I don’t watch bloggingheads.tv as much as I used to because I don’t have the time. I had to watch a bit when I saw the title “You’re either with us or you’re … Charles Lindbergh?”. It discusses a recent bloggingheads segment where David Frum wailed about Mark Schmitt being too turned off by the administration’s hijacking of 9/11 to commemorate its memorial. Good liberals Henry Farrell and Paul Glastris both agree that the neoconservative went way overboard, and is perhaps too emotional because of the failure of his vision with regard to Iraq. I hold no high regard for Frum, whose Unpatriotic Conservatives tried kick opponents of this misadventure off the bus
. However, I also don’t see what is so horrible about Lindbergh. If opposing war makes you a traitor then Henry David Thorough, William Graham Sumner, Mark Twain, Albert Jay Nock, H. L. Mencken, Smedley Butler, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, Robert Nisbet, Ayn Rand, William F. Buckley and I are all traitors. Oh, but WW2 was a “good” war, a “noble” one. Why? Because Hitler was so bad. Because he opposed war, Lindbergh must be some kind of crypto-nazi. What nonsense. Does opposing either Iraq war make one a Ba’athist, military action against Iran a Khomeinist, intervention in the Balkans a Serbian nationalist, Vietnam & Korea a communist, World War 1 and the Spanish American war a German/Spanish imperialist or the Mexican-American war a supporter of Aztlan? I have thrown out some less than popular wars there, but I will go further and say that opposing the War Between the States (civil wars are fights for political power within one political unit, like the Spanish or Russian civil wars, and do not include wars of secessions) does not make one pro-slavery.
Most people will interject here and say that Lindbergh was anti-semitic. The primary reason for this is his Des Moines speech. Here is the first quote where he mentions jews:
The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.
I guess like Mel Gibson he hates the Brits as well. Here he elaborates:
The second major group I mentioned is the Jewish.
It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race.
No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. 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.
Here he explicitly denies animosity toward them:
I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.
We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.
Change around a few words here and there and I bet Farrell and Glastris would applaud this:
Our theaters soon became filled with plays portraying the glory of war. Newsreels lost all semblance of objectivity. Newspapers and magazines began to lose advertising if they carried anti-war articles. A smear campaign was instituted against individuals who opposed intervention. The terms “fifth columnist,” “traitor,” “Nazi,” “anti-Semitic” were thrown ceaselessly at any one who dared to suggest that it was not to the best interests of the United States to enter the war. Men lost their jobs if they were frankly anti-war. Many others dared no longer speak.
I have passed over a quote that some consider especially objectionable, because it sounds like the sort of thing anti-semites often say.
Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.
William Cash was similarly attacked for talking about how many movers and shakers in the media are jewish in his article Kings of the Deal. Few people honestly believe it is not the case that the media is disproportionately jewish. Some, like comedian Judy Gold, have noted that this does not represent some sort of sinister conspiracy but merely the result of a higher than average intelligence especially in its verbal as opposed to visuospatial dimension (though she used the more palatable term “creativity”). It is not anti-semitism to notice that, or that neo-conservatives tend to be jewish and take a strong interest in Israel, or to note like Solzhenitsyn & Lenin the significant jewish (even if they did not strongly identify as such) contribution to the Bolshevik cause. There are enough jewish detractors of neoconservatism who have noted as such to make accusations of anti-semitism in that case seem laughable. A genuinely anti-semitic approach was that of the Nazis who denied a German jew could be loyal and patriotic by virtue of their judaism. In the speech Lindbergh states that there are jews who speak out against intervention, and he does not fling any insults their way. This is because he has a problem with intervention, not jews.
Some people may object that “We’d all be speaking German right now” if we listened to Lindbergh. I don’t believe this, in part because of where Lindbergh was wrong. Lindbergh was sent on behalf of the United States to Russia and Germany. Being a pilot and an inventor of mechanics, he took much notice of the air-power of those countries. Few now would disagree with his analysis that the Soviet’s had very shoddy aircraft and that Germany had quite good ones (in the coming war they were the first to use jet engines on planes, though not all that successfully). It was during this time that he received a German Eagle medal from the Nazis. As he was working on behalf of America nobody objected when this first occurred. It was only his later refusal to return it that caused a big stink. Lindbergh believed that Britain was already defeated or damn near because of the might German Luftwaffe. Germany’s advantage in pilots proved insufficient to defeat the RAF because their planes were generally low on fuel by the time they reached their targets, and they still had quite a ways to go on the return. Assuming that Germany elected to attack the United States (which it did not and was not likely to, as I intend to explain) the Atlantic ocean would serve the same purpose as England’s channel, and would be even more insurmountable an obstacle. Germany was known for its U-Boats (which were outclassed by the convoy system that turned them into death-traps later in the war), but not its carriers. The British Navy always outclassed theirs, which is why the participants in the Battle of Britain were all land-based aircraft.
