Lindbergh

by A. Scott Berg

  Six nights later, Lindbergh addressed another capacity crowd, filling ten thousand seats in New York’s Manhattan Center. Outside, among another ten thousand people milling on Thirty-fourth Street, were members of a watchdog organization called Friends of Democracy. Its national director, Leon M. Birkhead, had recently informed Lindbergh that his group had discovered “that the America First Committee is being used by Hitler’s propagandists to advance a doctrine which is anti-American and anti-democratic.” His supporters picketed the event, calling it “the largest gathering of pro-Nazi and pro-Fascists, of both domestic and imported brands, since the German American bund rallies in Madison Square Garden.” The Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League distributed handbills headlined “What One Hitler Medal Can Do.” PM characterized the gathering as “a liberal sprinkling of Nazis, Fascists, anti-Semites, crackpots and just people” in which the “just people seemed out of place.” Walter Winchell announced that “every hate spreader they could find showed up for that meeting.” Meantime Interior Secretary Ickes said the America First Committee’s ties to “professional Fascists and anti-Semites” had become “clear and scandalous”; and he named Lindbergh “the No. 1 United States Nazi fellow traveler.”

  With so many others denouncing his opponent, President Roosevelt remained above the fray. But on April twenty-fifth, he could not resist a zinger or two of his own. At a press conference, a reporter asked, “How is it that the Army, which needs now distinguished fliers … has not asked Colonel Lindbergh to rejoin his rank as Colonel?” As though waiting for the question, Roosevelt launched into a folksy history lesson about Clement L. Vallandigham, leader of the “Copperheads,” those Yankees during the Civil War who were sympathetic to the Confederates. “Well, Vallandigham, as you know, was an appeaser,” Roosevelt said, getting a laugh from his audience. “He wanted to make peace from 1863 on because the North ‘couldn’t win.’ Once upon a time there was a place called Valley Forge,” he continued in making his point, “and there were an awful lot of appeasers that pleaded with Washington to quit, because he ‘couldn’t win.’” When another reporter asked the President if he was still talking about Lindbergh, FDR said, “Yes,” drawing another round of laughter as well as the next day’s headlines.

  Lindbergh was not amused. Had FDR’s attack been strictly political, he would have paid little attention to it. Because the President of the United States had spoken specifically to Lindbergh’s commission in the Army, however, he felt his “loyalty, character, and motives” were being questioned and his honor impugned. Lindbergh handwrote a draft of his response, in which he stated, “I had hoped that I might exercise my rights as an American citizen, to place my viewpoint before the people of my country in time of peace, without giving up the privilege of serving my country as an Air Corps officer in the event of war.” But since his Commander in Chief had clearly implied “that I am no longer of use to this country as a reserve officer,” Lindbergh said he saw “no honorable alternative” to tendering his resignation as Colonel in the United States Army Air Corps Reserve. “Here I am stumping the country with pacifists and considering resigning as a colonel in the Army Air Corps,” he wrote ruefully in his journals, “when there is no philosophy I disagree with more than that of the pacifist, and nothing I would rather be doing than flying in the Air Corps.” He showed his letter to Anne, who suggested a coda: “I will continue to serve my country to the best of my ability as a private citizen.”

  Miss Gawne typed the letter, which Lindbergh sent to the White House while his formal resignation went to the Secretary of War. “If I did not tender my resignation,” Lindbergh was forced to recognize, “I would lose something in my own character that means even more to me than my commission in the Air Corps. No one else might know it, but I would. And if I take this insult from Roosevelt, more, and worse, will probably be forthcoming.”

  On May 3, 1941, at an America First rally of fifteen thousand at the Arena in St. Louis, Lindbergh hammered away at his new theme—that “no matter how many planes we build in America and send to England, we cannot make the British Isles stronger than Germany in military aviation.” One week later, he spoke to ten thousand people in Minneapolis, in his most personal and hard-hitting speech to date. After summoning up his father’s fight against American entry into the first World War, he attacked the President for misleading the nation, keeping it uninformed as to where it was being led. He asserted that he had never wanted Germany to win this war, but that the only way Germany could be defeated was by an invasion. “Even if an invasion were possible, which I do not believe,” Lindbergh averred, “the resulting devastation would be so great that Europe could not recover for generations if it could recover at all.”

  When Lindbergh returned to New York City for his next address, on May twenty-third, the rally required Madison Square Garden. The night was charged with political energy, as some twenty-five thousand people filled the flag-festooned stadium. Almost as many stood on the street, listening to the speeches over loudspeakers. The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies heckled that those who entered the stadium would “mingle with Nazis, Fascists and Communists.”

  The charge was true, as many recognizable extremists had shown up for the meeting—including disciples of Father Coughlin and of Joseph McWilliams, leader of the pro-Fascist American Destiny Party. Furthermore, there were rumors (secretly substantiated by FBI reports) that Senator Burton K. Wheeler’s wife was “bitterly anti-Semitic,” as was one of Colonel McCormick’s key men, Harry Jung, who headed the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation, another purportedly pro-Nazi group. Talk of Colonel McCormick’s and General Wood’s anti-Semitism was rampant.

