The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax 

 Charles Lindbergh, Anti-Semitism and the Hauptmann Trial

Photo  -  CAL & Burt Wheeler - 1941 Madison Sq Garden America First Rally.

 Was Charles Lindbergh an anti-Semite? 

  Lindbergh and Hitler  1941

  The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh & Rise of Third Reich   by Max Wallace

    The Plot Against America  by  Philip Roth           Ron Rosenbaum on Spielberg, Roth & Lindbergh

    Listen to Lindbergh, American Isolationist and Nazi Sympathizer,  Urges "Neutrality"  

    Henry Ford was Lindbergh's hero, from childhood throughout his adult life. 

    Henry Ford's opinion of the "Jewish Problem"  (from his Dearborn Independant)

  Freedom of Information Act - 1368 pages FBI Files 

  Is Lindbergh A Nazi?  (PDF)  Friends of Democracy 1941

Fascism Part II: The Rise of American Fascism  by Geoff Price - March 11, 2004

  Dr Seuss - Theodore Geissel - attacked America First and Charles Lindbergh

   Woody Guthrie's Song About Lindbergh

                           Goering Photo Found In Lindbergh Home

                    Lindbergh's Secret German Children

The controversy regarding this question will never end. Everyone sees it differently. But, Charles Lindbergh's lifelong argument, like Pat Buchanan's today,  that the United States never should have fought Hitler, caused many people to condemn him as an anti-Semite. Even his own friends abandoned him on this issue as many allies of Pat Buchanan today shake their head in disgust.

It is believed by some, including Scott Berg evidently, that it is possible for someone to blame American Jews for the United States' involvement in World War II and NOT be an anti-Semite.   Lindbergh, like Buchanan, was opposed to war with the greatest killer of Jews in history yet his family-authorized biographer refuses to call him what he was - an unrepentant anti-Semite and White Supremacist. Lindbergh, and his friend, Nobel scientist Alexis Carrel, were both Eugenicists, believers in the physical and mental superiority of white Nordic people. 

Scott Berg, has, on more than one speaking engagement, unabashedly referred to the aviator's  stubborn tenacity in holding on to his anti-social beliefs as an "admirable quality."  It is a good example of what happens when a biographer gets too close to his subject - or, his subject's family.

But,  Lindbergh's pre-war, anti-Semitic speeches have puzzled historians and Lindy buffs alike. It is an aspect of Lindbergh's life that hardly seems appropriate to a discussion about the death of his child or the trial of the supposed kidnapper. Yet, according to Gregory Ahlgren and Stephen Monier, authors of Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax, there is a very surprising and plausible connection.

 Family-Authorized Lindbergh Bio  

With the recent publications of two family-authorized tales - the aviator's youngest child, Reeve, - Under A Wing -    and Scott Berg's Lindbergh, the battle to redefine what the "hero" really meant when he made those blatantly anti-Semitic speeches is now in full swing. Their cause had almost been joined by Stephen Spielberg who planned a filmed reappraisal, based on Berg's book,  of the "real" Charles  Lindbergh.

Since Spielberg's film was going to be based upon Berg's opinions of Lindbergh many people were worried. The Forward published Ronelle Delmont's lengthy critique of Berg's biography and Spielberg's intended movie.  Several days later Stephen Spielberg  announced, in the New York Times, that he had canceled production of the movie. He said he was sorry that he did not read Berg's bio of Lindbergh before he purchased it. Spielberg's company, DreamWorks, paid multi-millions for the bio six months before its publication and never read a single word of it! 

Lindbergh, he told the Press, was his hero as a child. According to some reports in various magazines, his desire was originally to complete a trilogy  - Schindler, Ryan, and Lindbergh!

  So, what's all this got to do with the Trial?  

If Ahlgren and Monier are correct in theorizing that Charles Lindbergh accidentally killed his son in a failed prank and covered up the mishap with the red herring of a "kidnap" hoax, the rest of his pro- Nazi, anti-Semitic behavior is entirely understandable. In fact, their theory unravels a psychological puzzle about Lindbergh's weird behavior. He was not a man yearning to make speeches. So, what drove Lindbergh to get on the airwaves, into the newspapers and even into Madison Square Garden rallies?  