Most Americans grow up believing that our country is responsible for defeating Hitler. In that patriotic Americans are wrong and Marxists are right. It was Stalin that defeated Hitler. The Western Front was a sideshow to the Eastern one. It was there that Germany hemorrhaged its men and materiel. It was the Soviets that occupied eastern Germany, where the government was seated. Although Stalin liked what assistance we provided, he could have done without it. Stalin also would have liked peace with Germany, but Hitler would have never held by it. In Mein Kampf (which I admit I haven’t actually read, but I’ll trust Wikipedia here) Hitler details his predictions for the future of Germany: it will re-arm in defiance of the Versaille treaty, ally with Britain and Italy against France and Russia. War between Greater Germany and the United States will occur around 1980, by which time if Hitler was alive he would be almost a century old. There also can be no doubt of the anti-semitism in Mein Kampf, which identifies jews (along with bolshevism) as the greatest threat to Germany. If world leaders had taken it seriously, they would not have been surprised by what Hitler later did.
Hitler’s predictions first went wrong in that Germany did ally with the Soviet Union and did not with Britain. Hitler had always planned to “Drang nach Osten” and defeat the “Judeo-Bolsheviks”. Even the generals that plotted to overthrow Hitler planned on continuing the war against Russia and making peace with the other Allies. Stalin’s trust in Hitler despite numerous warnings he received were completely misplaced. France was also stuck in the position of having to face Germany. The rivalry between the two nations went back a long way (perhaps to Napoleon & the French Revolution, though one could make the point that Richeliu’s fanning the flames of the 30 Years War was intended to keep Germany weak). Bismarck had attempted to make peace with France after the Franco-Prussian War, as he had after the Austro-Prussian War, but his advice was ignored and the two nations were to be bitter enemies. France seized back Alsace-Lorraine at the conclusion of the First World War (which mostly consisted of the German army against others on French territory), and the Versailles was no more conducive to peace than the end of the Franco-Prussian War. France and Russia had no choice in the matter, but Britain did. Hitler made overtures to England, but they were rebuffed. It was not Hitler that declared war on Britain, but the latter who declared war on Germany on the invasion of Poland (it is a great irony of the war that Poland would not be free for over four decades after its conclusion). Britain also seized German ships and blockaded Germany (this method was effective enough that Germany’s defeat in the previous war could perhaps be attributed to it). Along with the other allies it sought to use Norway as a platform against the Axis, which resulted in its invasion by Germany, after which the British Expeditionary Force fought alongside the pre-Vichy French government until Dunkirk. There is little reason to believe that Britain could not have followed a policy of armed neutrality, like Sweden, and stayed out of the war. Other Anglophone countries like the United States, Canada and Australia had even less to fear as they were a long ways from Europe.
After that digression, I’d like to get back to Lindbergh. He was no “Lord Hee-Haw” who supported the enemy during a war. It was his desire to serve his country and after the attack on Pearl Harbor he attempted to return to the Army Air Corps (which he had resigned as Captain from when F.D.R questioned his loyalty) but was rejected by several members of the administration. He acted as a consultant to the manufacturers of American aircraft and despite his status as a civilian flew about 50 combat missions in the Pacific. Even here, despite his fear of the “Asiatic races” he was averse to the racial hatred many of his comrades displayed toward the enemy, even as he recognized it was right to kill them in war.
This brings me to one of the sins of Lindbergh that has been pointed out accurately: race was an important part of his world-view. He thought the European races should not war with each other in part because they needed to stand together against the Asiatics. When he discusses the machinations of the British to bring America to war he does not refer to the “government” or even “country” as doing this but the “British race”. Such a world-view was no rare thing at the time, including among supporters of war against Germany. It is a separate thing from racial hatred though. Even while he likely viewed the Nordic race as intellectually superior to others, he denounced the hypocrisy of America or Britain claiming to represent freedom and democracy while blacks were oppressed in the south or the natives of India were subject to English imperialism. It is because of this that he was able to deplore what happened to the Japanese in the Pacific as being similar to what the jews were suffering in Europe (I would consider that comparison overblown as total Japanese casualties were about 2,621,000 many of whom were in the military while 5,754,400 jews were killed in the Holocaust, but the nuking of two cities and the fire-bombing of Tokyo along with the to-the-death nature of the Pacific fight were disturbing things) even if he considered their race to be a rival to his own.
So why have I decided to defend the reputation of this failed opponent of our entering into a now-popular war? Because as long as we glorify those unnecessary wars and the leaders who got us into them, we are sure to do it again. I want American opponents of war to be able to say “Yes, I am a patriot, and yes, I would have left Hitler to his devices”. Vietnam did much to make opposition to war more acceptable and the current mess will do likewise, but they have not done enough. Still a large number of people have a Dochtoss theory of Vietnam in which our noble effort would have won but was sabotaged, and another war is necessary to regain our honor. Many neoconservatives still believe the invasion of Iraq was a great idea but Bush fouled it up. If they could all be replaced with Bush Sr. style “realists”, that would be preferable. Unfortunately the war they are associated with, which drove Iraq out of Kuwait, made opposition to war seem politically risky to many Democrats and played a large part in our later troubles (we were supposed to be enforcing U.N sanctions on Iraq which it was attempting to avoid and two of Osama’s grievances against us stem from that war). Until that is recognized we will keep making similar mistakes.
UPDATE: Justin Raimondo at Taki’s Top Drawer has gone further than me and written a defense of Lawrence Dennis, the author of “The Coming American Fascism” who “passed” as white though he had black ancestry.
