Charles Lindbergh, war hero or Nazi sympathizer? Or both?

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In the end, was a sympathizer of Nazi Germany and supporter of racial “purity” really just a regular, old American hero? 

Prior to watching “The Plot Against America” on HBO, I felt this strange need to fact-check best I could about the protagonist of the series, Charles Lindbergh. Aviation pioneer. Highly decorated pilot. WWII veteran? Celebrity. Environmentalist. In the TV series, a what-if scenario ensues: Lindbergh runs for president in 1940 and unseats Franklin D. Roosevelt, which leads to a fascist government. World history completely changes, presumably. 

Lindbergh’s remains are buried in lush, distant Kipahulu, just outside of remote Hana, Maui. That, I’ve known for some time. But so much about him has been largely forgotten. His thing for eugenics, whether he is correct or not, he took to the grave. He never renounced his stance on his love of pure genetics, which makes his adoration of Maui — he was a key to expanding Haleakala National Park to Kipahulu Valley, in order to save endangered species — quite interesting. 


His — and his wife's — admiration for Adolf Hitler, another stunner. Before America’s involvement in WWII, Lindbergh was sent to Germany by the US to study their much-superior aircraft. He was soon awarded a medal by the Germans, and his love for them never waned. Lindbergh served in WWII as a civilian, but never fought directly against Nazi Germany. And by 1958, despite being married with three children, he began to father seven more kids with three mistresses — two German and one Swiss — two of them sisters. All this was under wraps, and never divulged publicly until the 2000s. 

But it’s the Maui chapter of his life that is equally fascinating. He spent the final six years of his life there before succumbing to lymphoma. He sought purity and found it in the pristine region of East Maui, in the precious species of flora and animals of the islands. He gave backing to oppressed tribes in the Philippines and Africa. But Hawaii is a place of intermarriage and mixed blood. It is one of the most successful examples of multi-cultural tolerance on Earth. Far from perfect, but in comparison to most other societies, Hawaii would seem to be the opposite of what Lindbergh championed for most of his life. 


Which brings us to Hana. Remote. A tough place to get to, especially for passengers who get car sick easily. Lindbergh loved the isolation. The peace. No paparazzi. He went to church in a place that was, like the rest of the islands, home to all kinds of people, a multitude of ethnicities. 

His tombstone, which he designed, bears scripture from Psalms 139:9: “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the season.” 

His biographers generally summarize him this way: Lindbergh wasn’t a practicing racist, was certainly a friend of Nazi Germany. He wrote in Reader’s Digest (1939) that “we 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 never renounced those words. 

His stance on Nazi Germany changed when he visited concentration camps after WWII: “No person with a sense of dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany.” (1941) 

Yet, he spent his finals years in the melting pot, or the “stew”, as sports broadcasting legend Jim Leahey says, of the Hawaiian islands, where there is no ethnic majority. Intermarriage and mixed ethnicities are the norm. If actions mean more than words, it is possible that Lindbergh’s departure from the continent and residence in Hawaii was also a rejection of his earlier stance on genetic purity. Complicated man in complicated times. Polite enough to be accepted by a Christian church in a remote island town of non-whites. We’ll never know what remained in his heart during those last years. 

So here we are, 46 years after his death, and a TV series based on a book, penned in 2004 by Phillip Roth, is on the air. Lindbergh was at the height of popularity during the 1930s after his trans-Atlantic flight, popularizing US Air Mail — leading to myriad postmarks (cancellations) and stamps that I would have been ecstatic to collect in person. If he had run for vice-president in 1940 and won, as Roth writes, America would have veered into fascist territory. 

Time has been neither kind or unkind to the legacy of Lindbergh. Roadways in Missouri are named after him, which seems more than coincidental given the hate crimes and brutality against minorities in that state historically. A terminal (Terminal 1-Lindbergh Station) in Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport bears his name. For all the medals, American, German and otherwise, he was awarded, his reputation was never quite the same after he stood and gave the ol’ “Heil Hitler” salute on American soil during his many “Defend America First” engagements at sites like Madison Square Garden. 

His gravesite remains pristine. There are no extremist-group swastikas here or elsewhere commemorating his life, at least not publicly. He did much more good for his country (see links below) than most citizens. I’m looking forward to the HBO program, and knowing the many facts about Lindbergh’s complex life, it’s best to be prepared. 


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