Those Angry Days

by Lynne Olson

  A year and a half later, she wrote to her husband from a New York hospital, where she was recovering from knee surgery: “Where are you? I have been expecting you every day for the past two weeks. I know I made light of the operation, but I did hope you’d get here in time to take me home.”

  With her marriage becoming increasingly problematic, Anne noted the “agonies of mind & emotions” and the “banked bitterness” she felt toward Charles for his long and frequent absences and his “un-understanding and hostility” toward her when he was at home. As A. Scott Berg put it, “the Lindbergh marriage had become a one-sided affair, at Charles’s disposal whenever he chose to partake. When together, he expected [Anne’s] attention to be focused on him.”

  On the twentieth anniversary of their marriage, she poured out her feelings in a diary essay she called “Marriage Vows Annotated After Twenty Years.” Before she wed Lindbergh, the starstruck Anne had described him as “the last of the gods” and “a knight in shining armor.” Her amended vows made clear that she had long since given up on that romantic, fairy-tale image. The essay included these statements: “Since I know you are not perfect, I do not worship you … I do not promise to obey you … I do not look on marriage as a solution to any of my problems.”

  In her anger and frustration, she turned to her internist and adviser, Dr. Dana Atchley, for solace. “Dana pulled me through … kept me alive,” she noted. The close relationship between doctor and patient blossomed into an intense affair. In 1956, Anne rented a small apartment in New York to which she could retreat to write, see friends, and spend time with Atchley. At one point, she considered the possibility of a divorce, but in the end she decided against it. As “badly mated” as she and Charles were and as “abandoned and put upon” as she felt, she couldn’t bring herself to break the ties that bound them.

  Lindbergh apparently never knew about Anne’s involvement with Atchley; as it happened, he, too, had developed private interests during his incessant travels. His footloose postwar existence, away from family responsibilities, seemed to have infused him with a new vigor. Anne’s psychotherapist told her he believed that Lindbergh, now in his mid-fifties, “was running away from old age.”

  While probably correct, that premise was just one piece of a very complicated reality. From 1957 until his death in 1974, Lindbergh led a secret life that was breathtaking in its audacity. In those seventeen years, he fathered no fewer than seven children by three different women, all of them German, and made frequent visits to his children and mistresses at the homes he provided for them in Germany and Switzerland.

  His first inamorata was Brigitte Hesshaimer, a hatmaker he met in Munich in 1957. He later took up with Brigitte’s sister Marietta, who, like Brigitte, was more than twenty years younger than Lindbergh. His third relationship was with Valeska, a German secretary whose last name was never revealed and who helped him with his business affairs in Germany. Lindbergh’s European children—three by Brigitte, two by Marietta, and two by Valeska—were born between 1958 and 1967.

  His clandestine existence did not come to light until 2003, almost thirty years after his death and two years after Anne’s. The news came as a total shock to his family and acquaintances, although a close friend of Anne’s told Reeve that her mother apparently had had an inkling that something was amiss. “She knew,” the friend said, “but she didn’t know what she knew.”

  Lindbergh took great care to ensure that his covert life remained just that during his lifetime. His mistresses told their children that their father was a famous American writer named Careu Kent who was on a secret mission and that they must never talk about him to anyone. When the women wrote to Lindbergh, their letters were sent to post office boxes, which he changed regularly.

  Brigitte’s children, who discovered their father’s true identity and made it public after their mother’s death, were the only German offspring of Lindbergh’s to speak openly about his visits to them and their mother, which occurred about four times a year. He made them pancakes, they recalled, and took them to the park. “We were always very happy when he came,” one son said. “He really gave us the feeling he was there for us.”

  Hit with yet another bombshell about their father’s past, Reeve Lindbergh and her siblings struggled to make sense of the incomprehensible. How could Lindbergh—“the stern arbiter of moral and ethical conduct in our family,” Reeve noted—have, for decades, violated virtually every standard he had demanded they follow?

  One possible explanation lay in Lindbergh’s oft-expressed desire for at least a dozen children, perhaps to make up for his own loneliness and solitude as an only child. Anne was forty when she gave birth to Reeve, their sixth child, and would have no more. The seven additional children Charles sired with his mistresses fulfilled his wish for a brood of twelve. (The slain Charles Jr. would have made thirteen.)

  Still a believer in the pseudoscience of eugenics, which advocated selective breeding to ensure the dominance of Northern and Western “European blood,” Lindbergh apparently was also interested in further perpetuating his own Northern European gene pool. (Reeve Lindbergh recalled how her father used to lecture his children about the importance of choosing mates with good genes.) If he was inclined to have children out of wedlock, as he obviously was, what better mates could there be, from his Nordic point of view, than Germans, the ultimate Aryans? Yet there was one major problem with that hypothesis: both Brigitte and her sister suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, making them less than perfect physical specimens.

  In making families with these three other women, Lindbergh may also have been tempted by the opportunity to create a parallel universe of a life, where he could shed his identity as one of the most famous people on the planet and come and go as he liked, staying just a few days at a time with each, with no lasting commitments. Reeve Lindbergh offered another take on the situation: “One of my first thoughts was that this arrangement made a certain kind of sense. No one woman could possibly have lived with him all the time.”