Entitled to an Opinion 
October 2, 2007 at 6:38 pm
1) Germany declared war on the United States, following the United States declaration of war on Japan. Look it up.
2) Check out the USS Reuben James, sunk by a German U-Boat in 1941. 115 sailors dead. No military response from the US.
3) While more than 2/3 of Germans KIA were on the Eastern front, that hardly reduces the Western front to a sideshow. It was American and British bombers, not Russian ones which reduced German strategic production.
4) Germany was engaging in aggressive war, deporting, enslaving and murdering populations systematically and methodically. Lindbergh was not just wrong about Germany, he was so wrong, so publicly wrong, its unlikely that he could ever be right again.
I appreciate your iconoclasm, and it’s certainly legitimate to question the conventional wisdom, but sometimes the conventional wisdom is just right.
June 23, 2015 at 5:41 am
oy vey, heard of the balfourdeclaration and the jewry involved to get US into WW I btw? And then after this little backstab “judea declares war on Germany”. Kicked out from 109 countries last 2 milleniums always as a group from totally different question. Maybe should ask yourself why.
June 23, 2015 at 4:37 pm
WW1? I would not have thought Jews would be so inclined for that. Plenty of German-speaking Jews were resident in the Central Powers and reasonably integrated to their societies. There were also many in Russia, but they tended to be hostile to the Czarist regime.
October 2, 2007 at 10:42 pm
You’re right, there was nothing crypto about Lindbergh’s Nazi sympathies. The man was, at best, a moral imbecile who chose the wrong side on the most important fight of the century, and never managed to get right.
As Lenin said, you may not be interested in war but war is interested in you.
Your attempt to draw parallels between WW II and Iraq is ludicrous. In WW II, Hitler was the aggressor. In Iraq, we are the aggressor. So opposition to our role in Iraq has nothing whatsoever to do with our role in WW II.
October 2, 2007 at 11:54 pm
1) Nepal declared war on Germany fairly early on, but that doesn’t mean Germany needed to attack them (I don’t actually know if they ever did). Germany was not a threat to the United States, and if our government wanted peace, we could have had it rather than pursuing policies of unconditional surrender. Like Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt wanted to join in the war on behalf of England. That’s why we had military ships in areas that civilian vessels were prohibited from entering and that’s why we were blocking shipments of scrap metal and oil to Japan. Even given our policy toward Japan and their attack, we could have restricted our activities to one sphere of the war. The Russians, despite their proximity to Japan and having fought a war previously with them, managed to stay out of the conflict with them until after both atomic bombs were dropped. The Chinese only fought Japan and we could have as well. The Germans did come in to assist their Italian allies, but they generally left Japan’s problems to Japan. Japan even invaded Indochina when it was controlled by Vichy France, a puppet state of Germany and they fought German-trained and equipped troops in China.
2) You say Reuben, I think Polk’s army attacked by Mexico, Fort Sumter, the Maine, the Lusitania (which we also did not respond to for years) and the Gulf of Tonkin. When a government wants to go to war, it can arrange an attack on itself (think of the Franco-Prussian war) and when tactic didn’t work for Hitler he claimed Poland attacked Germany. Anti-semites/anti-zionists like to bring up the U.S.S Liberty and how we did nothing, but as far as I’m concerned avoiding getting more men killed is the smart thing to do. I would prefer not engaging in a Tanker War with Iran in the 80s, but it was certainly preferable to full-fledged war, and ignoring the U.S.S Stark incident falls in the same category as the U.S.S Liberty.
3) Analysis done after the war determined that strategic bombing was largely a failure. It is well known that the Blitz strengthened the will of the English, and we should not be surprised to find the same thing in Germany.
4) Plenty of countries have engaged in aggressive war, bu that doesn’t mean it’s any of our business. Iraq’s attack on Kuwait, the northern Vietnam and Korean states attack on the southern ones all fall under that category. The U.S has also engaged in aggressive war, but I don’t think my country should be invaded. Plenty of dictators have also killed massive numbers of people, but that doesn’t mean the U.S should go to war with them.
Lindbergh was not just wrong about Germany, he was so wrong, so publicly wrong, its unlikely that he could ever be right again.
That sounds rather extreme. To me what he seemed wrong about was the chance Britain and Russia had against Germany. Granting for the sake of argument that he was horribly wrong, it’s quite a jump to say that someone being wrong about one thing cannot be trusted again.
You’re right, there was nothing crypto about Lindbergh’s Nazi sympathies.
He openly stated that what they were doing was horrific. There were such accusations made against him and he always denied them. Granting for the sake of argument that he was sympathetic to the Nazis, you have to at least grant him the crypto label.
The man was, at best, a moral imbecile who chose the wrong side on the most important fight of the century, and never managed to get right.
So the internment of the Japanese, the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, the nukings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the alliance with Stalin and “Operation Keelhaul” are all moral? It’s a riot that advocates of war and the mass killings that go along with it think they have the moral high-ground. But what do I know if I’m on the side of Saddam, Ahmadenijad, Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il Sung.
As Lenin said, you may not be interested in war but war is interested in you.
