1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler—the Election Amid the Storm by Susan Dunn

1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler—the Election Amid the Storm by Susan Dunn

Author:Susan Dunn [Dunn, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300195132
Google: 9ZUniR1uQcUC
Published: 2013-06-04T16:37:12+00:00


Chapter 17

Final Days, Final Words

WHAT CHANGE HAS COME OVER US?” demanded Charles Lindbergh in a nationwide radio address on October 14, at the height of the fall campaign season. “Where is the blood of such leaders as Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, blood that stood firm on American soil?” Whereas Roosevelt underscored that, no matter the race, color, or creed, “we are American,” Lindbergh made blood the test of patriotism, loyalty, and leadership.

As if he were himself campaigning for the presidency, he regaled his audiences with his own formula for great leadership. “We have not confidence in our leaders,” he said. “We have not confidence in their efficiency or in their judgment,” in their ability to turn “adversity and hardship into virility and success.” Blood, efficiency, virility, success: Lindbergh injected all the fascist code-words into his prescription for American leadership.

Lindbergh insisted that “the first step must be to assure ourselves of leadership which is entirely and unequivocally American,” as he told a radio audience three weeks before the November election. “There must not be even the remotest question of foreign influence involved.” It was “amazing,” he said in his talk, that he was forced to “plead for American independence in a nation with a heritage such as ours.” Reminding his listeners that Americans had fought a revolutionary war against “foreign control,” he voiced dismay that the nation’s independence and destiny “were never more in jeopardy than they are today.” In addition to stooping to the insinuation, long heard in conservative, anti-Semitic, and pro-fascist circles, that FDR had Jewish ancestors, that his real name was Rosenfeld, the aviator was also displaying his ignorance of the key roles that foreigners like Lafayette, General de Rochambeau, Admiral de Grasse and the French fleet—and even the Caribbean-born Alexander Hamilton himself—played in the American War of Independence.

His thinking and values influenced by German Nazis and French fascists like his friend, the eugenicist Alexis Carrel, Lindbergh warned that the policies of interventionists like Roosevelt would be “fatal to our nation.” He urged Americans to vote for “men, regardless of their party, who will lead us to strength and peace.” The United States desperately needed leaders “whose promises we can trust, who know where they are taking us, and who tell us where we are going!”1

Despite his dread of a Roosevelt victory—“no one I know trusts Roosevelt,” he had written a few weeks earlier—Lindbergh had minimal interest in endorsing the president’s rival and never even pronounced Willkie’s name in public. He supported the GOP candidate faute de mieux—“I wish that someday I could vote for a President in whose leadership I had real confidence,” he would write on Election Day.2 But his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was far more enthusiastic: she saw in the GOP candidate a perspicacious, forthright leader who knew where he wanted to take the nation. “At least he knows we cannot turn backwards and has some conception of the forces of the future,” Anne wrote.3 Did she think that Willkie would subscribe to the



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