Charles Lindbergh

[[File:Col Charles Lindbergh.jpg|thumb|165px|le|Charles Lindbergh: blamed Jews for war with Hitler]]
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'''Charles Lindbergh''' {{lived|1902|1974}} was an [[USA|American]] aviator best known for making the first solo transatlantic flight. He was politically active from the late 1930s, a strong advocate of American [[isolationism]] and the preservation of the white [[racism|race]], and a fierce opponent of [[communism]]; he has been accused of support for [[Nazi Germany]] and [[Hitler]]. He also worked as an inventor, designing the perfusion pump, an early type of artificial heart.<ref name=wpcl>{{wpa|Charles Lindbergh}}</ref><ref>[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/save-his-dying-sister-law-charles-lindbergh-Invented-medical-device-180956526/ To Save His Dying Sister-In-Law, Charles Lindbergh Invented a Medical Device], Smithsonian Magazine, Sep 9, 2015</ref>

In 1932, his 20-month-old son was kidnapped, creating a national obsession and leading to a variety of [[conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]], false confessions, and confusion about the fate of the boy and identity of his captors. Richard Hauptmann was executed for the kidnapping and murder in 1936.<ref name=wpkidnap>{{wpa|Lindbergh kidnapping}}</ref>

His wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh was herself a talented aviator and bestselling author of ''Gift from the Sea'' (1955).<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/08/books/anne-morrow-lindbergh-94-dies-champion-of-flight-and-women-s-concerns.html Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 94, Dies; Champion of Flight and Women's Concerns], ''New York Times'', Feb 8, 2001</ref>

==Life==
Lindbergh was born in Detroit, [[Michigan]] in 1902. His father was a [[Minnesota]] congressman from 1907-17 and opposed US entry into [[World War One]]; his mother was "so hot-tempered and self-dramatizing that she once held a revolver to her husband's head and may have failed to pull the trigger only because her weary target told her to go ahead and shoot".<ref name=ward/> The family moved around a lot, but a boyhood interest in mechanics and [[science]] led him to flying. He trained in the United States Army Air Service in the 1920s before becoming an air mail pilot in the midwest.

The first non-stop transatlantic flight was made as early as 1919 by Alcock and Brown who flew from [[Newfoundland]] to [[Ireland]], but around the same time the French-American hotelier Raymond Orteig offered a prize for the first flight from [[New York]] to Paris. This was a significantly longer distance and the prize remained unclaimed for many years. With only modest funding from St Louis businessmen, Lindbergh made the flight successfully in 1927 and claimed the prize. This led to enormous fame and popularity.<ref name=wpcl/>

=="I'm the Lindbergh baby!"==
[[File:Lindbergh baby poster.jpg|thumb|right|165px]]
On March 1, 1932, his son Charles Jr was kidnapped from their home in New Jersey. A ransom of $50,000 was demanded and paid on April 2, after negotiations in which John F Condon ("Jafsie"), a retired schoolteacher, acted as an intermediary. Condon was the only person to have seen one of the kidnappers. However the child was not returned, and his body was found on May 12 near the kidnapping site. A [[German]] immigrant, Richard Hauptmann, was arrested in September 1934 after being found with around $14,000 of the ransom money. At the trial, the prosecution produced [[evidence]] that the ransom note matched Hauptmann's [[Graphology|handwriting]] and that a ladder found at the crime scene matched wood in Hauptmann's home.

However, there were no fingerprints found, and Hauptmann denied all involvement, claiming that the money and other items had belonged to his former business partner, Isidor Fisch. Hauptmann claimed that Fisch had left the items, including the box full of ransom money, with him before leaving the country. Fisch subsequently returned to Germany, where he died in March 1934. However, there was no evidence that Fisch "ever had the money or ever spent a nickel",<ref name="NYT">https://www.nytimes.com/1977/03/28/archives/long-island-weekly-35-hauptmann-letter-to-mother-denying-guilt-was.html</ref> and he "died in poverty, a victim of tuberculosis".<ref name="NYT" /> Hauptmann also claimed that after Fisch's death, he opened the box to discover the money, and as Fisch had owed him a debt, kept it as recompense, not realizing it was tied to the Lindbergh kidnapping. 