Lindbergh never said we should not be interested. He advocated a policy of armed neutrality (one of the reasons he objected to the shipping of military equipment to England was that it meant less for the U.S). However, Germany was not interested in warring with the United States. Nobody in the Western Hemisphere needed to be worried about him. The Roosevelt administration made us of interest to Hitler, and even then there was never an attempt at invasion nor would any have been plausible.
Your attempt to draw parallels between WW II and Iraq is ludicrous. In WW II, Hitler was the aggressor. In Iraq, we are the aggressor. So opposition to our role in Iraq has nothing whatsoever to do with our role in WW II.
See above. A aggressing against B does not mean C should jump in. The Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan after Operation Barbarossa, and we could have done likewise with Germany. I am not saying that Iraq was anything near the global threat that Germany was (though I don’t think either was a threat to the U.S), but I am saying the U.S could have avoided war with both.
October 3, 2007 at 10:28 am
You are basically arguing that Lindbergh and the America First movement were motivated by neutrality and a desire to avoid foreign war. In fact, they were active Nazi and fascist sympathizers. The gist of the Lenin quote is that in some point in a large-scale conflict it is impossibe to remain neutral. That’s the nature of war. I don’t like it much myself, but there it is. Sides get drawn up and you find yourself on one or the other. The fact that the Allies were not morally pure is well-known and irrelevant.
Do you really think it would have been in the best interests of the US to let Hitler overrun Europe?
October 3, 2007 at 1:34 pm
You are basically arguing that Lindbergh and the America First movement were motivated by neutrality and a desire to avoid foreign war. In fact, they were active Nazi and fascist sympathizers.
I’ve heard of the book but don’t feel like reading it, since I don’t doubt Henry Ford was very anti-semitic and worked with Germany. Point out to me where they show that Lindbergh sympathized with Nazism/fascism.
The gist of the Lenin quote is that in some point in a large-scale conflict it is impossibe to remain neutral.
But Russia did remain neutral toward Japan until the atom bombs dropped, when they entered as a favor to us. Sweden remained completely neutral AND THEY WERE FAR CLOSER TO THE CONFLICT THAN US.
Sides get drawn up and you find yourself on one or the other.
Nonsense. Not being on one side does not mean you must be on another.
Do you really think it would have been in the best interests of the US to let Hitler overrun Europe?
I don’t think Hitler would have been able to withstand Stalin, and Stalin did overrun a great deal of Europe (including Poland, like I mentioned above). A huge chunk of Asia fell to the communists, but I don’t think that required intervention either. Almost none of the wars the U.S has engaged in actually served the interests of the American citizenry. They sometimes helped extend American hegemony, but whether that is desirable is a different story.
October 3, 2007 at 3:11 pm
My sense is that isolationism vs. internationalism is a false dichotomy. That may not be a radical proposition, exactly. Yet few people seem to want to specify where, and on whose behalf, it makes sense for the United States to intervene militarily.
My position, so you don’t have to guess: I want American opponents of the current war to be able to say “Yes, I am a patriot, and no, I wouldn’t have left Hitler to his devices”.
If we roll back to the 1990-1991 Iraq war (which has more obvious parallels with WWII than the current Iraq war does), you can make several comparisons:
(A) Were Hitler and Hussein equally grave threats to regional peace and stability?
(B) Are Europe and the Middle East equally important regions from the US perspective?
(C) Do American intervention in Europe and the Middle East have equal chances of success?
(D) Does America have true allies in either region?
I don’t pretend that those are all the relevant questions, just the ones that spring to mind. If you answer yes to all of these, you pretty much have to have the same answer (intervene or not?) for each war (or else you have to make an explanation).
October 3, 2007 at 3:28 pm
My humble opinions (freshly washed in warm water and mild soap):
(A) It’s difficult to compare Hitler 1939 to Hussein 1990, because you’re comparing a fairly stable region with the Middle East. My hip-shot assessment is that they were about equal in terms of the regional threats they presented.
(B) No. Europe is a group of countries which has supplied most of our ideas, culture, the building blocks of our technology, varying approaches to democracy which (occasionally) compare favorably to our own, etc. The Middle East is an oil exporter. Europe is also considerably closer to North America. Given the choice of never visiting my ancestors’ homelands again (which pretty much would be the result of a Stalin- or Hitler-dominated Europe), or getting an electric car, I’ll choose the latter.
(C) No. Success in both wars depends on having true allies. (See D, below.) This is not true in all wars, becomes sometimes success in a war just means stopping an invasion. But success in a war can also be defined as creating a world in which the US (and the scores of smaller countries which share our values and thus, our constraints) can exist in peace and prosperity. It does no good to just blast enemy military capabilites to smithereens, if in doing so you just make new enemies.
(D) Europeans had good reasons to treat Americans (imperfect as we were, with immigration restrictions against Jews, not to mention “showing up late”) as friends. (Maybe “saviors” is too strong a word, but it has been applied.) We’re not just talking about a few British girlfiends of US airmen, we’re talking about dozens of ethnic groups in several countries. Can the same be said of the Middle East?
Or am I to believe that the welcome extended to our efforts – the “hearts and minds” – doesn’t really matter? Or that we can Lippmann our way to a whole new generation of allies created out of thin air?
