# Lindbergh Des Moines Speech (September 11, 1941) On **September 11, 1941** — three months before Pearl Harbor — [[Charles Lindbergh]] delivered a speech at an [[America First Committee]] rally in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he identified **"the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration"** as the three groups pushing America toward war. The speech is the **moment the America First movement's latent antisemitism became explicit and undeniable** — and the event that fatally damaged both Lindbergh's reputation and the AFC's claim to principled non-interventionism. The Des Moines speech matters for the KB because it is the **purest case study in how populist anti-interventionism slides into conspiratorial scapegoating**. The pattern — legitimate grievance (opposition to war) → identification of an enemy within (Jewish Americans) → conspiratorial framework (they control media and government) — is the same template that runs from [[Father Charles Coughlin]]'s radio broadcasts through [[Pat Buchanan]]'s "Israel's amen corner" to the "Jews will not replace us" chants at [[Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally]]. ## What He Said Lindbergh identified three groups he accused of agitating for American entry into the war: **1. The British:** Who wanted American military support to survive the German onslaught. Lindbergh argued Britain's interests were not America's. **2. The Jewish:** Lindbergh stated that Jewish Americans' "greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government." He acknowledged that Jewish persecution in Germany was understandable cause for hostility to the Nazi regime — but argued that Jewish Americans were prioritizing their group interests over national interests by pushing for war. **3. The Roosevelt administration:** Which Lindbergh accused of manufacturing war hysteria and maneuvering the country toward intervention through Lend-Lease and other measures. ## The Reaction The speech produced an immediate firestorm: - **Mainstream condemnation:** Republican presidential nominee [[Wendell Willkie]] called it "the most un-American talk made in my lifetime by any person of national reputation." Multiple newspapers compared Lindbergh's rhetoric to Nazi propaganda. - **AFC internal crisis:** Several AFC leaders, including some board members, repudiated the speech. The organization spent its remaining months in damage-control mode, unable to separate its anti-war message from Lindbergh's antisemitism. - **White House response:** Press Secretary Stephen Early noted that Lindbergh's speech bore a striking resemblance to Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels's talking points. - **Defenders:** Father Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith praised the speech. The overlap between Lindbergh's supporters and the explicitly antisemitic right was now impossible to deny. ## Why It Matters ### The Antisemitism Was the Point, Not an Accident Lindbergh's speech was not an off-the-cuff remark. He had been warned by AFC leaders not to name Jewish Americans specifically. He chose to do it anyway, and his private diaries and correspondence reveal views consistent with the speech — including admiration for German "vitality" and concern about Jewish "influence." The speech made explicit what the broader America First ecosystem had communicated through implication: - [[Father Charles Coughlin]] had been broadcasting antisemitic conspiracy theories to 30 million listeners - [[Henry Ford]] had published *[[The International Jew]]* (1920–1927) - The Nye Committee's "bankers' war" narrative drew on a long tradition of coding "international finance" as Jewish Des Moines stripped away the coding. Lindbergh said what Coughlin had implied and Ford had published — but as the most famous American alive, on a national stage, three months before Pearl Harbor. ### Celebrity Radicalization Template Lindbergh was America's greatest living hero — the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic (1927). His celebrity gave the AFC its most powerful spokesman and gave isolationism mainstream legitimacy. The Des Moines speech demonstrated how **celebrity amplifies extremism**: Lindbergh's fame ensured the antisemitic message reached audiences that would never have listened to Coughlin or read Ford's propaganda. The template recurs: celebrity → political platform → increasingly radical messaging → the fame that provided legitimacy now provides reach for extremism. ### The Date The speech was delivered on **September 11, 1941** — exactly 60 years before the attacks that would transform American foreign policy. This is coincidence, not causation, but it is worth noting that both dates mark inflection points in the debate over American engagement with the world. ## See Also - [[Charles Lindbergh]] — The speaker - [[America First Committee]] — The organization that hosted the speech - [[Father Charles Coughlin]] — The radio priest whose antisemitic messaging Lindbergh echoed - [[Henry Ford]] — Whose *International Jew* laid the groundwork - [[Gerald L.K. Smith]] — Who praised the speech and continued the antisemitic America First tradition - [[Nye Committee Hearings]] — The investigation that created the "bankers' war" narrative Lindbergh drew on - [[Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally]] — Where the "Jews will not replace us" chant revealed the persistence of the template - [[America First Movement]] — The tradition that runs through the speech