  At first, Reeve was consumed with rage over Lindbergh’s duplicity and hypocrisy. Shortly after learning about her half-siblings, she wrote in her journal: “These children did not even know who he was! He used a pseudonym with them. (To protect them, perhaps? To protect himself, absolutely!)” But in the ensuing years, during which she visited all seven of her newfound brothers and sisters, she made a sort of peace with her impenetrable father, whom she realized she had never really known. “Being in my family is like a melodrama sometimes,” she noted, “with a story line that is simultaneously powerfully compelling and utterly baffling.”

  Reeve once had a dream in which she told Lindbergh that all of his children—in Europe and America—had been hurt by what he had done. In the dream, her father made no response to her complaint. “He just didn’t get it,” she observed. “At that moment, I thought I knew the truth about my father.… With all his gifts and his abilities, he had come into the world without one very specific piece of listening equipment, and whatever it was, it was critical to a complete understanding of the sufferings of other people.”

  In learning more about Lindbergh’s secret life, Reeve was struck by the fact that “every intimate human connection my father had during his later years was fractured by secrecy. He could not be completely open with anybody who loved him anywhere on earth.… [W]hat remains with me is a sense of his unutterable loneliness.”

  There was one place, however, where Lindbergh could escape from that loneliness, where he could forget, for at least a few moments, the complications and demands of his strange, conflicted life. A place where he could turn back the clock and experience again the adventure—the sheer, simple joy—of his youth, skimming low over waves, touching a cloud, climbing high above a mountain.

  Several times a year until he died, Lindbergh traveled to Washington to visit the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building. With his lined face and white, thinning hair, he was no longer recognizable to most tourists. Yet he
always took the same precaution, inconspicuously stationing himself behind a showcase. From there, he gazed up at the Spirit of St. Louis, riding high in the air above him.

  * During his eighteen-month stay in the United States, Saint-Exupéry wrote two books, Flight to Arras and his masterpiece, The Little Prince.

  For Stan and Carly

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In all my books, I’ve worked hard to bring to life the people and historical periods I write about. Obviously, to do that, an author has to find good resource material, and in researching Those Angry Days, I was fortunate enough to turn up a real wealth of information. Contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts were invaluable in yielding colorful, revealing details about the country’s mood in the two tumultuous years before America’s entry into World War II. Even more important was the information, often surprising and provocative, gleaned from the letters, journals, diaries, and other personal papers of the book’s major and minor characters.

  My deep appreciation goes to the librarians and archivists who were so helpful to me in my search. They are the true preservers of history, and their enthusiastic, selfless work is nothing short of heroic. Chief among them are Bob Clark, the head archivist at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, and his staff, who are simply the best at what they do. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to the staff of the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, as well as to the archivists at the Hoover Institution, Harvard’s Houghton and Baker Libraries, and Smith College’s Sophia Smith Collection. Special thanks, too, to Dr. Edward Scott and Dr. Mary Elizabeth Ruwell for granting me access to the Air Force Academy archives, and to Dr. Russell Flinchum, archivist at the Century Association Archives Foundation, for his generous sharing of materials about the Century Group.

  A word of thanks as well to the writers and scholars whose groundbreaking work assisted me immeasurably in writing this book. I’d like to single out A. Scott Berg, whose magisterial biography of Charles Lindbergh is an essential resource for anyone writing about Lindbergh; Dr. J. Garry Clifford, for his impressive scholarship on Grenville Clark and the peacetime draft; Dr. Wayne S. Cole, unquestionably the premier authority on America’s prewar isolationist movement; and Richard Ketchum, whose history/memoir of the years 1938–1941 was an invaluable font of information.

  Thanks, too, to Elizabeth M. Pendleton, Rachel Cox, Fisher Howe, Margaret Shannon, Dr. Raymond Callahan, and Roger Cirillo.

  I am also grateful to everyone at Random House, particularly my superb editor, Susanna Porter, for their unflagging support and guidance and for creating such a welcoming, collegial environment for authors. Gail Ross, my agent for almost twenty years, has been outstanding as always in her advice, representation, and friendship.

  Above all, my deep love and thanks to Carly, my daughter and nonpareil adviser on social media, and to my husband, Stan Cloud, whose editing of Those Angry Days helped make it a better book and whose partnership with me, both professional and personal, has been the greatest joy of my life.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1 “mano a mano”: Gore Vidal, The Last Empire: Essays 1992–2000 (New York: Doubleday, 2001), p. 138.

  2 “a loveless quality”: Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 315.

  3 “The people he called”: Walter S. Ross, The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh (Harper & Row, 1976), p. 212.

  4 “untold humiliation”: Thomas M. Coffey, Hap: The Story of the U.S. Air Force and the Man Who Built It (New York: Viking, 1982), p. 157.

  5 “the fight dented”: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Coming of the New Deal, 1933–1935 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), p. 455.

  6 “Roosevelt judges”: Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), p. 187.

