Just when it sounded as though Lindbergh was throwing in the towel, FDR revived him. The President asked Congress to revise the Neutrality Act, which had prevented the arming of American merchant ships and kept them from entering the war zones. To America Firsters, such as Richard Moore, this reversal seemed the last step before “the final straw which would turn America into a full belligerent.” Lindbergh agreed to speak at the next meeting at the end of October in Manhattan and another in early December in Boston.
Because Anne was busy moving the family into another house—one with heat—at Seven Gates Farm, Charles left for New York alone. “The most fundamental issue today is not one of war or peace, but one of integrity. Whether we go to war or whether we stay out, we have the right to demand integrity in the leadership of this nation,” he told a crowd of twenty thousand at Madison Square Garden on October 30, 1941. “The enthusiasm generated by the New York rally was contagious and gave an important lift to the rank and file members just when it was needed most,” Richard Moore later recalled. But the “man on the street” felt different. Lyle Leverich, then a copy boy on the New York Daily News, attended the rally and remembered it fifty years later as one of the most “awesome sights” of his life. “There, in the midst of many, open Nazi-sympathizers was the hero of my childhood, Lindy, and I was literally sickened by the spectacle,” he recalled. “I felt betrayed.” Millions felt the same.
On November 7, 1941, the Senate passed FDR’s neutrality bill amendment by a vote of 50 to 37. Six days later, the House did the same by the slightly narrower margin of 212 to 194. America First refused to say die. By December first, it was going public with a new policy called “We Will Meet You at the Polls!” by which they would target swing Congressional votes and support only those candidates who would “oppose further steps to involve us in war.”
Anne spent the first week of December in New York and New Jersey. In her absence, Charles repitched her tent by the side of the new house and camped out. He divided his time there between the book he had started in Paris two years earlier—a detailed account of his 1927 flight—and writing his next America First address, which he had agreed to deliver in Boston on the tenth.
It promised to be his strongest speech yet. In it he would ask the audience to consider “how ridiculous it is that this democratic nation has twice, within a generation, been carried to war by Presidents who were elected because they promised peace.” Before crusading for four freedoms across the seas, Lindbergh wrote, “let us make sure that the roots of freedom and democracy are firmly planted in our own country”—starting, he added, with “the Negro … in our southern states.”
Anne was still away on Sunday, the seventh, when the radio announced that Japan had attacked the Philippines and the Hawaiian Islands. Lindbergh was shocked. “An attack in the Philippines was to be expected,” he wrote in his journal, “although I did not think it would come quite so soon. But Pearl Harbor! How did the Japs get close enough, and where is our Navy?” He anxiously waited for confirmation of the story, that this was not just a hit-and-run raid being exaggerated by radio commentators into a major attack. “If C. speaks again,” Anne thought on her way home, “they’ll put him in prison.”
Details of the events unraveled slowly, but by the next morning there was no doubt that the attack on Hawaii had been heavy. Lindbergh telephoned Bob Stuart in Chicago to recommend canceling their meeting in Boston. Then he phoned General Wood, who said, “Well, he got us in through the back door.”
Realizing his two-year crusade had come to an end, Lindbergh composed a statement for the America First Committee to release on his behalf that December eighth. “We have been stepping closer to war for many months,” he wrote. “Now it has come and we must meet it as united Americans regardless of our attitude in the past toward the policy our government has followed. Whether or not that policy has been wise, our country has been attacked by force of arms, and by force of arms we must retaliate.” He urged the nation to build its neglected military forces into the mightiest in the world. He wired his message to Bob Stuart, then fell publicly silent on the subject of the war, or anything else for that matter, for several years to come. He took Anne for a walk across their isolated beach, during which he pronounced the bombing in Hawaii “the most important event in our lives.”
Over lunch, the Lindberghs listened to the radio, as the President addressed a special joint session of Congress, calling for a declaration of war against Japan. “What else was there to do?” Lindbergh mused. “We have been asking for war for months. If the President had asked for a declaration of war before, I think Congress would have turned him down with a big majority. But now we have been attacked, and attacked in home waters. We have brought it on our own shoulders; but I can see nothing to do under these circumstances except to fight.”
Lindbergh wrote in his journal that day—for posterity—“If I had been in Congress, I certainly would have voted for a declaration of war.”
Anne concurred, but she approached the day’s events with more practical incertitude. “Where,” she wondered, “will we be thrown in the maelstrom—our private lives?”
15
CLIPPED WINGS
“There are occasions when incidents combine to outline basic laws
of life and nature with extraordinary clearness—incidents of birth and death, of peace and war, of beauty and hardship.”
—C.A.L.
OTHER DEBATES IN AMERICAN HISTORY WOULD LATER BE recalled with at least an appreciation for the high-mindedness of their ideas; and other members of America First would bear no stigma for having been allied with that particular cause. But America First swiftly entered the annals of public discourse tainted; and Charles Lindbergh would thenceforth be contaminated, considered by many wrong-headed at best and traitorous at worst. “Imagine,” Anne’s sister Constance would later comment on Lindbergh’s reputation, “in just fifteen years he had gone from Jesus to Judas!”
