Lindbergh, Charles Augustus b. February 4, 1902; Little Falls, Minnesota d.August 26, 1974; Maui, Hawaii
American pilot who was the first to cross the Atlantic in an airplane in 1927. During the 1930s, he became an admirer of Germany’s air force and the Nazi dictatorship. By March 1936, with the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the American military attache in Berlin, Major Truman Smith, was eager to obtain further analysis of German air power.
The Luftwaffe, banned under the Versailles Treaty, had been reactivated, but its true strength was unclear. Lindbergh, who had remarked upon the weakness of French military aviation, was asked in June 1936 whether he would be willing to act as an observer. He accepted Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goring’s invitation to visit Germany. The nine-day trip involved flying a Junkers 52 transport, visiting factories, and meeting with officials. A speech he gave on the dangers of air power was printed in the German media, and the visit concluded with his attendance at the opening ceremonies of the Berlin Olympic Games. Lindbergh’s report on what he had seen, although couched in the neutral tones of an independent observer, failed to hide a definite admiration for the progress the Luftwaffe had achieved, but also for a “German spirit” of work and dedication that was missing elsewhere in Europe. It also turned out to have grossly overestimated the strength of the German air force, which would take years to achieve the levels of power found in the report.A second visit followed in October 1937. Despite its private nature (there was no official reception committee), the Lindberghs were allowed to visit aircraft factories. Lindbergh’s overall analysis by then was that although Nazi Germany’s methods were abhorrent, they appeared less dangerous than communism.
However, in 1938, it was his third trip that prompted accusations of collusion with the Nazis. Lindbergh again met with Goring, who awarded him the Verdienst Kreuz deutscher Adler (Service Cross of the German Eagle).
Although to Lindbergh it appeared as little more than another award for his Atlantic exploit eleven years earlier, the ceremony did cause some concern, especially because Lindbergh and his wife had thought of moving to Berlin. Their plans, which went as far as locating an apartment, were cancelled following Reichskristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) on November 9 and 10. Lindbergh’s final visit to Germany came in January 1939, after which he returned to the United States. His reporting on the military power of Germany as compared with that of France or England played into the hands of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy in London, who favored negotiations with the Germans.To Lindbergh, though, the situation was more serious, for he viewed Europe’s potential war as an unavoidable fratricidal action that called for noninvolvement from the United States and the building ofAmer- ican defenses against future aggression. The reports Lindbergh wrote, as well as his correspondence, couch such visions in the vo-
Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh (left), with R. Douglas Stuart Jr., national director, when the flyer enrolled in Chicago as a member of the America First Committee, April 19, 1941. (Bettmann/Corbis)
cabulary of race as the definition of nationality. Although shocking by present-day standards, such references are nonetheless reflective of a prevailing attitude in many circles in the United States and Western democracies—one that was appalled at Nazi brutalities, yet refused to take in German Jewish refugees. In Lindbergh’s case, though, his association with Henry Ford on the one hand and French Nobel Prize winner for medicine Alexis Carel on the other may have further influenced his rhetoric in these matters, as he warned of an impending Asiatic threat against the West. The threat was not Germany, whose strength might, he felt, balance the challenge brought on by communism.
When World War II began, Lindbergh publicly argued for a position of neutrality and became involved in October 1940 with the America First Committee (an isolationist group with over 800,000 members). As Lindbergh spoke in favor of nonintervention, others came to view him as part of a “fifth column” of Nazi sympathizers. Citizens contacted the FBI, which opened a file on him. One of Lindbergh’s speeches, in September 1941, openly questioned Jewish interests, defining these as separate from American ones. By then, Harold Ickes had publicly condemned Lindbergh, and Franklin D. Roosevelt had even called him a “copperhead,” a pejorative term used during the
Civil War for Northerners who favored peace with the South.
The attack on Pearl Harbor swiftly ended the anti-intervention power of America First and Lindbergh supported the war effort, though on the Pacific front. After the war, he agreed to visit Germany, in part to assess the advances Germans had made in aerospace science. Some of his notes reflect recommendations for transferring technological knowledge to the United States in the face of a Soviet threat. Lindbergh expressed dismay and shock upon seeing concentration camps, but also felt disgust at the behavior of American troops on German soil. In so doing, he faced criticism from Americans who remembered his noninterventionist stand.
Guillaume de Syon
See also Antisemitism; Ford, Henry
References and Further Reading
Berg, A. Scott. Lindbergh. New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1998.
Cole, Wayne S. Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle against American Intervention in World War II. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974.
Wallas, Max. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich. New York: St. Martin’s, 2003.