7/6/2023 0 Comments Mail pilot lindberg![]() ![]() But his words in the critical years before the United States entered World War II suggest otherwise. It was a charge he refuted his entire life - "Good God, no," he said when asked the question pointblank by a New York Times reporter shortly before he died. Still, Bullis' question raises the thornier issue about whether Lindbergh was an anti-Semite. Let them fight it out without us, he urged Americans.Ĭharles Lindbergh addressed an America First Committee rally in August 1941. Unlike FDR, Lindbergh considered Soviet communism a greater threat to the West than Nazi fascism, and he believed the Germans better equipped to "dam the Asiatic hordes" and defeat the Russians than either England or France. In his mind they provided a favorable contrast to the excesses of American society - especially the press - that he blamed for the kidnapping and murder of his toddler son in 1932. State Department, Lindbergh admired what he considered the vitality and order of the German people. While touring German aviation plants in the 1930s collecting intelligence on the Luftwaffe for the U.S. It's true that Lindbergh was drawn to aspects of the Nazi regime. The feat electrified the world, not least because he was modest, handsome and had done it alone. He spoke at the dedication of the interpretive center there in 1973, a year before he died.įew people have rocketed to worldwide fame as rapidly as Lindbergh did in 1927, when the unknown air mail pilot completed the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris. He returned to the state periodically, to help his father campaign for office and in later years to assist the Minnesota Historical Society in the restoration of his old home in Little Falls. He spent less time in the area after graduating from high school in 1918, and finally moved from Minnesota for good when he went to flying school in Lincoln, Neb., in 1922. Lindbergh spent his childhood years in the central Minnesota town of Little Falls, with the exception of his birth in Detroit and periods in Washington, D.C., when his father represented Minnesota in Congress. When he died in August 1974, President Gerald Ford said Lindbergh represented "all that was best in our country - honesty, courage and the will to greatness."īut reader Mark Bullis had a more pointed question about Lindbergh for Curious Minnesota, the Star Tribune's reader-powered reporting project: Was he a Nazi?īullis, a retired Army officer and registered nurse who lives near Prescott, Wis., said he's read about the early years of World War II when Lindbergh was the leading spokesman for the America First Committee, a popular movement opposing American intervention in the war before Pearl Harbor. His daring solo flight from New York to Paris in May 1927 launched him on a lifetime of high achievement that included pioneering advances in rocketry and medical science, a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir and global advocacy for the environment and conservation. Listen and subscribe to our podcast: Via Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherĪny list of world-famous Minnesotans would include Charles Augustus Lindbergh, the Little Falls farm boy who grew up to become one of the greatest aviators of all time. ![]()
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