Well, I don’t. As different as WWII was from the first Gulf War, it’s even more different from the current war, which didn’t come in response to an invasion even of a nominal ally.
October 3, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Good topic. You might get a kick out of Bill Kauffman’s book “America First.” He talked to our blog a bit about the topic here.
October 3, 2007 at 5:42 pm
It seems I’m more dovish than Noam Chomsky.
I’d say Hitler was more of a threat to his region than Hussein. France was a major power which had given Germany quite a fight in the past, and the Germans rolled over them. Saddam couldn’t beat Iran and was only able to take over dinky little Kuwait. The toughest military in the region is Israel’s, which has defeated the Arabs (multiple countries at the same time) over and over. B C and D are mostly true, but I don’t think it’s worth fighting a war so you can visit the land of your ancestors. I’m probably never going to Ireland and don’t really give a hoot what happens there.
October 3, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Michael, your last comment was flagged for moderation. I don’t know why. My most recent was flagged as spam, which is bizarre considering I was already logged in as the owner of this blog. I’ll check out your blog post.
October 3, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I’ve heard of the book but don’t feel like reading it, since I don’t doubt Henry Ford was very anti-semitic and worked with Germany.
Hm, maybe if you’re going to make long posts defending the indefensible you should take the time to bone up on the available literature.
Point out to me where they show that Lindbergh sympathized with Nazism/fascism.
He was accepting medals from Nazis after Kristalnacht, praising Germany, grossly overestimating their military strength before the war (which means he was either a fool or a traitor). He was a racist and white supremacist. He palled around with Ford. He palled around with Goering. He never gave back his Nazi medals or repudiated his connections to the Nazi regime, and kept on defending them well after the war, after the Nuremburg trials. What more do you want?
Sweden remained completely neutral AND THEY WERE FAR CLOSER TO THE CONFLICT THAN US.
Good thing not every country took their path then.
Let’s say people like Lindbergh and you had their way. Either Hitler and Stalin fight to the death, or (more likely) they split up Europe between them. Hitler now has the entire industrial resources of Western Europe, the oil resources of the Mideast, V-2 rockets and a stable of scientists to develop ICBMs, and chemical and biological weapons, and the desire (expressed before the war) to see Manhattan in flames. Meanwhile, we are painting our picket fences white and drinking lemonade on the porch. Yeah, that sounds like a truly wonderful outcome.
The whole nativist American movement is frankly ridiculous, because there are no natives here, other than the Indians. The rest of us have roots that go back at most a few hundred years and typically a lot less. So the notion that America can, should, or would pull its head in and not interact with the rest of the world is dead from the start. We are a nation of immigrants and have numerous ties to the rest of the world. Oceans matter a lot less than ties of culture and commerce.
Not being on one side does not mean you must be on another.
My point is that the dynamics of conflict tend to trump neutrality and pacifism. I don’t think this is such a good thing, it’s just the way the world is. More thoughts here.
This ties into our disagreement about voting. Voting makes no sense from an individualist-rationalist perspective, but people aren’t indivdualist-rationalists. War is the same way — if everybody was a rationalist-individualist, there would be no war (and that would be a good thing). But that’s not how people are.
BTW I made a comment on voting on Overcoming Bias that got lost in the shuffle, but maybe you’d like to respond.
October 3, 2007 at 7:55 pm
1. The US was waging an undeclared war in the North Atlantic against the U-Boats (in cooperation with the Royal Navy) for several months before Pearl Harbor. The US had, of course, already violated the principles of neutrality with the destroyers-for-bases deal and Lend-Lease aid.
2. Germany had no aircraft carriers whatsoever.
3. The derisive appellation was “Lord Haw-Haw” (William Joyce), not “Lord Hee-Haw”.
October 3, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Our gracious host wrote: “B C and D are mostly true, but I don’t think it’s worth fighting a war so you can visit the land of your ancestors. I’m probably never going to Ireland and don’t really give a hoot what happens there.”
Okay, maybe the visiting Europe thing came off a bit too literally. I just mean that our ongoing economic, cultural, intellectual, what-have-you ties with Europe are important and positive, and were in 1939 and for the rest of the century.
The US didn’t save Europe from Hitler, we saved it from Stalin. Am I completely off-base here? I though the Soviet Union was big and domineering enough when it was just messing up Slavic and Central Asian nations. Without Overlord, the Italian campaign, etc., I really don’t see any possible outcome other than the Soviets controlling ports on the Bay of Biscay. I’d like to think that they would have crushed themselves under their own economic idiocy the way they did in actual history, but who knows?
Or, more to the point, who knew? The West in the 1930s had every reason to believe ominous forces were at work threatening everything in the world worth living for. The idea behind Atlanticism isn’t too different from the idea behind the United States, anyway. Free people help other free people defend their freedom. They’re not supposed to meddle in each other’s affairs. (They do, certainly. The EU and the US Federal government are pesky, meddlesome, inefficient, etc. Which is too far off-topic, really.)
That’s my belief, anyway.
October 3, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Hm, maybe if you’re going to make long posts defending the indefensible you should take the time to bone up on the available literature.
