In memory of Philip Roth, I got a library copy of his novel The Plot Against America, in which Charles Lindbergh displaces Wendell Wilkie as the 1940 Republican candidate, and beats FDR.
It's told from the perspective of a teen Jewish boy in NJ. It creates a fictional echo of the experience of a teen Jewish boy in Berlin seven years earlier in 1933.
Roth includes an afterward about his non-fictional sources.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh was born in 1906 in NJ in a wealthy family (father was partner in JP Morgan and a Senator). She got a BA in 1928. Her father was Lindbergh's financial advisor and she married CL at age 22 in 1929.
Lindbergh himself had catapulted to fame at age 25 in 1927. They lost a child through kidnapping in 1932.
Lindbergh himself had catapulted to fame at age 25 in 1927. They lost a child through kidnapping in 1932.
AML published her first travelog book, North to the Orient, in 1935. In 1938, she published a second book, Listen! the Wind! which was marked by antisemiticism and Jewish booksellers refused to sell it. Undeterred, in 1940 she publishes The Wave of the Future, a pro-fascist screed that was a commercial flop. (Los Angeles Public Library doesn't even have a reference copy of it, but it can be found on Amazon for $10).
Later she publishes a novel or two that didn't do well. Nonetheless, Wikipedia opens her bio by branding her "an acclaimed author." However, further in Wikipedia's own bio, they state:
"The Roosevelt administration subsequently attacked The Wave of the Future as 'the bible of every American Nazi, Fascist, Bundist and Appeaser,' and the booklet became one of the most despised writings of the period."
June 22, 2018, would have been AML's 102nd birthday.
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Contemporary review here and here.
In Lindbergh's 1930s/1940s diaries, she talks about going to a mass rally against Intervention at which her husband spoke, and going with TR's daughter Alice Roosevelt Longfellow.
Other Books
Very grim views of the collapse all about them are shared by Lindbergh's The Wave of the Future as above, and Dutch historian Johan Huizenga's 1937 In the Shadow of Tomorrow and the 1935 British collection The Frustration of Science (here). Both of these books from the mid-30s describe the fall of the West as it was occurring in real-time, one from a continental and the other from a UK perspective.
Earlier, Leland Stowe's 1934, "Nazi Means War," was later viewed as prophetic but was disregarded by most contemporaries. He was a journalist who detailed German society as of late 1933. See here.
See also the 1934 (transl.) book, "Germany Prepares for War," essentially an academic German author's war plan for all of WW2 published 5-6 years before the invasion of Poland. This is "German viewing Germany." For "Germany Viewing Europe," see Johannes Stoye's book "The British Empire" 1936.
To me, with reference to Lindbergh, I take the contemporary quote that this was "the Bible of every Nazi appeaser" seriously, but her 1940 pamphlet (30pp, 6000 words) seems mostly like foggy drivel to me (here).
Contemporary review here and here.
In Lindbergh's 1930s/1940s diaries, she talks about going to a mass rally against Intervention at which her husband spoke, and going with TR's daughter Alice Roosevelt Longfellow.
Other Books
Very grim views of the collapse all about them are shared by Lindbergh's The Wave of the Future as above, and Dutch historian Johan Huizenga's 1937 In the Shadow of Tomorrow and the 1935 British collection The Frustration of Science (here). Both of these books from the mid-30s describe the fall of the West as it was occurring in real-time, one from a continental and the other from a UK perspective.
Earlier, Leland Stowe's 1934, "Nazi Means War," was later viewed as prophetic but was disregarded by most contemporaries. He was a journalist who detailed German society as of late 1933. See here.
See also the 1934 (transl.) book, "Germany Prepares for War," essentially an academic German author's war plan for all of WW2 published 5-6 years before the invasion of Poland. This is "German viewing Germany." For "Germany Viewing Europe," see Johannes Stoye's book "The British Empire" 1936.
To me, with reference to Lindbergh, I take the contemporary quote that this was "the Bible of every Nazi appeaser" seriously, but her 1940 pamphlet (30pp, 6000 words) seems mostly like foggy drivel to me (here).
