services of 800, 000 draftees.
NOVEMBER 1940. Denounced by right-wing Republicans as a "warmonger," and campaigning as an avowed enemy of Hitler and fascism pledged to do everything possible to keep America out of the European war, Roosevelt wins unprecedented third term, by 449 to 82 electoral votes, defeating the Republican Wendell L. Willkie in an election in which national defense and U.S. relationship to the war are major issues; Willkie carries only Maine, Vermont, and the isolationist Midwest.
JANUARY–MARCH 1941. Inaugurated January 20. In March Congress passes his Lend-Lease Act, authorizing president to "sell, transfer, lend, lease" armaments, foodstuffs, and services to countries whose defense he deems vital to the defense of the U.S.
APRIL–JUNE 1941. After German army invades Yugoslavia and then Greece, Hitler breaks joint non-aggression pact and invades Russia. In April U.S. takes Greenland under protection; in June Roosevelt authorizes landing of U.S. forces in Iceland and extends Lend-Lease to Russia.
AUGUST 1941. Meeting at sea, Roosevelt and Churchill draw up Atlantic Charter of "common principles," containing eight-point declaration of peace aims.
SEPTEMBER 1941. Announces that Navy has been ordered to destroy any German or Italian submarines entering U.S. waters and threatening U.S. defense; asks Japan to begin military evacuation of China and Indochina, but war minister, General Tojo, refuses.
OCTOBER 1941. Asks Congress to amend Neutrality Act to allow arming of U.S. merchant ships and to permit them to enter combat zones.
NOVEMBER 1941. Massive Japanese striking force secretly assembles in Pacific while negotiations with U.S. on military and economic issues appear to continue with arrival in U.S. of Japanese envoys for "peace talks."
DECEMBER 1941. Japan launches surprise attack on U.S. possessions in the Pacific and far eastern possessions of Great Britain; after emergency address by president, Congress unanimously declares war on Japan the next day. On December 11 Germany and Italy declare war on the U.S.; Congress, in response, declares war on Germany and Italy. (Casualty figures for Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: 2, 403 American sailors, soldiers, marines, and civilians killed; 1, 178 wounded.)
1942. Directing the war effort occupies president almost entirely. In his annual message to Congress he stresses increased war production, declares that "our objectives are clear—smashing the militarism imposed by the warlords on their enslaved peoples." Proposes record $ 58, 927, 000, 000 budget to accommodate war expenses. With Churchill, announces creation of unified military command in Southeast Asia. Strategy conference with Churchill in June results in November invasion of French North Africa by Allied troops under command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower (German army driven from Africa seven months later); president assures France, Portugal, and Spain that Allies have no designs on their territories. In June asks Congress to recognize existence of state of war against fascist regimes of Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, allied with Axis powers. In July appoints commission to try eight Nazi saboteurs arrested by federal agents after landing on U.S. shores from enemy submarine; following secret trial, two are imprisoned and six are executed in Washington. In September, president's emissary Wendell Willkie received by Stalin in Moscow, where he urges second military front in Western Europe. In October president makes secret two-week tour of war production facilities and announces objectives are being met. Asks Congress to expand draft to eighteen-and nineteen-year-olds.
JANUARY 1943–
AUGUST 1945. European war (and Hitler's concurrent massacre of Europe's Jews and the expropriation of their property) lasts until 1945. In April Mussolini executed by Italian partisans, and Italy surrenders. Germany surrenders unconditionally on May 7, a week after the suicide of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker and less than a month after the sudden death, from a cerebral hemorrhage, of President Roosevelt—then in the first year of a fourth presidential term—and the swearing in of his successor, Vice President Harry S. Truman. War ends in Far East when Japan surrenders unconditionally on August 14. World War Two is over.
CHARLES A. LINDBERGH 1902–1974
MAY 1927. Charles A. Lindbergh, a twenty-five-year-old Minnesota-born stunt flier and airmail pilot, flies the monoplane Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris in thirty-three hours and thirty minutes; his completing first nonstop transatlantic solo flight makes him a celebrity around the globe. President Coolidge awards Lindbergh Distinguished Flying Cross and commissions him colonel in U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve.
MAY 1929. Lindbergh marries Anne Morrow, the twenty-three-year-old daughter of U.S. ambassador to Mexico.
JUNE 1930. Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., born to Charles and Anne Lindbergh in New Jersey.
MARCH–MAY 1932. Charles Jr. kidnapped from family's secluded new house on 435 acres in rural Hopewell, New Jersey; some ten weeks later, decomposing corpse of baby discovered by chance in nearby woods.
SEPTEMBER 1934–MARCH 1935. A poor German immigrant carpenter and ex-convict, Bruno R. Hauptmann, arrested in Bronx, New York, for kidnap and murder of Lindbergh baby. Six-week trial in Flemington, New Jersey, characterized by press as "trial of the century." Hauptmann found guilty and executed in electric chair April 1936.
APRIL 1935. Anne Morrow Lindbergh publishes first book, North to the Orient, an account of her 1931 air adventures with Lindbergh; becomes a top bestseller and receives the National Booksellers Award as the most distinguished nonfiction book of the year.
DECEMBER 1935–DECEMBER 1936. Seeking privacy, Lindberghs leave America with their two small children and, until their return in spring 1939, reside mainly in small village in Kent, England. At the invitation of U.S. military, Lindbergh travels to Germany to report on Nazi aircraft development; makes repeated visits for this purpose over the next three years. Attends 1936 Berlin Olympics, where Hitler is in attendance, and later writes of Hitler to a friend, "He is undoubtedly a great man, and I believe has done much for the German people." Anne Morrow Lindbergh accompanies her husband to Germany and afterward writes critically of the "strictly puritanical view at home that dictatorships are of necessity wrong, evil, unstable and no good can come of them—combined with our funny-paper view of Hitler as a clown—combined with the very strong (naturally) Jewish propaganda in the Jewish-owned papers."
