SAN FRANCISCO — Charles A. Lindbergh, often branded as a Nazi sympathizer during World War II, gathered intelligence for the United States on four visits to Germany before the war, according to papers of the pre-war U.S. military attache in Berlin.
The late Col. Truman Smith, who was America’s military representative in Berlin between 1935 and 1939, disclosed in papers recently published by the Hoover Institution that Lindbergh provided crucial and detailed data on the Luftwaffe’s planes and Hitler’s aircraft manufacturing facilities.
As for the highly publicized incident in which Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering presented Lindbergh with a medal in 1938, the papers disclose that neither Smith nor Lindbergh had any advance knowledge of Goering’s plan.
Robert Hessen, who edited the Smith papers, said even if they had been alerted ‘Lindbergh would not have been able to refuse the medal without offending.’ Smith and Lindbergh did not want to offend Goering at that time because they needed his favor ‘if they wanted to see more of the German Air Force.’
This is from Richard M. Harnett, “Lindbergh’s spy missions in Germany,” UPI, November 4, 1984.
Bob Hessen is a dear friend and was a long-time Hoover fellow.
From my early 20s on, I had heard about how pro-Nazi Lindbergh was. So this came as a shock. A pleasant shock.
HT2 Glenn Garvin.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Mar 13 2020 at 9:17pm
Wow. I did not know any of this story
Mark Z
Mar 14 2020 at 12:19am
Reading through Lindbergh’s speeches and writing, he clearly shows sympathy both with racialist theories and a general suspicion of Jews (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh#Attitudes_toward_race_and_racism) and this seems to have motivated some sympathy for extreme German nationalism. I guess the question is, are we to suppose that this was all a subterfuge? This seems unlikely, since he continued to express some of the sentiments he’s controversial for well after the war started, it’s not clear what purpose such a subterfuge would serve.
My guess is: Lindbergh was indeed somewhat sympathetic to Aryan racialist ideology; but was not sympathetic to the extent of siding with Germany in a conflict with the US, hence his willingness to spy for the US government.
David Henderson
Mar 14 2020 at 12:30pm
I think he was pretty clearly an anti-Semite. So what’s neat is that he wanted to help the U.S. against the Nazis.
FDR was pretty clearly an anti-Semite too. But that doesn’t come up much because he made war against Germany. So he did what he did and Lindbergh helped in that effort, but one is attacked and the other is not.
Mark Z
Mar 14 2020 at 9:30pm
I imagine his opposition to the war explains the difference in perception. One might oppose the war without being perceived as pro-Nazi, but together with his racial attitudes, it looks suspicious. His opposition to the war may of course have been independent of his other opinions – he did have other stated reasons, but one can never know for sure.
David Henderson
Mar 15 2020 at 12:12am
Mark Z,
If he opposed the war, he sure had a funny way of showing it. See Jim Ancona’s comment below.
Of course, he opposed the war before December 7, 1941, but so did the majority of Americans.
David Seltzer
Mar 17 2020 at 7:28am
FDR refused entry to America to the S.S. St. Louis carrying over 900 Jews fleeing Hitler. So did Canada and Cuba. In the end, the ship returned to Europe and a deadly uncertain future. It was a voyage of the damned.
john hare
Mar 14 2020 at 4:12am
One wonders if there will be revelations about Jane Fonda in North Vietnam in a few decades.
John Fembup
Mar 16 2020 at 12:36am
This one does not wonder.
john hare
Mar 16 2020 at 4:27am
Not sure which way you are meaning that. I have long wondered how she didn’t end up with serious problems due to her actions.
Alan Goldhammer
Mar 14 2020 at 9:26am
This is all well known stuff. Philip Roth dealt with the pro-Nazi stuff in his book, “The Plot Against America.” David Simon, creator of “The Wire, ” Treme,” “The Deuce,” and several other good shows, has adapted the book for HBO and the series begins this Monday night.
Interestingly, his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis, was built by Ryan Aircraft in San Diego. Most of the funding came from the Spirit of St. Louis Organization whose member lived in that Missouri city. My mother worked at Ryan during the last two years of WW II after she graduated from University of California. My dad worked on the other side of San Diego airport for Consolidated Aircraft.
Jim Ancona
Mar 14 2020 at 3:02pm
Lindbergh flew 50 combat missions in WW II as a civilian (which meant that if he had been captured he could have been shot as a spy). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh#World_War_II.
While he was evidently an anti-semite, he seems to also have been a patriot who took personal risks to support the US war effort.
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