\n<\/p>\n
Charles Lindbergh shown receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross from President Calvin Coolidge in June 1927.<\/em><\/p>\n The American Founding Fathers counseled that the nation should \u2018avoid foreign entanglements\u2019, and President Trump’s recent hesitation in support of Ukraine brings back memories of earlier similar debates. In the 1930s, the mood in Congress and the country was that American involvement in World War I had been a mistake and had not only failed to make the world \u2018safe for democracy,\u2019 but too many lives had been lost or damaged. But by 1940, President Roosevelt started to try to convince America to get involved in the new war in Europe. Public opinion was divided, and although there was majority support for giving help of some kind to beleaguered Britain, the polls were against putting \u2018boots on the ground\u2019. Leading the opposition to such deeper involvement was the America First Committee (AFC), the most significant grassroots movement ever in America, and they preferred the term \u2018anti-intervention\u2019, which did not suggest total withdrawal from the rest of the world. The AFC had the most support in the Midwest, while FDR and his hawks in the cabinet had the backing of the anglophile East Coast. The AFC had bipartisan political support and was joined by writers and historians. Eventually, their star speaker at the regular nationwide rallies was the American aviator hero Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974). After his famous solo flight to Paris from New York in 1927, he had retained a remarkable mystique since he coupled his success in the world of commercial aviation with a policy of avoiding the still-intrusive press, particularly the tabloids, by using the European royalty\u2019s strategy of \u2018never complain never explain.\u2019 He traveled widely in Britain, France, Germany, and Russia and proudly showed their military planes; it was his confidential reports via the Berlin American embassy back to G2 intelligence in Washington on the Luftwaffe strength that eventually convinced President Roosevelt in 1938 to order a rapid expansion of the American Air Corps. From 1939, Lindbergh added his voice to the anti-intervention movement, starting with historically based, closely argued radio broadcasts and then speeches at the large AFC rallies later. His emergence was doubly uncomfortable for FDR. He not only feared Lindbergh\u2019s contribution to the debate but knew that his close connection to the Republican Party (including marrying Mexican ambassador Dwight Morrow\u2019s daughter) meant he could be a formable populist political opponent should he run for president, as many had urged. In response, FDR and his inner cabinet, aided by compliant congressmen and friendly columnists, mounted an unpleasant campaign against Lindbergh, and, rarely debating the issues he raised, they preferred an ad hominem<\/em>attack. His travels in Germany and interest in the Luftwaffe made him vulnerable, and the jibes included but were not limited to, claiming he was a Nazi, a fifth columnist, an antisemite, a quisling, and even, mysteriously, a fellow traveler.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n World War Two<\/strong><\/p>\n It is often said that Lindbergh and the AFC lost the intervention argument to FDR, but instead, Pearl Harbor brought abrupt closure to the still evenly balanced debate. Thereafter, during the War, Lindbergh worked in the commercial aviation sector and then flew 50 distinguished missions with the Marines in the Pacific. After FDR\u2019s death, the unpleasantness of the intervention debate was admitted and regretted (\u2018there was a war going on\u2019), and some private apologies reached Lindbergh. Even the FBI was contrite. FDR had brought them in to investigate Lindbergh, even using illegal wiretaps. Still, when J. Edgar Hoover closed their huge file on him, he added a summary saying that \u2018none of the earlier allegations had any substance.\u2019 <\/p>\n Lindbergh was welcomed back into the post-war military world. As a Cold War warrior, he worked with the atomic bomb air squadrons and served on crucial ballistic missile planning committees. From the mid-1950s, he successfully took up many conservation issues. Now a national icon again, but a reclusive one, his book on the Paris flight and the book sold well. From Truman\u2019s administration onwards, he was in favor of the White House, and the Kennedys sought the Lindbergh\u2019s company, invitations which the couple occasionally accepted. Now, on the White House\u2019s social A-list, Nixon also puts him on important conservation committees. When he died in 1974, President Ford expressed national sympathy. Later, Reagan\u2019s addresses to young people often invoked Lindbergh as a role model. <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lindbergh disparaged<\/strong><\/p>\n But by the end of the century, something changed, and his place in history became uncertain. This was not the result of new scholarly work or an adverse biography. All the post-war literature had been favorable to him, including Berg\u2019s thorough Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of 1998, which cleared him of any Nazi leanings or antisemitism.[1]<\/a> The damage to Lindbergh instead came from historical fiction. The basis of Philip Roth\u2019s best-selling novel The Plot Against America<\/em> 2004 was the well-worn \u2018what if\u2019 fictional trope that Hitler won the European war. Lindbergh, elected as US president, aligns with him and acts against the Jews. Roth’s usual disclaimer was that his story was not to be taken seriously, but it was. Historical fiction can be entertaining if the sales are low and the author obscure, but the inventions can be dangerous in the hands of a distinguished author. An HBO television series of the same name based on the book followed in 2020, and it often felt like a documentary. Serious-minded reviewers of the television series took the opportunity to reflect widely on fascism and antisemitism, with Lindbergh still featured as a central figure. The mood at the time was \u2018wonkish,\u2019 looking again at figures of the past and seeking feet of clay or swollen heads, or both. When others sought any justification for Roth\u2019s allegations, they returned and found the smears and insults directed at Lindbergh during the intervention debate. The old 1940-1941 jibes were revisited, and, yielding to presentism, to the dreary list was added the charge of \u2018white supremacist,\u2019 which at the time had escaped even Lindbergh\u2019s most vocal opponents. Evidence for all the old labels was lacking, and to prove them, corners were cut even by serious historians, leading to a regrettable number of mangled or false quotations. The most vivid tampering with the historical record was misusing a newspaper picture taken at an AFC rally in 1941. It shows Lindbergh and the platform party with arms raised, and the caption at the time noted that they were loyally saluting the flag. The gesture at that time was the so-called Bellamy salute which was soon officially discouraged and changed in 1942 to the present hand-on-heart version because of its similarity to the Nazi salute.\u00a0 Washington\u2019s Smithsonian Institution was now revisiting Lindbergh, and although they had proudly used Lindbergh\u2019s plane Spirit of St Louis as their star exhibit since 1928, they had now deserted him. An article in their Smithsonian<\/em> Magazine,<\/em> after denigrating the AFC, described Lindbergh as \u2018patently a bigot\u2019 and used the image suggesting a Nazi salute.[2]<\/a> The Minnesota Historical Society, also with long-standing links to the Lindbergh heritage, also turned to him and answered inquiries about Lindbergh by directing them mainly to the Roth novel and the television program based on it. They also recommended a shrill new book on Lindbergh subtitled \u2018America\u2019s Most Infamous Pilot.\u2019. Lindbergh had not been \u2018infamous\u2019 until 2004.<\/p>\n The 100th anniversary of Lindbergh’s classic flight will be with us soon in 2027. The damage done by Roth\u2019s mischievous historical fiction should be met instead with good evidence-based history, restoring the story of this talented man.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n David Hamilton is a retired Scottish transplant surgeon. His interest in Lindbergh came from the aviator\u2019s laboratory work as a volunteer in Nobel Prize-winner transplant surgeon Carrel\u2019s laboratory in New York.<\/em>[3]<\/em><\/strong><\/a> \u00a0His forthcoming book is The Enigmatic Aviator: Charles Lindbergh.<\/em><\/p>\n [1]<\/a> A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh<\/em> (New York, 1998).<\/p>\n