OCTOBER 1938. Service Cross of the German Eagle—a gold medallion with four small swastikas, conferred on foreigners for service to the Reich—presented to Lindbergh, "by order of the Führer," by Air Marshal Hermann Göring at American embassy dinner in Berlin. Anne Morrow Lindbergh publishes second account of her flying adventures, Listen! the Wind, a nonfiction bestseller despite her husband's growing unpopularity among American antifascists and the refusal by some Jewish booksellers to stock the book.
APRIL 1939. After Hitler invades Czechoslovakia, Lindbergh writes in his journal, "Much as I disapprove of many things Germany has done, I believe she has pursued the only consistent policy in Europe in recent years." At request of Air Corps chief, General "Hap" Arnold, and with approval of President Roosevelt—who dislikes and distrusts him—goes on active duty as colonel in U.S. Army Air Corps.
SEPTEMBER 1939. In journal entries after Germany invades Poland on September 1, Lindbergh notes the need to "guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races. . .and the infiltration of inferior blood." Aviation, he writes, is "one of those priceless possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown." Earlier in year he notes, of a private conversation with a high-ranking member of the Republican National Committee and the conservative newsman Fulton Lewis, Jr., "We are disturbed about the effect of the Jewish influence in our press, radio, and motion pictures. . .It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country." In an April 1939 diary entry (omitted in 1970 from his published Wartime Journals) he writes, "There are too many Jews in places like New York already. A few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos. And we are getting too many." In April 1940, speaking over the Columbia Broadcasting System, he says, "The only reason that we are in danger of becoming involved in this war is because there are powerful elements in America who desire us to take part. They represent a small minority of the American people, but they control much of the machinery of influence and propaganda. They seize every opportunity to push us closer to the edge." When Idaho Republican senator William E. Borah encourages Lindbergh to run for president, Lindbergh says he prefers to take political positions as a private citizen.
OCTOBER 1940. In spring America First Committee founded at Yale University Law School to oppose FDR's interventionist policies and promote American isolationism; in October Lindbergh addresses meeting of three thousand at Yale, advocating that America recognize "the new powers in Europe." Anne Morrow Lindbergh publishes third book, The Wave of the Future, a brief anti-interventionist tract subtitled "A Confession of Faith," which arouses enormous controversy and immediately becomes top nonfiction bestseller despite denunciation by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes as "the Bible of every American Nazi."
APRIL–AUGUST 1941. Addresses ten thousand at America First Committee rally in Chicago, another ten thousand at New York rally, prompting his bitter enemy Secretary Ickes to call him "the No. 1 United States Nazi fellow traveler." When Lindbergh writes to President Roosevelt complaining about Ickes's attacks on him, particularly for accepting the German medal, Ickes writes, "If Mr. Lindbergh feels like cringing when he is correctly referred to as a knight of the German Eagle, why doesn't he send back the disgraceful decoration and be done with it?" (Earlier, Lindbergh had declined returning the medal on grounds that it would constitute "an unnecessary insult" to the Nazi leadership.) President openly questions Lindbergh's loyalty, prompting Lindbergh to tender his resignation as Army colonel to Roosevelt's secretary of war. Ickes notes that while Lindbergh is swift in renouncing his Army commission, he remains adamant in refusing to return the medal received from Nazi Germany. In May, along with Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, who is seated on the platform beside Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Lindbergh addresses twenty-five thousand at America First rally at Madison Square Garden; his appearance greeted with cries from the audience of "Our next president!" and his speech followed by a four-minute ovation. Speaks against American intervention in European war to large audiences across the country throughout spring and summer.
SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 1941. Delivers his "Who Are the War Agitators?" radio speech to an America First rally in Des Moines on September 11; audience of eight thousand cheers when he names "the Jewish race" as among those most powerful and effective in pushing the U.S.—"for reasons which are not American"—toward involvement in the war. Adds that "we cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction." Des Moines speech is attacked the next day by both Democrats and Republicans, but Senator Gerald P. Nye, Republican from North Dakota and staunch America Firster, defends Lindbergh from critics and reiterates charge against the Jews, as do other supporters. December 10 address, scheduled for Boston America First rally, canceled by Lindbergh after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and U.S. declaration of war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. Activities of America First Committee terminated by leadership, and organization disbands.
JANUARY–DECEMBER 1942. Travels to Washington to seek reinsta
tement in Air Corps, but key Roosevelt cabinet members strongly oppose, as does much of the press, and Roosevelt says no. Repeated attempts to find position in aviation industry also fail, despite a lucrative association during the late twenties and early thirties with Transcontinental Air Transport ("the Lindbergh Line") and as highly paid consultant with Pan American Airways. In spring finally finds work, with government approval, as consultant to Ford's bomber development program, outside Detroit at Willow Run, and family moves to Detroit suburb. (The September afternoon President Roosevelt visits Willow Run to inspect war production projects, Lindbergh makes it his business to be away.) Participates in experiments at Mayo Clinic aeromedical laboratory to decrease physical dangers of high-altitude flying; later participates as test pilot in experiments with oxygen equipment at high altitudes.
DECEMBER 1942–JULY 1943. Takes active role in training pilots for Navy/Marine Corps Corsair, fighter plane that he helps develop for United Aircraft in Connecticut.