  Arriving with a police escort, the Lindberghs were shunted past the crowd into a quiet room with the night’s other featured speakers. While waiting, John T. Flynn—columnist for The New Republic and leader of the liberal flank of the America First movement—was informed that Joe McWilliams himself was sitting in the front of the hall. Flynn said he was going to denounce McWilliams from the platform. Lindbergh advised disclaiming “any connection between America First and McWilliams” but stressed that “it should be done with dignity and moderation.”

  At last the speakers paraded onto the stage into a flood of lights and a torrential ovation. Shouts of “Lindy!” and “Our next President!” went up. Photographers rushed toward him. The hysteria made Anne fearful that somebody might shoot her husband.

  Flynn opened the meeting by attacking those who had smeared America First’s purpose and whose support they rejected—namely Communists, Fascists, Bundists, and Christian Frontists … and specifically, Joe McWilliams. The audience booed and threatened to turn unruly, until police stepped into the breach. The crowd settled down to listen to short addresses by Mrs. John P. Marquand, wife of one of the most celebrated novelists of the day; Kathleen Norris, a popular writer herself, who spoke of mothers losing their boys in times of war; and Norman Thomas, who simply believed, “This is not our war.”

  The introduction of citizen Lindbergh set off a wave of applause that practically shook the Garden. He stood in silence—slightly stooped, grinning—until the crowd quieted. He spoke that night of the United States as a civilization of mixed races, religions, and beliefs, and he inquired why the country had to jeopardize all that “by injecting the wars and the hatreds of Europe into our midst?” The audience cheered wildly. “With adequate leadership we can be the strongest and most influential nation in the world,” he told the crowd. But first, he said, they must “demand an accounting from a government that has led us into war while it promised peace.”

  The occasion offered the press enough material to skew their stories in any direction they wanted. The anti-isolationists played up the support that night for Joe McWilliams and his followers. Dorothy Thompson and PM wrote of Lindbergh’s becoming the leader of the pro-Nazi movement. Henry Luce’s Time and Life ran photographs of Lindbergh and his colleagues with their arms held high as they were reciting th
e Pledge of Allegiance, looking for all the world as though they were Sieg Heil-ing. Rumors of Lindbergh’s heading the German underground in America became rife.

  In truth, Charles Lindbergh was never associated with any pro-Nazi or anti-Semitic organization; he never attended any Bund meetings; and since more than four months before the outbreak of war in Europe, he had neither consorted nor consulted with anyone known to have any connections with the Third Reich. When Truman Smith invited him to meet a visiting German dignitary, Lindbergh declined, noting: “I have had no communication with Germany, or with German citizens, since I left Europe in April 1939, and I think it is important for me to be able to say this whenever the question arises. It is a stupid situation, and I do not intend to govern my actions by such considerations indefinitely, but I do not want to give my enemies any unnecessary opportunity to cause confusion in the public mind at this time.” He even stopped writing to the Carrels so that he could attest, if ever necessary, to having had no direct communication with the Continent whatever.

  In a speech at the Arena in Philadelphia on the night of May 29, 1941, Lindbergh traced the foreign policy the President had pursued, one which subtly but steadily engaged America in the European war. “First they said, ‘sell us the arms and we will win.’ Then it was ‘lend us the arms and we will win.’ Now it is ‘bring us the arms and we will win.’ Tomorrow it will be ‘fight our war for us and we will win,’” Lindbergh told the crowd of fifteen thousand, which spilled out into the street. Lindbergh reported that America First’s membership was increasing by thousands every day, as chapters were being formed across the country—each of which hoped for a “Lindbergh rally.” “If you can just arrange to divide yourself into 118 equal parts,” Bob Stuart wrote their top draw, “all the America First representatives will be happy.”

  The movement gained momentum through the summer; and those who believed in it took pride in Lindbergh’s giving voice to their feelings. In response to a Dorothy Thompson column stating that many army officers disapproved of Lindbergh, Major A. C. Wedemeyer wrote Lindbergh that the opposite was true, “that most of the officers highly approve of you as an individual and as a clear thinking realist with the most unselfish motives.” Indeed, whether one agreed with Lindbergh’s position or not, most conceded that he was not appearing in public for personal gain. One man wrote a letter to the editor of the Dayton Journal-Herald likening Lindbergh to the prophet Isaiah, who sacrificed “his favored position in high places to warn his people against alliances that will destroy much that is good in the land.” A poll in FDR’s home district showed that more than ninety percent of the constituents were against American entry into the war.

  But Lindbergh had never been subjected to such personal attack. Libraries across America pulled his books from their shelves; in Ottawa, Ontario, a group asked the Mayor to burn Lindbergh’s books in a public square. Charlotte, North Carolina, changed the name of Lindbergh Drive to Avon Avenue. The Kansas City Liberty Memorial removed Lindbergh’s name from its list of honorary members. And the town of Little Falls repainted its water tower so that it no longer boasted a favorite son. A Gallup poll published April twenty-seventh said while “there were still 81% of the people opposed to U.S. war entry now, if it appeared that the only way to beat Germany and Italy was for the U. S. to go to war, 68% would now say ‘Go.’”

