Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, by Candace Fleming (2020)

 

The cover of The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, by Candace Fleming, 2020.

Charles Lindbergh and The Spirit of St. Louis, 1927.

Charles Lindbergh making a speech on behalf of "America First," 1940-41.

Charles Lindbergh was a complicated man. That’s an understatement, but let’s start there, shall we? As I grew up in Minnesota, and still live in Minnesota, Charles Lindbergh is someone who looms large in the iconography of the state. The largest terminal at our main airport was named after Lindbergh. (The airport has since changed the names of the terminals to the more prosaic “1” and “2.”) When I was a kid growing up in the 1980’s, there was a full-scale replica of Lindbergh’s airplane The Spirit of St. Louis that hung in the Lindbergh terminal. Lindbergh’s boyhood home in Little Falls is now a museum, run by the Minnesota Historical Society. There’s a statue of Lindbergh, “The Boy and the Man,” on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that three of the most significant American cultural figures to emerge during the decade of the 1920’s were from Minnesota: Charles Lindbergh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sinclair Lewis. Not bad for a state from the Midwest, old sport. 

Candace Fleming’s magnificent 2020 biography, The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, is a fantastic look at a complicated, contradictory man. Fleming often uses Lindbergh’s own words, and those of his wife, writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, to paint a vivid and detailed picture of his life. Fleming’s book is classified as “young adult,” but those distinctions are irrelevant when you’re discussing an expertly written book.

Every chapter of Lindbergh’s life could be made into a movie. If you wrote his life as a novel, it would seem unbelievable.

Lindbergh skyrocketed to world fame in May of 1927, as he became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Lindbergh looked every inch the ideal American hero: tall, slender, with a dimpled chin and a shy grin. Lindbergh used his newfound fame to advocate for aviation, but the press was fascinated by his personal life as well. His marriage to Anne Morrow in 1929, and the birth of their first child a year later, Charles Lindbergh Jr., made worldwide headlines.

In 1932, Lindbergh’s life became a nightmare when his son was kidnapped. Lindbergh ran much of the investigation himself, and while he had a sharp intelligence, Lindbergh was not the best judge of people. He was taken advantage of by people who claimed to have knowledge of where his son was being held. It’s heartbreaking to read of Lindbergh being led astray by liars, searching in vain in stormy waters for the non-existent boat where someone told him his son was being held, at the very moment when police found the child’s dead body, just a few miles from the Lindbergh home.

A sad coda to the Lindbergh kidnapping was how, periodically, people would show up on the Lindbergh’s doorstep and claim that they were his dead son. Rather than respond to them with anger, Fleming writes of how Lindbergh “met their delusions with compassion, speaking with them logically, reasonably, and at length.” (p.308) How heartbreaking to have to carry out such a task.

Controversy followed Lindbergh throughout his life. His interest in eugenics and his approval of pre-war Nazi Germany have cast a sinister shadow over his reputation. Incredibly enough, in the fall of 1938 Charles and Anne were searching for a house in Berlin. Then Kristallnacht happened, and Lindbergh finally came to his senses—sort of. He returned to America in 1939.

Lindbergh was determined that the United States should not enter the coming European war, and he eventually joined “America First,” a non-interventionist group. For a man who didn’t like being a celebrity, and who treasured his privacy, Lindbergh made the surprising decision to barnstorm around the United States, giving speeches in favor of American neutrality. Lindbergh blamed the Jews for agitating for the United States to enter World War II. He wrote of Jews, “There are too many in places like New York already. A few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos.” (p.247) Ugh, what a disgusting sentiment.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote a 1940 pamphlet in support of fascism, The Wave of the Future, promoting an American brand of fascism that could be “crisp, clear, tart, sunny, and crimson—like an American apple.” (p.265) Wait, what? Fascism is like an apple? This quote shows how unsophisticated the political thinking of both Lindberghs was. American fascism will be crimson, sure, but the crimson will be the blood running in the streets.

Despite his support for isolationism, once the United States entered World War II, Lindbergh attempted to return to active military service. (He had resigned his military commission earlier in 1941 after clashing with FDR.) Lindbergh was rebuffed, but eventually, in the spring of 1944, he found himself attached to a bomber unit in the Pacific as a civilian observer. Lindbergh was past 40, but he was still a better pilot than the men half his age. He ended up flying more than 50 bombing missions in the Pacific. (This was technically against military policy, since Lindbergh was a civilian, but the military brass was fine with looking the other way.)

During World War II, as Lindbergh was testing planes in the United States, he had a revelation during a flight where he blacked out and almost crashed. He wrote that he had suddenly realized “In worshipping science man gains power but loses the quality of life.” (p.285) After the war was over, Lindbergh toured a concentration camp in Germany. He was sickened by what he saw there. Lindbergh had always been a worshipper of science, but now he saw what science could bring about: Nazi death camps and the atomic bomb. He wanted no part of either.

Lindbergh spent much of his later life traveling the world advocating for environmentalism. He said, “I realized that if I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.” (p.317) But lest you think that he was mellowing into old age, Lindbergh also fathered several secret children in Germany that he financially supported.

As I wrote at the beginning, Charles Lindbergh was a complicated man. Candace Fleming has done a remarkable job in presenting all the different facets of Lindbergh’s life and personality.