At Flemington, each day, the Colonel would take his seat at the Prosecution table and watch the horrific circus described by every journalist who had the "good" fortune to attend. (Many careers were "made" by this lynching.) Lindbergh's outrageous testimony, swearing, under oath, that he recognized Bruno Richard Hauptmann  from just three words uttered two and a half years earlier,  in a Bronx cemetery, is not humanly possible.  Yet, it was Lindbergh's  finger-pointing testimony that sealed Hauptmann's death. Who were jurors going to believe anyway? The German, illegal immigrant carpenter? Or the famous aviator? 

According to Ahlgren and Monier the responsibility for Hauptmann's electrocution ought to have created some sort of inner conflict in the subconscious mind of the daredevil pilot who would surely have admired Hauptmann's bravery. 

"The Jews made me do it" 

If any single person in the Flemington Courthouse knew, and admired,  the bravery of an innocent man facing a lynch mob it would have to be Charles Lindbergh. However, rather than deal with his own complicity in this fiasco Lindbergh would have had to twist the facts, in his own mind,  so that he could absolve himself of any wrongdoing. 

Lindbergh, knowing there had never been a kidnapping at all,  watched silently as David Wilentz ( a Jew, born in Latvia) framed Hauptmann.  Now he could be free of guilt - the Jews were framing innocent Germans - just as Hitler claims! Lindbergh could have absolved himself by blaming Hauptmann's death on a ruthless Jewish lawyer - and, by extension,  all Jews.  The whole group could then become Lindbergh's scapegoat as they were, at that time,  in the Third Reich.

 Actually, there were two other Jewish men involved in this case and Lindbergh would also have, in his own mind, used as a reason to absolve himself.  Mickey Rosner, a gangster who Lindbergh hired and paid $2,500.00 to find his son and Isidor Fisch, BRH's Jewish partner who swindled him out of $7,000.00 and left him a shoebox filled with ransom money.

  The  Forward  ought to be commended for publishing a letter by Ronelle Delmont that attempted to explain the connection between Lindbergh's anti-Semitism, the death of his son, and the death of Bruno Richard Hauptmann.  Her critique also deals with Scott Berg's apologist approach to his subject and was originally submitted to the NY Times but was completely ignored. 

Forward editors omitted some explanatory parts and so it is presented here in full with red brackets around the edited portions.  

The FORWARD  December 18, 1998 Editorial Page

Lindbergh and Spielberg, A Troubled Pair

by Ronelle Delmont

Scott Berg should have listened to his wise grandmother when she warned him, a decade ago, not to become involved with the subject of his latest book, Lindbergh.  After nine years of privileged access to 2,000 boxes of papers at Yale, and personal access to friends and relatives of the Lindbergh family – something no writer has ever been granted - Scott Berg claims he has found nothing to prove Charles Lindbergh was an "active" anti-Semite. Yet ironically, his muddled book affirms that Charles Lindbergh was the very worst kind of anti-Semite – a remorseless one.  Even Lindbergh's youngest daughter, Reeve, deals more convincingly with this issue than Berg, who is Jewish, does.

 Beth Pinsker’s observant critique (Lindbergh’s Anti-Semitism Is Revisited) also proves that Lindbergh’s reputation will be questioned forever, but only by writers and newspapers with the integrity to challenge the ulterior motives of families who authorize biographies of disgraced relatives. Skepticism of this kind does not come easy in print as the NY Times allowed a family friend, Geoff Ward, to review, not only Berg’s book, but Reeve's memoir as well. Time magazine allowed Lance Morrow, a family member, to review Berg’s book. No mention - in either publication – regarding these family connections.  

[ Five years ago a Goffstown, NH Police Chief, Stephen Monier, and a Manchester, NH defense attorney, Gregory Ahlgren published their book, Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax. Their research has created a legitimate controversy for which I have recently developed a website on the Internet.  Berg never even mentions Ahlgren and Monier's research anywhere in his book. Their rational sleuthing surprisingly offers a plausible response to the issue of why Lindbergh, atypical of his paranoid fear of the Press, flaunted and loudly proclaimed through the airwaves his admiration for Nazi Germany as well as his condemnation of American Jews. As Beth Pinsker noted in her observant article Berg never deals with why.]

 [Ahlgren and Monier have sensibly theorized that Lindbergh simply rationalized his own guilt for having lied under oath at the 1935 trial in which he knowingly allowed a German immigrant to pay with his life for a crime that never existed in the first place. 

