The President And the Pilot

U.S. participation in World War II is generally seen as morally righteous. H.W. Brands, a prolific writer of popular histories, argues in “America First” that the country was “cemented” into this view only after the discovery of the Nazi death camps, and he is keen to remind us that, before Pearl Harbor, Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist movement had a large following. Given that Donald Trump’s slogans have “echoed” those of Lindbergh’s era— and that the world is again menaced by aggressors—Mr. Brands believes the time is ripe for reappraising the original America First.

- H.W. Brands

Mr. Brands goes about this project—really a revisionist study—by offering twin profiles of Lindbergh and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president who, he says, practiced a “deceptive incrementalism” to lure America into the fight. He aims to show that FDR “knew” the country was headed for war and that Lindbergh’s point—that America was perfectly safe as long as Germany and Japan remained outside North America—was technically and militarily accurate.

Lindbergh, the son of a Minnesota congressman who had opposed U.S. entry into World War I, was 25 when, in 1927, he flew solo to Paris and became a hero. Mr. Brands begins five years later, when the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was kidnapped and slain. The devastated couple were subjected to merciless hounding by photographers as well as physical threats. The family fled to England, returning in the late 1930s as Roosevelt was turning his attention to rising militarism overseas.

Lindbergh parlayed his fame to become a sort of roving consultant on war preparedness. He was invited to tour air forces across Europe; he chatted with heads of state; the U.S. ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, received as gospel the pilot’s awestruck admiration of German strength.

Meanwhile, Roosevelt was cajoling Congress to remove a series of restrictions on arms supplies to allies and to beef up American forces. He was also preparing the public to play a part. Lindbergh countered with radio addresses and speeches against the president, whom he likened to a dictator.