There have been a number of books about the subject, some of them focused on Lindbergh (Berg’s “Lindbergh”, for example). I browsed through some of the excerpts linked and I didn’t noticed where they pointed out where Lindbergh sympathized with Nazism/fascism. Maybe you could provide a quote or something.
He was accepting medals from Nazis after Kristalnacht
He was sent to Germany on behalf of the U.S government (and more specifically the U.S Army’s Major Truman Smith) and was with U.S ambassador, Hugh Wilson, when he received the German Eagle on October 13 1938. Kristallnacht occurred on November 9-10 1938, and he deplored the riots (though not in very respectable terms) and canceled his plans to obtain a house in Berlin. If you are referring to any medals he received AFTER Kristallnacht, I am unaware of them.
He palled around with Ford
Helping to develop aircraft used to bomb Nazi Germany when he was not permitted to rejoin the Air Force and was also turned down by Pan-Am, United and Curtiss-Wright.
He palled around with Goering
With the U.S ambassador and on behalf of the U.S government.
grossly overestimating their military strength before the war (which means he was either a fool or a traitor)
Germany did roll over France, which few expected. They did have a great airforce, though not one capable of winning the Battle of Britain (at least once they shifted from focusing on the RAF to the blitz on London). His background was as a pilot rather than a military one, but greater errors in prediction have been made by generals.
He was a racist and white supremacist.
I’ll grant his racist worldview, but I don’t think he can be considered a white supremacist. As I noted above, he denounced the oppression of blacks in the south and the natives of India before the conventional wisdom had come around.
He never gave back his Nazi medals or repudiated his connections to the Nazi regime, and kept on defending them well after the war, after the Nuremburg trials.
He said after the war “History is full of [power’s] misuses. There is no better example than Nazi Germany”. He also said “I was far from being in accord with the philosophy, policy, and actions of the Nazi government”. I don’t see how you can maintain your claim that he openly supported them, and though he was suspected of secretly harboring sympathies for Nazi Germany F.B.I phone-taps on him found nothing incriminating.
Good thing not every country took their path then.
Good for Sweden and too bad more countries didn’t imitate them. Sweden also stayed neutral during the previous war, something Lindbergh’s father advocated (along with that great fascist Eugene Debs). Aren’t those Swedes evil?
Let’s say people like Lindbergh and you had their way. Either Hitler and Stalin fight to the death
I’m getting giddy.
or (more likely) they split up Europe between them.
Fighting the Bolsheviks and seizing land in the east formed a huge part of Hitler’s plan. Stalin was on his side when he attacked. What makes you think he would have left Russia alone and attacked the U.S if we had stayed neutral?
the oil resources of the Mideast,
He went in the save the asses of the Italians when they screwed up, and it was still Italians & Vichy there when Rommel was commander. Are you so sure they would have beaten Britain & the Free French?
a stable of scientists to develop ICBMs
He did have those, but I don’t recall them being that effective.
and chemical and biological weapons
Tactically useless unless you’re trying to use them on civilians. There’s a reason people gave up on them for the most part after the first World War, and it wasn’t because Hitler was a nice guy.
and the desire (expressed before the war) to see Manhattan in flames
I hadn’t heard of that. Could you post a link? From what I know he didn’t think the U.S or Germany would fight in his lifetime.
Meanwhile, we are painting our picket fences white and drinking lemonade on the porch. Yeah, that sounds like a truly wonderful outcome.
Sounds a hell of a lot better than war to me.
The whole nativist American movement is frankly ridiculous, because there are no natives here, other than the Indians.
And all Europeans stole the land from Neadertals. Sounds like a non-sequitur to me.
So the notion that America can, should, or would pull its head in and not interact with the rest of the world is dead from the start.
I don’t think we shouldn’t interact. I want to open up trade and dialog with Cuba (and I blame the Miami exile community in part for our refusal to do so), Syria, Iran and the rest. Trying to isolate them because they’re bad, bad, bad has been a stunning failure. The only example people point to of a regime that went down because of sanctions is South Africa, and if anything the National Party was strengthened by it.
We are a nation of immigrants and have numerous ties to the rest of the world.
Because of our ancestries we should go to war? Many people came here to get away from European squabbles.
Oceans matter a lot less than ties of culture and commerce.
They matter when it comes to war. They are very good at stopping tanks. Because of our cultural commonalities (we’re both liberal democracies with roots in Europe) I sympathize with Israel. But I don’t think it is our country’s job to look after their interests. I expect our country to be hated by islamists for being the biggest and most omnipresent (culturally) infidel country’s, but I don’t think we need to go messing around in their neighborhood all the time and sticking our necks out to get smacked. I don’t think we would be playing this World’s Policeman role if we had stayed out of the second world war.
My point is that the dynamics of conflict tend to trump neutrality and pacifism.
Sweden managed it. Norway could have if the allies hadn’t let it be known they wanted to use it as a base of operations against Germany. Do you honestly think Canada, Mexico or Australia couldn’t have ignored Germany?
This ties into our disagreement about voting. Voting makes no sense from an individualist-rationalist perspective, but people aren’t indivdualist-rationalists.
