Charles Lindbergh was a hero for his feats of aviation but ultimately lost that goodwill once he started pushing bigoted conspiracies to keep America from fighting Hitler.
Lindbergh would spend the years leading up to World War II actively campaigning to “protect the white race” and for the U.S. to maintain strict neutrality toward Nazi Germany. He even flew to Germany to receive a medal in person from Hermann Göring, the infamous commander of Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe, on behalf of Adolph Hitler himself.
According to the unpublished galleys of American historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., some Republicans even urged Lindbergh to run for President against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940 to keep America out of the war.
This dark night for the American soul became the subject of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, The Plot Against America. Now an HBO series of the same name, the story explores an alternate future where Lindbergh does challenge Roosevelt and wins Presidency — with disastrous consequences.
Henry Ford served on the board of the AFC and printed anti-semitic pamphlets and books that were required to be distributed with every new car purchased at a dealership.
The printed material made its way to Germany where the Nazis distributed it to help fan the flames which eventually led to the holocaust
Well, yeah, although the Germans had plenty of antisemitism of their own. They didn’t need to import it.
They did, however, borrow a lot of policy cues from American Jim Crow Laws.
I think it’s been a minute since Lindbergh was anybody’s hero. However, before anyone defends him as a “product of his time”, antisemitism and racism may have been more socially acceptable, but everyone knew, or should have known it was wrong.
There was never any time in history where “nobody knew” oppression was wrong. The oppressed always know, but nobody listens to them for some reason. And the oppressors imply knowledge of their wickedness when they spend so much effort making cringe arguments that it’s a virtue instead.
What we should highlight is the fact that being a bigot cost Lindbergh, not just his legacy. It made him foolish enough to swallow bad-faith bullshit and get on the bandwagon with a circus of pigs. Racism makes fools of smart people.
I hate that phrase “product of his time”.
People like to use it to defend this sort of shit going back centuries, but I know about Benjamin Lay, the badass 1700’s-era hobbit (no really, he was a short king who lived in a cave) who was friends with Benjamin Franklin and told him to his face what a motherfucker he was for being a slaver. He also walked from city to city spreading his views, because he was a vegan before his time and felt it was wrong to ride horses.
There are always people who know something’s wrong, and generally plenty of people willing to say it.
First time I’ve ever seen him referenced anywhere outside where I learned of him! Best dude, what an inspiration.
Schools do not teach about him. I didn’t learn about him until reading history books for fun as an adult, but yeah, Lay was an incredibly courageous individual for his time.
He was the OG hobbit
His existence is just wild in so many ways.
Precisely. It’s why I reject being too strict about ruling out judgement due to “signs of the times”. In the famous words of Parenti, ancient Greece actually had a whole segment of the population opposed to slavery. They were called slaves.
Trauma makes people do strange things. Given what his family went through with kidnapping and murder, it’s entirely possible that he started on that road thanks to a sincere desire to never see another person’s child get killed. What emerged from there may easily have started as blaming the people in his life that he saw either trying to push young men to go and die, or that he somehow blamed for the murder of his child. I can’t bring myself to hate the man - his turn from glory to agony was so abrupt that any clear voice in the midst of madness and pain probably seemed like something worth holding onto. It’s amazing what people believe when they’re grieving or traumatized.
To me, that’s when his death started. The Nazi sympathizer was just a dead man walking, a bereft father of a kidnapped and murdered baby, not the national hero who inspired a dance craze with his aeronautic feat.
Given what his family went through with kidnapping and murder
Ehhh… I’ll go with “if that’s what happened”.
And which alternative do you support?
None in particular, but there is enough known to be able to put it in question relative to the alternatives.
I will say that quite a bit of the case reminds me of current day parents who kill their kids, intentionally or not. Whether they thought it would blow over since kidnapping for ransom was more common then, or attention, whatever, I have no idea.
Given the only physical evidence tying to the crime had no fingerprints on it, or anything else to tie to the crime itself, combined with the last…
I can only think “if thats what happened”.
They US didn’t fight the Germans because nazis are bad and they wanted to save the jews. They fought the Germans because they didn’t want it to become a superpower that rivaled them.
America was not really a superpower at the time because it was more isolationist, they fought Germany because their ally (Japan) attacked. They became a superpower after WWII.
The HBO series was decent. I believe I watched in during pan-times. Adding it to the list to watch with my partner.
