# Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902–1974) was an aviator who became the **most famous person in America** after his solo nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris on May 20–21, 1927 — and who subsequently became the **most famous spokesperson for American isolationism** as the public face of the [[America First Committee]] in 1940–1941. His **Des Moines speech of September 11, 1941** — in which he named "the Jewish race" as one of three groups pushing America toward war — permanently associated the AFC and the "America First" slogan with antisemitism, a stain that lasted seventy-five years until Trump and Bannon rehabilitated the phrase by simply ignoring it. Lindbergh matters for the KB as the **celebrity face of a political pattern** that recurs throughout the right: the famous figure whose personal prestige is used to legitimize a coalition that includes elements he may not fully endorse but cannot separate himself from. Lindbergh was not a Nazi. He was, however, willing to accept a Nazi medal, unwilling to return it, and willing to identify Jewish Americans as a threat — and the distinction between "Nazi" and "Nazi-adjacent" proved functionally meaningless for the coalition's public image. ## Background - Born February 4, 1902, in Detroit, Michigan; raised in Little Falls, Minnesota - Father: Charles August Lindbergh Sr., a progressive Republican congressman (1907–1917) who opposed U.S. entry into WWI — the isolationist tradition was literally inherited - Dropped out of the University of Wisconsin to pursue aviation - **May 20–21, 1927:** Completed the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in the *Spirit of St. Louis*, flying 3,600 miles from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, to Le Bourget Field, Paris, in 33.5 hours. The flight made him the most famous person on earth and won him the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the first-ever Time magazine Man of the Year (1927) - **1932:** His 20-month-old son, Charles Lindbergh Jr., was kidnapped and murdered in the "Crime of the Century." Bruno Hauptmann was convicted and executed. The trauma drove the Lindbergh family to Europe in 1935 - Married Anne Morrow in 1929; six children (plus, as discovered posthumously, seven children by three European women maintained as secret families) - Died August 26, 1974, in Maui, Hawaii, at age 72 ## The European Years and the Nazi Medal (1935–1939) The Lindberghs moved to Europe in 1935, partly to escape media scrutiny after the kidnapping. During these years, Lindbergh made several visits to Nazi Germany at the invitation of the Luftwaffe: - **1936, 1937, 1938:** Toured German aviation facilities, inspected the Luftwaffe's capabilities, and reported to U.S. military intelligence on German air power. His assessments — that the Luftwaffe was vastly superior to any other air force — were accurate and valuable to American military planners. - **October 18, 1938:** At a dinner in Berlin hosted by [[Hermann Göring]], Lindbergh was awarded the **Service Cross of the German Eagle** (*Verdienstkreuz des Deutschen Adlerordens*), a medal given to foreign nationals who served the Reich. Lindbergh accepted the medal; he never returned it, despite repeated public demands that he do so. - The medal became the symbol of Lindbergh's Nazi associations. His defenders argued he was a military intelligence asset gathering valuable data; his critics argued he was a willing propagandist for the regime. Both claims had evidence. ## America First Committee (1940–1941) Lindbergh joined the [[America First Committee]] in April 1941 and immediately became its most powerful draw. His rallies attracted audiences of 10,000–30,000 — far larger than any other AFC speaker could command. His argument was simple: America's geographic isolation (two oceans), combined with a strong defensive military, made intervention in the European war unnecessary and foolish. Lindbergh gave dozens of speeches and radio addresses between April and December 1941. The speeches were effective, well-delivered, and — until Des Moines — carefully calibrated to avoid the antisemitic fringe. ## The Des Moines Speech (September 11, 1941) On September 11, 1941, Lindbergh addressed an AFC rally of approximately 7,500 people in Des Moines, Iowa. The speech identified three groups he claimed were pushing America toward war: **"The British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration."** On Jewish Americans specifically, Lindbergh said: "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." He continued: "Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government." The speech was immediately and widely condemned: - The **White House** called the speech an appeal to antisemitism - Many **AFC members and donors** publicly distanced themselves from Lindbergh - Major **newspapers** condemned it across the political spectrum - The **interventionist opposition** used it to brand the entire AFC as antisemitic - Lindbergh **never retracted or apologized** for the speech; he maintained that he was stating facts, not expressing prejudice The Des Moines speech did not destroy the AFC (Pearl Harbor did that three months later), but it **permanently defined the public memory** of the organization and its slogan. For the next seventy-five years, "America First" was shorthand for isolationism-plus-antisemitism. ## Wartime and Postwar After Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh attempted to rejoin the military; FDR personally blocked his reinstatement. Lindbergh served as a civilian consultant to Ford Motor Company and United Aircraft, and flew approximately 50 combat missions in the Pacific as a civilian technical representative — combat he was not authorized to conduct but that military commanders permitted. After the war, Lindbergh was gradually rehabilitated. He served as a consultant to the [[Air Force]], advised Pan American World Airways, won the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir *The Spirit of St. Louis* (1953), and was restored to Brigadier General status in the Air Force Reserve (1954). By the time of his death in 1974, the dominant public narrative emphasized the aviation hero and downplayed the America First chapter. The posthumous discovery of his **three secret European families** (seven children by three German and Swiss women, maintained in parallel with his American family from the 1950s until his death) complicated the rehabilitation further. ## Legacy for the KB Lindbergh's significance is threefold: 1. **The celebrity-to-politics pipeline.** Lindbergh was the first American celebrity to convert personal fame into political influence at national scale in the service of a right-wing cause. The model — famous person lends credibility to a political movement that needs mainstream appeal — runs through Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Trump, and every celebrity political endorsement since. 2. **The antisemitism that couldn't be purged.** The AFC's "Jewish question" problem is structurally identical to the JBS's conspiracy-theory problem, to MAGA's white-nationalism problem, and to every other coalition in the KB that includes an element the leadership claims to deplore but cannot separate from. Lindbergh was not the AFC's worst antisemite — that was Gerald L.K. Smith — but he was its most visible one, and the damage was permanent. 3. **The slogan's resurrection.** That "America First" could be rehabilitated in 2016 — despite Des Moines, despite the Nazi medal, despite seventy-five years of association with antisemitism — is evidence of how completely the Trump movement broke with the historical sensibilities that had governed American conservatism since Buckley. ## See Also - [[America First Committee]] — The organization Lindbergh became the face of - [[Father Charles Coughlin]] — The radio priest whose antisemitic audience overlapped with the AFC's base - [[Henry Ford]] — The industrialist-antisemite who shared Lindbergh's worldview - [[Gerald L.K. Smith]] — The fascist organizer at the AFC's fringe - [[Clarence Manion]] — The AFC-to-JBS bridge figure - [[America First Movement]] — The full through-line from 1940 to 2026