The "kidnapping," according to Ahlgren and Monier's groundbreaking research, had only been a cover-up for the aviator's failed sadistic prank, (a lifelong practice of the Lone Eagle), in which he accidentally dropped his child from a homemade ladder. ]

Stephen Spielberg, an "expert" in heroes, is now under scrutiny for DreamWorks's recent multimillion dollar purchase of Berg's family- authorized bio about the life of a man who was definitely no hero - especially not to anyone concerned with Holocaust history as Spielberg claims to be. Any person who has read even a single book on the life of Charles Lindbergh already knows what the author of this family authorized biography tried so hard not to reveal - that the Lone Eagle was a disgrace.

 What, I wonder, will the director of Schindler's List do with this pitifully warped biography of a man who ought to remain in disgrace? If Charles Lindbergh chose to go to his grave accepting complete responsibility for his antisocial views and prewar hate rhetoric, without any apology whatsoever, what gives Steven Spielberg the right to resurrect the fallen hero's reputation by making excuses for him? The defiant Lindbergh didn't want excuses from anyone. He was always right and everyone else was always wrong.

So, why did Spielberg pay multi - millions for this misleading book in which a Jewish author makes feeble and embarrassing excuses for a man to whom World War II was considered, until the day he died in 1974, not a war worth fighting? Consider the shocking irony of all this! Lindy, the Nazi medal recipient, is coming to the Big Screen next year through the efforts of two Jewish guys who could never have been born if the lucrative subject of their combined endeavor had his way fifty-seven years ago! Lindbergh, a eugenicist, spent the last decades of his life hugging trees and saving endangered species but, as Max Lerner asked, "where was he when an entire race of people were being exterminated?"

Could this book and movie deal have been arranged by the Lindbergh family to resurrect their shameful relative's reputation by using an author with connections to the Great Director himself? Since Lindy left his family feeling publicly disgraced who better than Spielberg to remove the sins of the father? And, who better than Berg, whose brother is Jeff Berg, president of ICM, the largest talent agency in the world, to make the shift from social outcast to "misunderstood" social outcast. Since not many Americans are in the habit of challenging Hollywood History and the press has little knowledge of Ahlgren and Monier, Spielberg may yet succeed in creating a hero out of nothing. Too much Kabbalah I would say.

The director, whose expertise in the realm of heroes has now been sullied by the purchase of this preposterous book, has sadly created a very personal dilemma for me. The problem is that Spielberg and I happen to "share" one other hero - my Parisian-born husband, Daniel Delmont (ne Rubinstein) whose tragic childhood is one of the film maker's 50,000 "teaching tool" videos. A professional cameraman, together with a French speaking interviewer, spent many hours in my home sensitively documenting my husband's woeful loss of his mother, sisters, and grandparents in Auschwitz. We are indebted, not only to the Christian woman, Madame Bertelet, who saved Daniel's life, but also to the Spielberg Foundation for their undaunted effort to make history "speak" to future generations with the words of those who lived it. Anyone who endured such suffering and still has faith in humanity, as my husband does, is a hero to me.

I have come to the sorrowful conclusion, however, that Steven Spielberg doesn't know anything at all about heroes and in his determination to bring his own childhood hero to the screen, in the form of Tom Cruise yet, has unwittingly become an accomplice in the mother of all bamboozles - Charles Lindbergh's Hoax. Ahlgren, a Manchester NH defense attorney, and Monier, Goffstown NH Police Chief, have offered the most plausible explanation for Lindbergh's bizarre behavior - something Spielberg, following Berg, will never do. But Ahlgren and Monier are not journalists or movie makers so what could they possibly know about crimes anyway?

As for Spielberg, there is a certain bridge I would like to sell him.

The Bergen Record  December 23, 1991

BUCHANAN'S AMERICA FIRST' MOTTO HAS ANTISEMITIC OVERTONES

 Ernest B. Furgerson

CONSIDERED in the abstract, the words "America First" could hardly
offend anyone lucky enough to be a citizen of this country. But after
more than two centuries of political dialogue, most such phrases suggest
more than they say.

Anyone familiar with our 20th century history, such as the
commentator Pat Buchanan, surely understands this. Thus, in declaring
his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination on an "America First"
platform, he knowingly associates himself with the best-known earlier
political movement of that name.

Taken broadly, his theme is no novelty in this campaign; all six of
the announced Democrats are urging George Bush to turn his attention to
troubles at home rather than spend so much time and effort on affairs
abroad. But only one contender has chosen those two words to sum up his
whole campaign.

Approaching World War II, the America First Committee was the most
vigorous isolationist group in the United States, campaigning against
Franklin Roosevelt's alleged intention to take the country in on
Britain's side.