Lindbergh himself wanted little more than to spend a year or two in quiet contemplation—“thinking and reading and writing”—alone with his wife and three children. But his own sense of duty got the better of him. “Now that we are at war I want to contribute as best I can to my country’s war effort,” Lindbergh wrote in his journal on December 12, 1941. “It is vital for us to carry on this war as intelligently, as constructively, and as successfully as we can, and I want to do my part.”
America First’s National Committee called a meeting to determine the organization’s future, which included the possibility of opposing entry into the European war. Hours before the meeting was held in Chicago, that option was made moot, as Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The committee dissolved; and Lindbergh hoped to follow most of its leadership into the armed services. General Robert Wood volunteered as soon as war was declared and was accepted by the Ordnance District in Chicago; Bob Stuart had an ROTC commission and reported to Fort Sill as an artillery officer. Most of his contemporaries from the original committee at Yale also volunteered for active duty. Having surrendered his Army Air Corps commission in a most public display, Lindbergh lacked the luxury of so easy a decision.
His first inclination was to write directly to the President, explaining “that while I had opposed him in the past and had not changed my convictions, I was ready in time of war to submerge my personal viewpoint in the general welfare and unity of the country.” He demurred, however. “If I wrote to him at this time,” Lindbergh entered in his journal less than a week after Pearl Harbor, “he would probably make what use he could of my offer from a standpoint of politics and publicity and assign me to some position where I would be completely ineffective and out of the way.” Lindbergh regretted having resigned his commission; “but whenever I turn the circumstances over in my mind,” he noted, “I feel I took the right action. There was, I think, no honorable alternative.”
In late December 1941, Lindbergh decided to approach his highest-ranking military friend, Gen
eral “Hap” Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Forces. After failing to get past his aide, Major Eugene Beebe, just to schedule an appointment, Lindbergh sent a handwritten note to the General himself. He offered his services to the Air Corps, all the while understanding the “complications” created by his recent political stand.
Lindbergh received a courteous reply, appreciation for his overture but nothing more. A week later, General Arnold made public Lindbergh’s offer over the radio, which made Lindbergh hopeful. “Is it an indication that my offer will be accepted?” he asked his journal. “And if so, will it be as a civilian or as an officer?” Even The New York Times was supportive, writing on its editorial page, “There cannot be the slightest doubt that Mr. Lindbergh’s offer should be and will be accepted. It will be accepted not only as a symbol of our newfound unity and an effective means of burying the dead past; it will be accepted also because Mr. Lindbergh can be useful to his country. He is a superb air man, and this is primarily and essentially an air war. Whether he has passed the age when he can be used for active service in the field is a matter for competent authorities to decide. But there can be no question of his great knowledge of aircraft and his immense experience as a flier. Nor have we any doubt that he will serve in the line of duty with credit to himself and to his country.”
The rest of the American press was not that kindly disposed. Lindbergh attended a dinner party in New York at the home of Edwin Webster, whom he had known from America First, just days after the organization had dissolved. Although Lindbergh did not wish to make a speech, the other guests—mostly America Firsters—imposed upon him to say a few words. Lindbergh held forth for five minutes, trying to explain that the recent decision to disband was “really to the best interests of the country, and that no matter what we did or advocated or stood for, we would have been viciously and bitterly attacked if we had continued our activities after the start of the war.” He added that it was “unfortunate that the white race was divided in this war.”
As a result of Lindbergh’s offhanded comments, many newspapers reported that the America First movement was alive and well. The New York Post said that “its nucleus of native fascist, anti-Semitic and, in some cases, pro-German organizations, continue to speak and publish material close to the line of treason, if not across it.” Washington columnists Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen wrote that Lindbergh was still blaming Britain for the war, while a radio broadcaster said that Lindbergh was still insisting that “Germany should have been appeased and tied to us as an ally against Japan and China.” The New York World-Telegram reported that Lindbergh said “it was too bad that we were divided on the question of the yellow race,” and PM ran a series of provocative quotations plucked from Lindbergh’s America First speeches under the headline: “Do You Want the Man Who Said These Things … To Have a Hand in Your Fight Against Fascism?”
The next day, Lindbergh tried to reach General Arnold but again got the runaround from Major Beebe, who advised his going directly to the Secretary of War. Beebe’s tone of voice made Lindbergh realize that the matter of his future military service had been discussed at the highest levels of U.S. government and that “everything had been arranged” for Lindbergh to have a showdown with Secretary Henry L. Stimson.
Spending the weekend in Washington, he telephoned Stimson’s office on Monday, January twelfth, and was given an appointment for that afternoon. After a few minutes of pleasantries, Lindbergh told Stimson outright that with his country at war, he hoped to find the way in which he could “make the greatest personal contribution.” He said he had been considering the possibility of working in the aviation industry, but not without first seeing if there was any way he could assist the Army Air Corps. Stimson replied in diplomatic double-talk until Lindbergh pressed him to talk turkey.
Stimson told Lindbergh outright that he was loath to put him in any position of command because of his public prewar opinions. He said he did not think anyone of such persuasion should be in a position of command in the war because he did not believe such a person “could carry on the war with sufficient aggressiveness!” And he said he doubted that Lindbergh had changed his views since.