Some of us make something of an attempt to be rather than engaging in some sort of false humility to excuse their behavior. I am an individual and I can attempt to reason before making a decision. In doing so I may take into account the fact that others will not behave like rational-individualists, but I do not take it as a reason not to do so myself.
War is the same way — if everybody was a rationalist-individualist, there would be no war (and that would be a good thing). But that’s not how people are.
Like I said, I don’t advocate not having a defense force and singing Kumbaya in the hopes and people mellow out and don’t attack us. I just wish to avoid the wars that we can. When we are brought into a war, as in the case of Pearl Harbor or 9/11 (even if some of our previous actions contributed to this) I favor a response that minimizes the likelihood that we will be attacked again but also tries to finish up quickly and return home. I don’t think we should still be in Afghanistan, since we aren’t accomplishing anything after crushing al-Qaeda proper. I think after we gained the upper hand with the Japanese we could have made peace with them rather than pursuing unconditional surrender.
expat, nice to have you here. I am guessing you are originally from the United States. If you care to tell, where do you reside now?
October 3, 2007 at 11:28 pm
The US didn’t save Europe from Hitler, we saved it from Stalin. Am I completely off-base here?
Part of Europe remained a Stalin-free zone, but not the region the war started over.
I though the Soviet Union was big and domineering enough when it was just messing up Slavic and Central Asian nations.
Did that mean we should have gone to war against it?
I really don’t see any possible outcome other than the Soviets controlling ports on the Bay of Biscay.
I think it would have had more opposition to it if it were not part of the Allies and if Hitler wasn’t in between.
I’d like to think that they would have crushed themselves under their own economic idiocy the way they did in actual history, but who knows?
I imagine something more like the wars between the late Roman/Byzantine Empire and the Persians, which left them both exhausted and ripe for the conquest by the armies of the Prophet out of Arabia.
The West in the 1930s had every reason to believe ominous forces were at work threatening everything in the world worth living for.
I think the Western Hemisphere was fairly well protected from the military forces, and the Anglosphere was comparatively free of the political ones.
Free people help other free people defend their freedom.
That idea has played quite an unfortunate role in our Middle East policy. And our Cold War policy. And so on.
October 4, 2007 at 12:51 am
“Part of Europe remained a Stalin-free zone, but not the region the war started over.”
Okay, this goes to show that Poland’s unfortunate geography acted against its prospects for freedom. Had things played out differently (say, had anti-Communist Polish resistance had tremendous success), chunks of Poland could have ended up in Western hands. So, basically, Western political power was limited as was its political power.
“Did that mean we should have gone to war against it?”
In actual history? No, the Soviet Union never directly attacked any of our allies. No need to fight. Atlanticism was a clear and ongoing pact between like-minded people which existed at the very dawn of the Soviet threat. All the things that our “alliances” with Saudi Arabia, some faction or other in Iraq, etc., are not.
“I think it would have had more opposition to it if it were not part of the Allies and if Hitler wasn’t in between.”
The scenario I’m describing is the Soviet Union defeating Germany on its own. Had it survived to 1942 I believe it could have done this. I’m not sure if that was clear.
“I imagine something more like the wars between the late Roman/Byzantine Empire and the Persians, which left them both exhausted and ripe for the conquest by the armies of the Prophet out of Arabia.”
I hope so. I’m not sure who the Arabs are in this metaphor, but it sounds plausible.
“I think the Western Hemisphere was fairly well protected from the military forces, and the Anglosphere was comparatively free of the political ones.”
Okay, well, I guess the US could have militarized as much as it did during the Cold War, filled the Atlantic with aircraft carriers, and soldiered on by itself. Sounds like a bleak world, but we’re getting counterfactual enough that I admit I can’t be more specific than “bleak”.
“That idea has played quite an unfortunate role in our Middle East policy. And our Cold War policy. And so on.”
Sure, because people are deluded about whether or not we have allies in the Middle East. As far as the Cold War, it’s too big a topic for me to know exactly what you’re getting at, but the West came out on top in the struggle, with comparatively little bloodshed. I believe that Atlanticism is part of the reason for that.
October 4, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Hey, FDR evidently praised Mussolini: “Roosevelt himself called Mussolini ‘admirable’ and professed that he was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished.”
October 11, 2007 at 9:31 am
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,849122,00.html
The Churchill you didn’t know
This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States)… this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”
Writing on ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism’ in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 1920
October 11, 2007 at 10:02 am
I’ve read most of that before. Even though I can’t hold Churchill in as high esteem and neocons do since I blame him for interfering with our wonderful isolation, my support for Zionism and irritation (I live in a very different time so I don’t fear) with some of the strange intellectual fads that found many of their adherents among ethnically if not religiously jewish people gels well with his.
October 11, 2007 at 9:41 pm
I’ve just noticed there’s a good article at Mises on this issue.
Isolationism and the Foreign New Deal
October 13, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Steven Spielberg thought there was something wrong with Lindberg
Spielberg bought the rights to A. Scott Berg’s biography of Charles Lindbergh. But when he read Berg’s biography, he was troubled by parts of Lindbergh ‘s life…
In February of 1999 Spielberg told the New York Times:
“We’ll probably make `Lindbergh ,’ but one of the reasons I’ve considered not being the director is that I didn’t know very much about him until I read Scott Berg’s book and I read it only after I purchased it, and I think it’s one of the greatest biographies I’ve ever read. But Lindbergh ‘s America First and his anti-Semitism bother me to my core, and I don’t want to celebrate an anti-Semite unless I can create an understanding of why he felt that way. Because sometimes the best way to prevent discrimination is to understand the discriminator.”
