by Susan Hertog
“German air strength is greater than all other European countries combined,” he wrote in his report. “They produce 500–800 planes per month and are capable of producing 20,000 per year.” Their design, construction, and operation were “excellent.”
It seems to be essential to avoid a general European war at any cost. I believe that a war now might easily result in the loss of European civilization. A general war would, I believe, result in something akin to communism running over Europe and, judging by Russia, anything seems preferable … I am convinced it is wiser to permit German’s eastward expansion than to throw England and France unprepared into a war at this time.58
In fact, Lindbergh’s statistics were later proved wrong. The numbers he had were based on long-range plans, but Hitler’s thirst for domination sabotaged them. Production would not hit its potential of 20,000 planes until the end of 1942.59 Goering’s estimates had been inflated not only to satisfy Hitler but to intimidate the Allies. Lindbergh was being used. The information leaked to him was meant to erode resistance. And, in fact, his derogation of Russian aircraft and his German production report to Roosevelt gave him new credibility and increased his access within the Reich.60
On receipt of Charles’s letter of September 22, Ambassador Kennedy cabled the document to Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington. Two days later, Kennedy and Hull conferred by phone, with the understanding that Roosevelt had received the message. The president had already sent the memo to Chief of Staff Malin Craig and Chief of Naval Operations William D. Leahy.61 On the same day, Kennedy had slipped a copy of the report to Chamberlain as he boarded a plane to meet Hitler at Bad Godesberg.62 That evening, in London, Lindbergh spent two hours at dinner with Air Minister John Slessor and the next day had lunch with Air Marshal Sir Wilfrid Freeman. He also talked with others in the air ministry and in air intelligence.
As Londoners placed sandbags around doors and windows, Anne and Charles strapped on their gas masks. They spent the night of September 26 at Cliveden, listening to a broadcast of Hitler’s speech. Anne felt as though she were watching a patient with a fatal illness. War seemed inevitable, but she was confused about the issues.
When her father was alive, the world had seemed smaller and less complicated. She was beginning to believe that his idealism was the “romantic” illusion of simpler times. He was certain of his loyalty to Britain, and committed to the Wilsonian vision of sovereign nations adhering to the laws of the international community.63 Confused about the “right” or “wrong” of war, Anne nonetheless consented to return to Berlin later in the fall and to consider making it their permanent home.64
While Chamberlain prepared his declaration of war, Hitler conferred with Mussolini, at whose suggestion they agreed to meet the British and French in a last effort to avoid military confrontation. Within twenty-four hours, Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, and Mussolini were in Munich. Without the consent of Czechoslovakia or Russia, they signed an agreement in the early morning hours of September 30, conceding to all of Hitler’s demands. Chamberlain arrived home waving the treaty, which promised enduring peace. He assured the crowds that had gathered to cheer him that he had brought them “peace with honor.”
Anne was thrilled. In her diary she quoted the words Chamberlain had borrowed from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, hoping with him that he had “out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.” It was clear, she noted proudly, that Charles could be of influence.65 Apparently, the French foreign minister thought the same.
On September 30, on their way home from London to Illiec, they stopped in Paris, where Charles once again talked to Ambassador William Bullitt and French economic minister, Jean Monnet. Recognizing Charles’s sway with statesmen, as well as his public clout, they asked him to galvanize French public opinion in support of developing resources to resist the Germans. Their plan was to circumvent Roosevelt’s pledge of neutrality by secretly manufacturing planes in the French air factories on the Canadian border, using manpower from Detroit and Buffalo.66 Anne was torn between her father’s views expressed by his old friend Jean Monnet and her husband’s hard-nosed realities. But Charles remained implacable. Planes or no planes, he was convinced that a war with Germany would be a disaster, allowing communism to overrun Europe.67 “Victory itself would be of little value, for it would leave no civilization able to appreciate or take advantage of it.”68 In short, if the Germans were to lose the war, the best blood of Europe would be dead. Certain that war would bring an end to Western civilization, and ridding himself of any moral responsibility, Charles refused to help. Jean Monnet abandoned his plans.69
The next morning, Hitler marched through the Sudetenland, occupying 10,000 square miles with a population of three and a half million, a fifth of whom were Czechs.70
Concerned about her children, Anne left Charles in Paris and returned to Illiec. The children were her source of strength.71 And yet she was home not a week before she agreed to accompany Charles to Berlin. He was so pleased about her coming, he was “like a small boy.”72 Jon, however, turned away in tears, asking plaintively why she had to leave. Anne, filled with pain, had no answer.
