By In The Plot Against America, the new HBO series from The Wire creator David Simon adapted from the 2004 novel by Philip Roth, we see Forties America through the eyes of a working-class Jewish family in New Jersey.
The Levin family are based on Roth's own experiences of growing up the son of two second-generation Americans in a Jewish household in the Newark neighbourhood of Weequahic.
But The Plot Against America takes a major swerve from reality in its revision of the 1940 election, speculating what would have happened if Charles Lindbergh had run against and defeated Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The election in 1940 took place in the shadow of World War II as America was emerging from the Great Depression and is often referred to as the most important election in history.
In reality Lindbergh never ran as the Republican opposition to FDR, but Roth's book was inspired by his reading that some American isolationists had urged Lindbergh to campaign, writing in the New York Times that it had caused him to wonder: what if he had?
"My talent isn't for imagining events on the grand scale," said Roth when explaining the book. "I imagined something small, really, small enough to be credible, I hoped, that could easily have happened in an American presidential election in 1940, when the country was angrily divided between the Republican isolationists, who, not without reason, wanted no part of a second European war - and who probably represented a slight majority of the populace - and the Democratic interventionists, who didn't necessarily want to go to war either but who believed that Hitler had to be stopped before he invaded and conquered England and Europe was entirely fascist and totally his."
Though his reimagining alters the course of history, the elements of the story surrounding the character of Lindbergh shine a light on the real man and his troubling comments about Jews as well as alleged Nazi sympathies.
Who was Charles Lindbergh?
Charles Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan to a United States congressman and chemistry teacher. He went on to become a decorated American aviator and military officer who at the age of 25 made the first non-stop flight from New York City to Paris in 1927. In the same year Lindbergh was named Time magazine's first-ever Person of the Year, remaining the youngest ever recipient of the award for more than 90 years.
In 1932 his infant son was kidnapped and murdered in a high profile case which was responsible for the introduction of kidnapping as a federal crime if the victim crosses state lines.
What were his anti-Semitic ties?
Speculation about his being a Nazi sympathiser followed him in later life due to numerous anti-Semitic comments he made about Jewish people, and his non-interventionist stance during World War II.
President Roosevelt, the man he fictionally defeats in HBO's series, told his Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, "If I should die tomorrow, I want you to know this, I am absolutely convinced Lindbergh is a Nazi."
In 1940 Lindbergh became a became spokesman of the non-interventionist America First Committee and went on to campaign against providing aid to the United Kingdom during the war, saying that the British, the Jews and the Roosevelt administration were the "three most important groups" pressing for greater American involvement in the war.
Writing in Reader's Digest in 1939 Lindbergh argued that Americans "can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races." He went on to make the case that Hitler "accomplished results (good in addition to bad) which could hardly have been accomplished without some fanaticism."
Lindbergh's aviation skills earned him adulation abroad and in 1938 Germany's air chief, Hermann Göring, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, presented him with the Commander Cross of the Order of the German Eagle, a medal instituted by Adolf Hitler.
Weeks after he received the medal the horrific pogrom Kristallnacht took place, prompting widespread criticism of Lindbergh's acceptance. He declined to return the medal, later writing: "It seems to me that the returning of decorations, which were given in times of peace and as a gesture of friendship, can have no constructive effect."
His wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wrote in a letter that she believed Hitler was "a very great man, like an inspired religious leader—and as such rather fanatical—but not scheming, not selfish, not greedy for power, but a mystic, a visionary who really wants the best for his country and on the whole has rather a broad view.”
She also wrote in a diary entry from 1939 that, "A few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos. And we are getting too many."
In one scene in The Plot Against America the character Herman Levin hears Lindbergh making a real speech in 1941, the same year in which he testified before Congress against offering aid to Allied nations.
"Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government," Lindbergh said of Jews in the anti-Semitic speech. "I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction."
Why is the story being compared to Trump's presidency?
Lindbergh's story has renewed relevance in America under Trump, a President who is accused of appealing to far-right supporters using dog whistle racism, messages of "America first" nationalism and the scapegoating of immigrants.
In August 2017, a Unite The Right Rally marched through Charlottesville, Virginia carrying swastikas and chanting the Nazi slogan "Blood and Soil". When they clashed with anti-fascist counter-protesters a young woman named Heather Heyer was killed after a self-identified white supremacist drove into her. Trump was heavily criticised for his failure to condemn the Unite the Right rally, saying there were "very fine people on both sides".
Lindbergh's address about Jews controlling the media is still part of the anti-Semitic rhetoric echoed today that has inspired threats against Hungarian-American billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros.
Speaking to Esquire, David Simon described how Trump had "sold [voters] the notion that they had been left behind" and "convinced them that the reason was because of people who aren’t like them: cosmopolitan, upper crust, Jewish. And because of grasping black and brown people who are reliant on a welfare state that actually serves more white people than not. And immigrants who are coming to take their jobs, and a whole range of others who they can hold in contempt and rage at."
However there are big distinctions between the two, Simon believes:
"Lindbergh had the charisma of being genuinely heroic, genuinely a great aviator, a great American hero who had a cowlick, who was sheepishly self-effacing, who had a Midwesterner’s voice, the voice of the heartland, who everybody adored," he says. "They named a dance after him, the Lindy. Trump is a real estate magnate, failed casino operator and reality TV show host who never had a single moment of courage or heroism in his life."
The Plot Against America is on Sky Atlantic now
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