More Spielberg on Lindbergh
“Once you commit to do a biography on an icon of a century, you have to be unflinching, you have to flesh out the entire story — and from (Lindbergh’s wife) Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s point of view — and not from Lindbergh the man,” Spielberg told Variety.
Variety said Spielberg selected Meyjes for the project after reading his script for “Hoffman,” (Later titled “Max”) the story of a Jewish art teacher who discouraged Hitler’s hopes for a career as a painter — an event some historians have speculated helped sparked Hitler’s political career and eventually the Holocaust.
He didn’t know very much about Lindy until he read Scott Berg’s book????
Really, that’s not what A. Scott Berg says…The following piece from New York Magazine makes it looked like he wanted to vilify Charles Lindbergh. Of course, Lindy was guilty of raising an anti-Semitic “canard” or two.
Lindbergh Drama Gets The Works
“…Exactly what Steven Spielberg knew and when he knew it was the question, after news circulated that the Academy Award nominated writer Paul Attanasio had withdrawn from a planned Charles Lindbergh project. Spielberg bought the rights to A. Scott Berg’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the famous aviator before reading the book, and the story making the rounds last week was that Spielberg turned cold on the project once he realized exactly how anti-Semitic Lindbergh was. ‘He did buy the rights to the book before reading the manuscript,’ confirms Berg, ‘because I was still working on it.’ But the writer adds that Spielberg always knew about Lindbergh. ‘When he and I first met, topic A was anti-Semitism,’ says Berg. ‘And I would say that topic Z was anti-Semitism as well.’ Another source close to the project explains that Attanasio, who wrote QUIZ SHOW and DONNIE BRASCO, wanted to write a character based drama, while the director of SCHINDLER’S LIST wanted more of a ‘spectacle.’ Spielberg is now talking to another writer about taking over the project…”
December 3, 2007 at 3:20 pm
With all due respect, I think your chief problem is hindsight. You were born too late to be properly scared. You grew up knewing that Hitler was, in fact, defeated.
December 3, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Are you saying that the people in favor of intervention couldn’t have known better at the time, or that in the absence of American intervention things would have gone much differently?
January 13, 2008 at 9:55 am
I’m with Eliezer: I think reading a more personal view of the war in Europe, perhaps talking to people who were there living under food rationing and air raids, as well as seeing refugees in their towns, might make it more clear that winning was by no means a foregone conclusion.
I have come to see that the Axis powers were willing to see the world in flames if they thought they would end up owning whatever was left. I don’t think they would have suffered any neutrals if they managed to defeat the Allies. This is what is at the root of the Lenin quote: war will come to you if you let it and you won’t be able opt out. Your choices will be join or die. The stark reality of that is what I think is missing in your argument.
I can understand your zeal at defending your position but, absent time travel, are you willing to concede that the people there knew what they were fighting for?
January 13, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I’m with Eliezer: I think reading a more personal view of the war in Europe, perhaps talking to people who were there living under food rationing and air raids, as well as seeing refugees in their towns, might make it more clear that winning was by no means a foregone conclusion.
I don’t think that would really affect the probability I assign to an Axis defeat.
I have come to see that the Axis powers were willing to see the world in flames if they thought they would end up owning whatever was left.
Hitler did say some things near the end implying he would rather Germany be destroyed than surrender, but I don’t think it was within his capabilities to destroy the world.
The stark reality of that is what I think is missing in your argument.
You seem to be arguing that Hitler was a really bad guy and if left unchecked would take over the world and I am arguing that realistically he would not have been able to. I concede that France and Russia didn’t have much of an option, but I am not arguing for a change in their policies.
are you willing to concede that the people there knew what they were fighting for?
I’m not entirely sure what the question means or why it matters.
May 6, 2008 at 4:28 pm
This is absurd, as many people have pointed out before. I will also add, since no one else has mentioned it, that Lindbergh was awarded, and personally accepted, the Order of the German Eagle from Hitler. Here:
http://adamholland.blogspot.com/2007/08/lyrics-to-lindbergh-by-woody-guthrie.html
is a photo of him being handed the award by Goering in 1938. He also made several public comments on how great the Nazi regime was for Europe. The man was dead wrong, and inexcusably so. It’s one thing to oppose war; sympathizing with and defending the Nazis is entirely different.
May 6, 2008 at 8:12 pm
angrymob, I already discussed the German Eagle medal both in the original post and the comments. It seems evident to me that you did not actually read this, or you would not have stated “since no one else has mentioned it”. You cannot expect to act in such a manner and have people take you seriously. Read the post, and then if you have something to contribute, do so.
August 17, 2009 at 8:44 pm
[…] – the internationalists came in swarms, the isolationists were one-offs Though I myself share your take, that sets off warning signs. I’m sure there were plenty of interventionists who were […]