Its most conspicuous figure was the Golden Boy of the '20s, the Lone
Eagle, Charles Lindbergh, an international hero since his solo flight
across the Atlantic in 1927. Public sympathy for him welled up again
when his infant son was kidnapped and killed. The ensuing manhunt and
the trial of Bruno Hauptmann was one of the sensational running stories
of the '30s. Lindbergh fled to Europe to escape more publicity.

A gifted aviator, he was more naive than conniving, and flattery
abroad made him think he understood world politics. As an official guest
of the German government, he was impressed by Hitler's Luftwaffe. His
reports on German air power convinced the U.S. ambassador to London,
Joseph P. Kennedy, and through him British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain, who subsequently caved in to Adolf Hitler at Munich.

When Lindbergh returned to America, he stirred public support with a
radio speech against the war in Europe, and there was talk of his
running against Roosevelt in 1940. As Hitler's army overran France, he
spoke out more. He joined America First, and became its prize speaker.

Up to that point, his speeches against the war were simply a
political crusade that turned out to be wrong. But within the anti-war
movement was a growing strain of anti-Jewish sentiment. In his
controversial address, Lindbergh voiced a minor fraction of it at Des
Moines, Iowa, in September 1941.

He did not condone the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, he said.

But "instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country
should be opposing it in every possible way, for they will be among the
first to feel its consequences... Their greatest danger to this
country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion
pictures, our press, our radio and our government...

"We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be
their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow
the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country
to destruction."

History overran Lindbergh and the America First Committee, but it
has led ambitious politicians in later decades to return to some of his
themes. George McGovern in 1972 pleaded "Come home, America", from war
in Vietnam. Current Democratic contenders urge priority for domestic
concerns. David Duke blames Jews for much of what is wrong. Pat Buchanan
asserts that the Jewish lobby in Washington drags America into disputes
and commitments we had best avoid.

Like Lindbergh, Buchanan denies that he is antisemitic. Unlike
Lindbergh, he is not naive.

 Philip Roth imagines a President Charles A. Lindbergh in 1940 

The Sun Times   by Henry Kisor  - March 14, 2004

Swastikas in the White House? The buzz in New York publishing circles this week is revolving around Philip Roth's first novel in three years, The Plot Against America, to be published in October by Houghton Mifflin.
In it Charles Lindbergh who flew from New York to Paris solo and nonstop in 1927 and later became a celebrated isolationist whose speeches and writings reflected a nativist anti-Semitism, defeats Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. "As war rages in Europe, the new President Lindbergh comes to an 'understanding' with Hitler," Publishers Weekly reports, "putting Jews in this country in fear for their lives."
It will be fascinating to see how Roth's often corrosive satire treats Lindbergh, sympathetically portrayed as a deeply flawed American hero in A. Scott Berg's 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning Lindbergh. But that was published before news broke last year of Lindbergh's secret family, including three illegitimate children, in Germany.
And the novel is appearing during what already has become a nastily contested presidential election.

The New York Times     March 2, 2004

ARTS BRIEFING   By Lawrence Van Gelder

What might life have been like for the Jews of the United States had the aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt for the presidency in 1940? 

That is the question raised and answered by the Pulitzer Prize-winner Philip Roth in the novel whose acquisition was announced yesterday by Houghton Mifflin.  In "The Plot Against America," to be published in October, Mr. Roth imagines life for his family in Newark and for a million other families around the country at a time when American Jews had reason to fear the worst. His Lindbergh blames Jews in a radio address for selfishly pushing America toward a pointless war with Nazi Germany and, upon taking office as the 33rd president, negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Hitler.

[ Note: Van Gelder says "His Lindbergh..." As if Lindbergh didn't actually make such a speech! See Mr Roth's letter below]

To the Editor: In your March 2 Arts Briefing item announcing the acquisition by Houghton Mifflin of my novel "The Plot Against America," you say my Lindbergh "blames Jews in a radio address for selfishly pushing America toward a pointless war with Nazi Germany."

In fact, the historical Charles Lindbergh did just that in his "Who Are the War Agitators?" radio speech to an enthusiastic America First rally at Des Moines on Sept. 11, 1941.

"No person of honesty and vision," Lindbergh said, "can look on the Jews' pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. . . . A few farsighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. . . . We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we must also look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction."        

 PHILIP ROTH  -   New York, March 2, 2004

Associated Press Story :Charleston Daily Mail  Oct 7, 1940