Quite in harmony, Anne and Charles set out for Berlin and were invited to the Lilienthal Aviation conference. Charles attended on the tacit premise that he would be privy to new Luftwaffe developments. In the wake of their Munich victory and their successful invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Nazis saw Charles as a spokesman for their superior military might. The new pro-German American ambassador, Hugh Wilson, viewed Charles’s presence as an opportunity to strengthen his connections within the Reich. And Truman Smith, like Charles, was eager to garner new military information.73
Later, Smith wrote that Charles had come to Berlin to help the Jews rescue their money from the hands of the Nazis.74 But there is no evidence to support that claim. While Anne expressed revulsion at German anti-Semitism, both she and Charles viewed “the Jewish Problem” as a German internal matter, of little import in the prevailing political and military context. But their intimate connections with the Reich through Truman Smith, as well as their familiarity with street life in Berlin, leaves little doubt that they did understand Hitler’s racial motives. Even if they had not read the hate-riddled pages of Mein Kampf, which is doubtful, the daily barrage of anti-Semitic propaganda, and the anti-Semitic laws that delineated the inferior legal and social status of the Jews, could not possibly have escaped their notice. By October 1938, there were nearly four hundred laws segregating, stigmatizing, and impoverishing Jews. In 1933, Jewish state employees had been dismissed. In an attempt to keep Jewish propaganda out of the press, Jewish editors were ousted and authors expelled. In 1934, Jewish students and professors were removed from college and universities, and in 1935 Jews were stripped of their German citizenship and civil rights. At the beginning of 1938, an intensified program of “Aryanization” had been launched, and Jewish businessmen were forced to sell out to Germans. Four out of five Jewish establishments were transferred to “Aryan” landlords. By the end of the summer, Jewish physicians and nurses had been forced to resign, and the middle names of all Jews were modified to bear the mark of their ancestors. Every man would be known henceforth as “Israel” and every woman as “Sara.”75 All who had walked the streets of Berlin, all who had read any pages of Mein Kampf, and certainly all who sat within the walls of the American embassy understood the intentions of the Reich.
But Lindbergh’s new moral order transcended the existence of any race or nation. In his view, no ideology or people were sacred; everything and everyone was expendable. The Jews, the Russians, the Asians, the British, and the French, even the principles of democracy, were subject to the same evolutionary laws. The strong would always dominate the weak, and the end would always justify the means. The Germans represented the archetypal model of virility, energy, efficiency, and excellence. The Jews, it seemed, were responsible for the economic and social chaos after the Great War. And their infiltration of German society
was a problem that had to be resolved. If the Jews were sacrificed to preserve German moral and racial superiority, it was in the natural order of things.76
Anne may have been ambivalent about the destructive power of fascism, but, like Charles, she had become disillusioned with the freedoms inherent in democracy. If the ungoverned press—the ubiquitous voice of the common people—could create the moral degeneracy that inspired the murder of her child, perhaps democracy wasn’t worth its price. Despite her deepest instincts, and the humanist teachings of her Presbyterian parents, Anne questioned its viability. Furthermore, there was something seductive about a society governed from the top. Under Hitler’s rule, there seemed no room for the moral license that had killed Charlie. Germany was vigorous, purposeful, and productive at a time when the democracies seemed to shatter in the throes of economic depression and moral confusion. While in America the Lindberghs had lived in a state of “siege,” there, in Germany, Hitler had promised them total protection from the public and the press. For the first time, they had the prospect of living a normal life with their children.
In the end, Anne cast her lot with Charles. She was willing to accept the validity of his views. Maybe history was Darwinian—the inevitable unfolding of natural laws. Maybe the strong would always dominate the weak; perhaps the fittest would always survive. Germany had the technology and the will to win a war. By force of nature, Hitler’s domination was inevitable.