Lindbergh replied that he felt it had been a mistake for America to enter the war; but that decision now made, he stood behind it—eager to help in whatever way he could be most effective. Stimson said he had no idea what that might be, as Lindbergh’s speeches raised a question of loyalty. He proceeded to misstate Lindbergh’s positions, saying they included his advocating an alliance with Germany and his expressing antagonism toward China—two opinions Lindbergh had never espoused.
Stimson called in his Assistant Secretary of War for Air, Robert A. Lovett, to discuss the possibilities of Lindbergh’s helping the government in a position of non-command. At their suggestion, Lindbergh met with General Arnold the next day in Lovett’s office in the Munitions Building. Arnold and Lovett said there were many ways in which Lindbergh could serve the Air Corps, but they were “not sure what the public and press reaction” would be at that time. After talking in circles for half an hour, Lindbergh said he was “not sure that the situation which worried them could be straightened out satisfactorily,” because he “was not willing to retract” what he had said in his addresses. Before leaving, Lindbergh asked Lovett whether he thought the Administration would object to his working with a commercial company. Lovett said he did not think so, and “that as far as the War Department was concerned he thought they would support such a move.” Encouragingly, Arnold told his friend, “I think you can find some way to straighten all this out.”
Lindbergh had no idea to what extent politics had been the controlling factor in his Washington meetings. He was not privy to memoranda about him that were circulating through the executive branch of the government. The same day Lindbergh volunteered for the Air Corps, for example, his old foe Harold Ickes wrote the President, “it is of the utmost importance that his offer should not be accepted.” Poring over Lindbergh’s speeches and articles had convinced him, he wrote FDR, “that he is a ruthless and conscious fascist, motivated by a hatred for you personally and a contempt for democracy in general…. His actions have been coldly calculated with a view to attaining ultimate power for himself—what he calls ‘new leadership.’ Hence it is important for him to have a military service record.” Ickes said accepting Lindbergh’s offer would be granting “this loyal friend of Hitler’s a precious opportunity on a golden platter. It would be … a tragic disservice to American democracy to give one of its bitterest and most ruthless enemies a chance to gain a military record. I ardently hope that this convinced fascist will not be given the opportunity to wear the uniform of the United States. He should be buried in merciful oblivion.” Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox felt the same. “If it were … put up to me,” he wrote the President, “I would offer Lindberg [sic] an opportunity to enlist as an air cadet, like anybody else would have to do. He has had no training as an officer and ought to earn his commission.” Roosevelt concurred with both men, especially Ickes, whom he wrote, “What you say about Lindbergh and the potential danger of the man, I agree with wholeheartedly.”
Stimson wrote the President after his meeting with Lindbergh that despite the “really valuable service” he had rendered the government when he had been assessing German air power, he had told Lindbergh that he was “unwilling to place in command of our troops as a commissioned officer any man who had such a lack of faith in our cause as he had shown in his speeches.” The next day, the Secretary disingenuously told the press that Lindbergh would be doing “research on a commercial project in which the War Department is interested.” He also announced the Air Corps’ goal of enlisting two million men in 1942. Lindbergh would not be one of them.
Searching for his first job in almost twenty years, Lindbergh proved as naïve in war as he had been in peace. “I believe my difference in outlook would make me of more value rather than less,” he wrote General Wood while he was figuring out his future. “It
seems to me that the unity and strength necessary for a successful war, demand that all viewpoints be represented in Washington. However, the discussions I have had to date indicate that definite limits exist to the Administration’s desire for ‘unity’, and that those limits do not extend very far into the group of people who have disagreed with the policies of the President.” In January, he turned to what he considered his fallback—a position in the aviation industry. Having spent considerable effort over the years trying to avoid just such a situation, he found this new pursuit “rather strange,” all the harder having to “stand by and do nothing while one’s country is at war.” Only later did Lindbergh learn that his name had come up at a recent meeting between the President and several senators, and FDR had said, “I’ll clip that young man’s wings.”
Lindbergh wasted no time in contacting his friends Juan Trippe at Pan American and Guy Vaughan at Curtiss-Wright. Although Lindbergh had not drawn his retainer as an adviser from Pan Am for many years, he had never severed his connection with either the company or its management. At a meeting in the Chrysler Building in New York City on January nineteenth, Trippe enthusiastically told him there were many things he could do for the company. Vaughan responded similarly, offering Lindbergh any position he wanted, hoping he would study their prototype aircraft.
Within days of each meeting, both prospects evaporated. Trippe telephoned Lindbergh that “obstacles had been put in the way”; and in person the next day, he privately explained, “The White House was angry with him for even bringing up the subject and told him ‘they’ did not want [Lindbergh] to be connected with Pan American in any capacity.” Vaughan informed Lindbergh that the situation there was suddenly “loaded with dynamite.” Lindbergh knew that no company with a government contract could afford to take him on without getting clearance from the Administration. “I am beginning to wonder whether I will be blocked in every attempt I make to take part in this war,” Lindbergh mused in his diary.
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