In 1927, Charles Lindbergh revolutionised the aviation industry by completing the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic, from New York to Paris. It was also the longest transatlantic flight on record by almost two thousand miles. By the time the twenty-five-year-old landed his tiny monoplane Spirit of St. Louis after 33 hours and 30 minutes in the air, he was an international superstar. The world media promoted his achievements as representing the spirit of modern America.
FAME AND TRAGEDY
Back5 in the US, Lindbergh used his fame to promote the development of aviation, particularly in his home state of Missouri. However, the media attention he received also turned him into a target: one evening in March 1932, Lindbergh’s twenty-month-old son was kidnapped. The Lindberghs paid the $50,000 ransom, but the baby’s body was found in the nearby woods.
EXILE IN EUROPE
The controversial case, which saw the convicted man protest his innocence all the way to the electric chair, fomented such hysteria that the Lindberghs went into exile in 1935. They lived in England and then in France, where Lindbergh served on the board of directors for Pan-American World Airways. On one occasion, he was invited by Nazi leader Hermann Göring to tour German aviation facilities. He was very impressed by what he saw.
AMERICA FIRST
In 1939, with World War Two approaching, Lindbergh returned to the US. He became a spokesperson for the America First Committee, a non-interventionist pressure group, against US entry into the European war. Lindbergh argued that no power could beat the German air force. But there was more to it than that. In a notorious essay, published by Reader’s Digest, he suggested a superiority of races, claiming that Western nations should preserve “our inheritance of European blood.” Then, in 1941, he gave a speech in which he called Franklin D. Roosevelt’s government and the Jewish race “not American” as they “wish to involve us in the war.”
DISGRACE
Anti-semitism was not unusual at the time, but the speech was widely condemned. Even newspapers sympathetic to non-interventionists called it “un-American.” The once-celebrated pilot was forced to resign from the US Air Force. Three months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Lindbergh dramatically changed his position. Although Roosevelt refused to recommission him, he flew more than fifty combat missions in the Pacific with the private company United Aircraft. After the war he returned to Europe to support rebuilding the Continent. In his later years, Lindbergh became a prolific author, explorer, inventor and environmentalist, but his reputation never recovered.
The new HBO series The Plot Against America is based on the 2004 novel by Philip Roth. Roth imagines that Lindbergh, a xenophobic populist, becomes US president. While, according to his Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh had no such political ambitions, the series associates the fictionalised figure with a real US President. Donald Trump’s adoption of the slogan ‘America First’ in his 2016 campaign, and his pursuit of a foreign policy that emphasises US nationalism and protectionism, could be compared with Lindbergh’s position with America First. Yet while there are similarities, Philip Roth warned David Simon, co-creator of the new series, that the two figures should not be confused. Lindbergh, Simon says, was “an astounding hero and an American icon. He had the power that Trump as a reality show host and failed casino owner did not have.”