They were not alone in their indifference to the Jews. In American polls taken in 1938, Jews were last on the list of public concerns. An overwhelming majority of those questioned were repelled by the atrocities and perversions of the German Reich, but few wanted to do anything about them.77 The words of Charles Lindbergh would echo around the world. By force of his celebrity and his ambition, he had placed himself at the crux of power, and it was his voice that was heard by those who governed. In 1938, he was still the untarnished hero of the technological age, as well as a world-renowned expert on aviation. Although his motives seemed enigmatic and mercurial, his voice carried the weight of “truth.”
To Anne, Charles seemed “chosen” to walk among the superior few who could push forward the “natural” process. Who was she to hold it back? As his wife, wasn’t she morally bound to his view? Like the virtuous woman defined by her ancestors, Anne was prepared to leave her country and her home, her children and her writing—in short, everything she held dear, to go “all the way” with her husband. Even if her loyalty to Charles violated her true instincts, she maintained her self-imposed silence. Only when the Nazis sought to honor him did she finally choose to speak.
Two and a half weeks after Munich, on October 18, Ambassador Hugh Wilson gave an official dinner at the American Embassy in Berlin to honor Charles and Field Marshal Goering. Among the Americans attending were Truman Smith, Albert Vanaman, Igor Sikorsky, Consul General Raymond Geist, and other officials of the American Embassy. Among the Germans were other high-level military advisers: Milch, Udet, Heinkel, Messerschmitt, and the chief of the Air Research division. The Italian and Belgian ambassadors to Germany also attended.78 Because the event was a “stag dinner,” Anne and Kay dined alone at the Smiths’ apartment.
Within minutes of Charles’s arrival, he was approached by Goering, who, with a few German words, handed him a small red-leather box. “Im Nahmen des Fuehrer ….”
As the voice of the translator echoed his words, Goering read from a parchment signed by Hitler, presenting Charles with the Service Cross of the Order of the German Eagle, a golden medallion with four small swastikas. “Dienst Kreuz des Orden vom Deutschen Adler mit dem Stern.”
It was the second highest medal conferred on foreigners for service to the Reich. Hugh Wilson noted that Charles received it with unqualified pride. Smiles and applause accompanied Goering’s declaration, and the evening proceeded with routine nonchalance.79
With Goering at one end of the dinner table, and Charles, the honored guest, at the other, conversation centered on the aftermath of Munich. Amid the clink and hum of Kate Wilson’s finest crystal and china, and the shuffling deference of coat-tailed servants, Goering delivered his opinions on the adversaries of the Reich. Daladier, he said, was limited but honest. Chamberlain was a diligent statesman within his narrow abilities. And Anthony Eden was contemptible—a coward who had achieved a position incommensurate with his meager gifts. It was Sir John Simon, foreign minister and now chancellor of the exchequer, Goering reported brightly, who fully understood the mission of the Reich.80 His views, coincidentally, reflected those of Charles.
As if by design, Goering and Charles “huddled alone” with their interpreters when dinner was over, and the others drew back, awaiting their return. Goering, pleased with his newly honored comrade, discussed his latest JU-88 bomber.81
When Charles returned to the Smith apartment with the small red box containing his medal, Anne immediately understood. He handed her the box in silence; it was as if the wave had finally crashed.
“The albatross,” was all she said.82
23
Broken Glass
Anne and Charles in Paris, winter 1939.
(Popperfoto)
A FINAL CRY1
Praise life—Praise life
Before the fall of winter’s knife,
They stand and call,
O man, praise life…
A final cry
From earth to sky,
Tree, fruit, and flower,
Before the hour
Of sacrifice:
Praise life, O man,
While yet you can.
—ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
NOVEMBER 9, 1938, “KRISTALLNACHT,” GERMANY
Three weeks later, flames shot through the November darkness as thousands of people scuttled amid the broken glass to escape the beatings of Hitler’s henchmen. It was the Day of the Movement, an official holiday since Hitler had come to power, and his S.A. officers swaggered through the streets of cities throughout Germany, attacking synagogues and storefronts with equal abandon. While Hitler remained aloof and silent, issuing orders through Gestapo headquarters, Himmler announced that “anti-Jewish demonstrations” should not be hindered. As many Jews as possible were to be arrested by the Gestapo—especially wealthy Jews—for immediate incarceration at detention camps. Staged by Hitler as “spontaneous demonstrations” in reaction to the assassination of a German consul in Paris by a young irate Jew two days earlier, Hitler assigned his civilian thugs, plucked from the general population, to kill the “abdominable Jews” for their crimes against the state. “The swine won’t commit another murder …” Goering would say. “I would not like to be a Jew in Germany.”2
By the early morning hours of November 10, 1938, as fire turned to smoke, tens of thousands of windows were broken, at least a hundred people had been killed, and thousands more had been subjected to wanton and sadistic violence. Seventy-five hundred businesses had been gutted, and two hundred sixty-seven synagogues burned. Almost all Jewish cemeteries had been desecrated, and at least a hundred and ninety-seven private homes destroyed. Later, it would be called Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.3
The official Nazi newspaper, the Voelkischer Beobachter (The People’s Observer), remained silent. It reported nothing on the number of Jews killed, injured, or arrested, or on the damage done to the Jewish homes and synagogues. It urged the German people to exercise discretion and discipline, to avert their eyes when they passed the ruins, and to remember the crimes committed by the Jews against the state.
The pogrom marked a turning; now even the general populace viewed the Jews as “fair game.” Although most Germans were frightened by the violence in their midst, angry at the hundreds of thousands of Reichmarks the damage had cost the state, and fearful of the vengeance of the Jews, thousands watched through the night and the next day as the Jews were marched off to concentration camps.
A hundred thousand people attended a rally to hear the anti-Jewish propaganda of Julius Strei
cher, the publisher of Der Stürmer and one of the most rabid anti-Semites in Germany. A member of the Hitler Youth Movement said, “After Kristallnacht, no German old enough to walk could ever plead ignorance of the persecution of the Jews and no Jews could harbor any delusion that Hitler wanted Germany anything but Judenrein, clean of Jews.”4
November 10 was a beautiful day on Illiec, mild and clear, with a cloudless sky and a gentle wind. As the news came over the radio, Anne wrote in her diary that she was “shocked.” But Charles sat quietly at his desk, wondering whether this was simply a deterrent against further shooting incidents. Or was it a move to oust the Jews from Germany? A means to stir up international anti-Semitism? Or was it the indication of the German government’s inherent hatred of the Jews?
“They have undoubtedly had a difficult Jewish problem,” he wrote. “But why is it necessary to handle it so unreasonably?”5
Kay Smith recorded that Charles called them the morning after Kristallnacht to express his “outrage” and to inform them that he and Anne had canceled their plans to move to Berlin,6 but on the same day, he wrote to Dr. Carrel expressing his regret at having to change his plans. He had hoped that living in Germany would enable him to understand the German viewpoint.
In fact, until the very morning of Hitler’s Kristallnacht, Anne and Charles were continuing with plans to make Berlin their home. Since receiving the German Cross, Lindbergh’s ties to Germany had tightened. He had spoken to Ambassador Hugh Wilson in confidence, asking his advice about taking a house in Berlin for the winter. Wilson counseled him to seek “a degree of immunity with the press” in the United States by speaking with William Randolph Hearst, Colonel Robert McCormick, and other newspaper publishers to work out a modus vivendi. Lindbergh vigorously objected to the position that the public had “a right to know” about his and Anne’s private lives. He added that as far as attacks on him went, he “didn’t give a damn.” In any case, he was not ready to return to the United States with his family.7 While Anne had felt strangely “starved” in the midst of plenty, Charles felt increasingly fulfilled. In exile, he had found a home. In the well-guarded Reich, he would no longer have to worry about the whim of a disapproving press or the fury of a volatile public. An official and permanent “bodyguard,” assigned by the Reich, would protect Lindbergh and his home.