  Lindbergh went back on the warpath for peace, arguing his case on the West Coast. On June 18, 1941, he and Anne boarded a TWA DC-3. Riding in the “silvered limousine of a plane,” with its “soft seats, small curtained windows, muffled noise, air conditioning, [and] sky hostesses” hardly seemed like flying, so removed were they from the elements. With fueling stops along the way, they crossed the country in less than eighteen hours.

  Two days later, Lindbergh spoke at the Hollywood Bowl to his largest live audience yet. Lindbergh said it was “the most beautiful and inspiring meeting place I have ever seen—open sky and stars above, and hills dimly outlined in the background, so that the rows of people merge into the hills themselves”—an estimated eighty thousand flowing onto the surrounding roads. After speeches by Kathleen Norris, Senator Worth Clark, a Democrat from Idaho, and actress Lillian Gish (who pled for a referendum on the war), the special guest star himself spoke. Because Japan had formed a military alliance with the Axis powers, Lindbergh said, America’s entering the war would probably mean “we must be prepared to fight Japan in the Pacific at the same time that we are convoying our troops and supplies across the Atlantic.” In its current state of unpreparedness for war, Lindbergh asserted that the “alternative to a negotiated peace is either a Hitler victory or a prostrate Europe, and possibly a prostrate America as well.” Cries of “Our next President!” went up again. “No,” Kathleen Norris said privately, “he is more like a Joan of Arc.”

  Eleven nights later, Lindbergh spoke at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium. Because of the fickleness of the European nations toward each other, Lindbergh underscored the folly of America’s allying with any of the belligerents. When the war started, he pointed out, “Germany and Russia were lined up against England and France. Now, less than two years later, we find Russia and England fighting France and Germany…. The murderers and plunderers of yesterday are accepted as the valiant defenders of civilization today.” Furthermore, he observed, “A refugee who steps from the gangplanks and advocates war is acclaimed as a defender of freedom. A native born American who opposes war is called a fifth-columnist.” Then he fell back on his own personal bugbear: “I tell you,” he said, “that I would a hundred times rather see my country ally herself with England, or even with Germany with all of her faults, than with the cruelty, the godlessness, and the barbarism that exist in Soviet Russia. An alliance between the United States and Russia should be opposed by every American, by every Christian, and by every humanitarian in this country.”

  Before leaving California, the Lindberghs spent three days with William Randolph Hearst at his Wyntoon ranch, a veritable Alpine village he had constructed at the foot of Mount Shasta. Although Lindbergh still disapproved of Hearst’s journalistic practices, he appreciated the anti-intervention message that his newspapers spread. “A period of crisis is the real test of character and leadership,” Lindbergh wrote him afterward. “I believe that you have done something for this country in the crisis we are going through, for which our people will be forever grateful.”

  In August, the great debate heated up. Opposition to Lindbergh had grown so vocal before his appearance in Cleveland, the police insisted on “X-raying” the furniture of the apartment in which he was staying and posting police guards all along his route, from his room to the podium. When he ventured to Oklahoma City on August twenty-eighth, to lecture on Air Power, he learned there had been threats of shooting. Worse, the city council unanimously voted to revoke America First’s lease with the Municipal Auditorium, forcing the organization to seek a new venue. Upon hearing this news, Lindbergh said, “if we could not rent a hall we could hold our meeting in a cow pasture.” They settled instead on a ballpark just outside the city. Fifteen thousand people weathered the blizzard of publicity, further convincing Lindbergh that American citizens were “definitely opposed” to intervention. “But what has Roosevelt in his mind,” Lindbergh asked in his journals, “and how far will he be able to take us? How close can we skate to the edge of war without falling in?” Closer, Lindbergh realized, if the President could somehow discredit him.

  For months, Harold Ickes publicly hectored Lindbergh, now referring to him as a “Knight of the German Eagle”; and Lindbergh generally ignored him. On July 14, 1941, however, Ickes got his goat. At a Bastille Day meeting sponsored by France Forever, the Secretary of the Interior built his rousing speech at Manhattan Center on the subject of liberating France largely around the image of “ex-Colonel Lindbergh” and “what a menace he and those like him are to this country and its free institutions.” He said he could tell Lindbergh “where he could readily locate an artificial heart
with the aid of an x-ray machine.” Beyond the name-calling, Ickes raised a point many Americans had thought but few had spoken: “No one has ever heard Lindbergh utter a word of horror at, or even aversion to, the bloody career that the Nazis are following,” Ickes said, “nor a word of pity for the innocent men, women and children, who have been deliberately murdered by the Nazis in practically every country in Europe.” For all Lindbergh’s repudiation of Communism, Ickes said, “I have never heard this Knight of the German Eagle denounce Hitler or Nazism or Mussolini or Fascism.”

  No, [Ickes continued] I have never heard Lindbergh utter a word of pity for Belgium or Holland or Norway or England. I have never heard him express a word of pity for the Poles or the Jews who have been slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands by Hitler’s savages. I have never heard Lindbergh say a word of encouragement to the English for the fight they are so bravely making for Lindbergh’s right to live his own life in his own way, as well as for their own right to do so.