Nonetheless, thanks in part to anti-German sentiment and a drunken defense lawyer, Hauptmann was convicted and then executed in 1936.<ref name=wpkidnap/>

A number of alternative theories were advanced, many suggesting that Lindbergh was himself responsible, while others more credibly suggested that Hauptmann did not act alone, whether with Fisch or others:
* Hauptmann alleged that the ransom money he found belonged to Fisch. 
* Jim Bahm in his book ''Beneath the Winter Sycamores'' suggested that Lindbergh had secretly sent the child to be raised in Germany because he was disabled.<ref name=wpkidnap/>
* Gregory Ahlgren in ''Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax'' claimed that Lindbergh had accidentally dropped and killed the boy.<ref name=wpkidnap/>
* More than 200 people confessed to the crime, an extreme example of the phenomenon of [[false confessions]].<ref>[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2372732214548678 False Confessions: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for Reform], Saul M Kassin, Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2014, Vol. 1(1) 112–121, DOI: 10.1177/2372732214548678</ref>
* Eugene and Robert Zorn from New Jersey investigated the case, the latter writing ''Cemetery John'' (2012), which claimed there was a small conspiracy around the kidnap, which centered on John Knoll, nicknamed "Cemetery John" because he collected the ransom money from a cemetery. John's brother Walter Knoll and Richard Hauptmann were also involved, according to Zorn.<ref>[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-lindbergh-mystery-could-america-s-most-famous-crime-be-solved-at-last-8215537.html The Lindbergh mystery: Could America’s most famous crime be solved at last?], Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, 20 October 2012</ref><ref>{{wpa|Cemetery John}}</ref>
* In 2016, a retired insurance man from Santa Cruz, [[California]], also known as Paul Husted, claimed to be the Lindbergh baby, secretly disposed of by Lindbergh and Al Capone because of a physical deformity, "crossed toes".<ref>[https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2010/02/11/man-79-says-hes-lindberghs-baby/ Man, 79, says he’s Lindbergh’s ‘baby’], East Bay Times, Feb 11, 2010</ref>
* [[The Simpsons|Abraham Simpson]] was the Lindbergh baby.<ref>[http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh Charles Lindbergh], Simpsons Wiki</ref>

==Politics and opinions==
[[File:Amrally.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Lindbergh at an America First rally.]]
Lindbergh was a key figure in advocating for isolationism before [[World War Two]], particularly in the America First Committee founded in 1940 (whose 800,000 supporters ranged from a young [[Gerald Ford]] to those on the [[far left]]; [[Henry Ford]] was a member but was expelled for his [[antisemitism]]).<ref name=newyorker>[https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/america-first-for-charles-lindbergh-and-donald-trump America First, for Charles Lindbergh and Donald Trump], New Yorker, July 24, 2016</ref><ref>[https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/02/06/513240634/america-first-from-charles-lindbergh-to-president-trump 'America First': From Charles Lindbergh To President Trump], NPR, 6 Feb 2017</ref><ref>[https://www.pbs.org/perilousfight/social/antisemitism/ The Perilous Fight: Antisemitism], PBS, 2003</ref> He believed the US should let [[Hitler]] conquer eastern Europe and defeat communism. He said the US should join with Germany and Britain to form a "Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or the infiltration of inferior blood."<ref name=ward/>

His exact relationship with [[Nazism]] is contested. He was a keen admirer of Germany, having lived there in the 1930s with his family (he left the US after the media circus over his son's kidnapping), and he praised Nazi Germany's order and dynamism.<ref name=newyorker/> Comparing Germany's order with what he perceived as the [[chaos]] of 1930s America, he questioned [[democracy]]: "it takes the sweetness from the [[freedom]] of democracy and makes one wonder where freedom ends and disorder begins."<ref name=ward>[https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/27/reviews/980927.27wardlt.html Fallen Eagle], Geoffrey C Ward, New York Times, September 27, 1998</ref>