  7 “The war was”: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), p. 249.

  8 “bitter”: Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream (New York: Atheneum, 1976), p. 195.

  9 “the most savage”: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. interview, “Lindbergh,” American Experience, PBS.

  10 “The intense feelings”: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, War Within and Without: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1939–1944 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1980), p. xvii.

  11 “Though historians”: Schlesinger, A Life in the Twentieth Century, p. 241.

  12 “People have forgotten”: George Marshall interview with Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall Foundation, Lexington, Va., www.marshallfoundation.org/library/pogue.html.

  13 “to take open”: Ibid.

  14 “a dirty fight”: Adolf Berle diary, Sept. 22, 1939, Berle papers, FDRPL.

  15 “doesn’t exist”: Roger Butterfield, “Lindbergh,” Life, Aug. 11, 1941.

  16 “recoiled from the prospect”: William S. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation: 1937–1940 (New York: Harper, 1952), p. 203.

  17 “I hadn’t thought”: Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), p. 23.

  18 “move gingerly”: Herbert Agar, The Darkest Year: Britain Alone, June 1940–June 1941 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973), p. 56.

  19 “godsend”: Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), p. 355.

  20 “defeating Nazism”: Nicholas John Cull, Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign Against American “Neutrality” in World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 185.

  CHAPTER 1: “A MODERN GALAHAD”

  1 “like a god”: Charles Lindbergh, Wartime Journals, p. 222.

  2 “I rather envied”: Ibid., p. 319.

  3 “Fame—Opportunity”: A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh (New York: Berkley Books, 1999), p. 5.

  4 “Sometimes … I wonder”: Reeve Lindbergh, “The Flyer—Charles Lindbergh,” Time, June 14, 1999.

  5 “the greatest feat”: Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s (New York: Perennial, 2000), p. 189.

  6 “a modern Galahad”: Ibid., p. 191.

  7 “The underwriters”: Kenneth S. Davis, The Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh and the American Dream (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959), p. 192.

  8 “No attempt at jokes”: Berg, Lindbergh, p. 121.

  9 “We measure heroes”: Ibid., p. 159.

  10 “demigod”: Ibid., p. 170.

  11 “In his flight”: Davis, The Hero, p. 244.

  12 “Like criminals”: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1929–1932 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. 5.

  13 “into waters”: Frederic Sondern Jr., “Lindbergh Walks Alone,” Life, April 3, 1939.

  14 “Because he kept”: “Press v. Lindbergh,” Time, June 19, 1939.

  15 “since the Resurrection”: Berg, Lindbergh, p. 308.

  16 “If it were not”: Anne Lindbergh, Hour of Gold, p. 249.

  17 “a personification”: “Press v. Lindbergh,” Time, June 19, 1939.

  18 “Between the … tabloid”: Berg, Lindbergh, p. 340.

  19 “we Americans”: Roger Butterfield, “Lindbergh,” Life, Aug. 11, 1941.

  20 “I can imagine”: Reeve Lindbergh, Under a Wing: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), p. 79.

  21 “You should have”: Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh (New York: Dell, 1977), p. 184.

  22 “the man who”: New York Times, Dec. 23, 1935.

  23 “a wonderful feeling”: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, The Flower and the Nettle: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1936–1939 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), p. 17.

  24 “I have never”: Charles Lindbergh, Wartime Journals, p. 10.

  25 “It would be murder”: Lynne Olson, Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2
007), p. 127.

  26 “the grossest act”: Ibid., p. 139.

  27 “had never adjusted”: Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), p. 28.

  28 “I cannot see”: Charles Lindbergh, Wartime Journals, p. 11.

  29 “Aviation has largely”: Ibid., p. 147.

  30 “The whole idea”: Ibid., p. 9.

  31 “It is necessary”: Ibid., p. 22.

  32 “The British have always”: Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud, A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II (New York: Knopf, 2003), p. 92.

  33 “fanatical”: Truman Smith, Berlin Alert: The Memoirs of Truman Smith (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1984), p. 60.

  34 “already a potential”: Ibid., p. 68.

  35 “the strictest censorship”: Ibid., p. 89.

  36 “There is no doubt”: Anne Lindbergh, Flower and the Nettle, p. xxi.

  37 “Germany now has”: Truman Smith, Berlin Alert, pp. 154–55.

  38 “operate meaningfully”: Berg, Lindbergh, p. 375.

  39 “the bomber will”: Olson, Troublesome Young Men, p. 64.

  40 “French cities”: Cole, Lindbergh, p. 53.

  41 “The Fuhrer has found”: Ibid.

  42 “extremely likable”: Davis, Hero, pp. 378–79.

  43 “All his life”: Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, Special Relationships: America in Peace and War (London: Macmillan, 1975), p. 131.

  44 “I cannot help”: Charles Lindbergh, Wartime Journals, p. 5.

  45 “refusal to admit”: Cole, Lindbergh, p. 29.

  46 “a sense of festivity”: Anne Lindbergh, Flower and the Nettle, p. 83.

  47 “For twelve years”: Charles Lindbergh, Wartime Journals, p. 166.