He was greatly worried about the decay of the white race, saying the people of the West "can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood."<ref name=newyorker/> 

Lindbergh is often accused of [[antisemitism]], although it is debated whether he actually hated [[Jews]] or merely disliked them for their (understandable) opposition to Hitler and isolationism in the late 1930s. In 1941, he claimed that the Jewish race was acting against American interests by trying to get the US to enter the war.<ref name=newyorker/> The ''New York Post'' said at the time:

{{quotebox|So deep does Mr. Lindbergh's anti-Semitism go that he can look upon a world in which almost half the human race has suffered intolerable outrage against its independence and dignity, and decide that somehow the chief villain in the piece is the Jew. This is no shallow, surface anti-Semitism, no mere petulance or passing bar-room anger; this is a deep, dark, mystical current, Teutonic, if not in inspiration, quite obviously in coloration and content.<ref>[https://www.jta.org/1941/09/15/archive/lindberghs-anti-jewish-speech-meets-with-severe-criticism-in-american-press Lindbergh’s Anti-jewish Speech Meets with Severe Criticism in American Press], Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 15 Sep 1941, reproduced online on JTA website</ref>}}

Even the anti-FDR pro-isolationist Hearst newspapers condemned Lindbergh and called his speech “un-American”, and his home town removed his name from its water tower.<ref name=newyorker/>

==Later life==
[[File:Bubalus mindorensis by Gregg Yan 01.jpg|thumb|165px|le|The {{wpl|tamaraw}} or Mindoro dwarf buffalo, whose preservation was one of several environmental causes he pursued]]
Unlike many prominent pro-Germans he wasn't interned after Pearl Harbor; he was keen to aid the [[World War II|war]] effort and worked as a consultant for aviation companies and as a trainer for the Air Force before being allowed to fly combat missions in the Pacific theater in 1944. After the war, he worked in various capacities for the US Air Force and Pan Am, and his pioneering voyage was recalled at the time of the Apollo moon landings, Lindbergh joining Walter Cronkite to comment on the Apollo 11 mission. He was also involved in conservation of endangered species, particularly in the [[Philippines]], and campaigned for protection of indigenous peoples in the Philippines and [[Africa]], including the Maasai.<ref name=wpcl/>

He died of lymphoma on Maui on August 26, 1974.

==The actual secret Lindbergh babies==
Lindbergh had three children by a German woman in the 1950s and 1960s. He kept it secret at the time, being married to Anne Morrow Lindbergh back home, but it was proven by [[DNA]] tests in 2003.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/29/germany.usa DNA backs Lindbergh family claim], The Guardian, 29 Nov 2003</ref>

==Fiction==
As a private man who often sought to protect his family from media attention, Lindbergh does not appear to have had a desire for political office.<ref name=newyorker/> In 2004, novelist Philip Roth imagined in an isolationist, [[fascist]] America where Lindbergh was elected president in ''The Plot Against America''. Roth's alternative history has Lindbergh sweeping into the presidency using demagoguery and an "America First!" message. He gets along just fine with dictators like Hitler and Hirohito, but his supporters say that's a good thing.<ref>Ezra Klein [https://www.vox.com/2018/5/28/17393268/philip-roth-trump-death-plot-america-book-fiction Philip Roth’s 2004 warning about demagogues is more relevant than ever] May 2018, Vox</ref>

==See also==
*[[Amelia Earhart]], female near-contemporary and current hide-and-seek world record holder.
*[[Henry Ford]], another fascist antisemite and Nazi supporter at the time.

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lindbergh, Charles}}
[[Category:History]]
[[Category:Antisemites]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theories]]
[[Category:Eugenics supporters]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Fascists]]
[[Category:Racists]]

Categories: History, Antisemites, Conspiracy theories, Eugenics supporters, Nazis, Fascists, Racists