Book Review: The Wave of the Future: a Confession of Faith, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1940)

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh, was a noted author in her own right. Her most famous book is 1955’s Gift from the Sea, a volume of essays using seashells as metaphors for life. Her first two books, North to the Orient (1935) and Listen! The Wind (1938) chronicled flying expeditions taken with her husband and both books were best-sellers. Morrow Lindbergh was Charles’ aviator on these expeditions, and an integral part of the journey, as the Lindberghs flew in two-seater planes. Her third book, a slim 40-page pamphlet titled The Wave of the Future: A Confession of Faith, was published in the fall of 1940. The book also sold well, but it was nothing like her previous two books. From the title, you might think the book had something to do with the future of air travel, or airplane technology. The Wave of the Future was an examination of the state of the world in the fall of 1940, and an argument in favor of the United States staying out of World War II, which had been raging for a year in Europe.  

The Wave of the Future is a bizarre little book, and it’s one of those books that could easily have just remained as a long magazine article, rather than a full-blown book. I was able to read it for free online, thanks to the Internet Archive. The book is weirdly defeatist about America combating fascism, as Morrow Lindbergh writes “There is no fighting the wave of the future.” (p.34)  

A few pages later, she writes “Might not a course be found which took advantage of, rather than opposed, the great forces pushing in the world? The wave of the future is coming and there is no fighting it.” (p.37) Morrow Lindbergh isn’t quite arguing for fascism in America, but she’s also not totally condemning it, either. It’s a very weird ideological needle she’s trying to thread in her argument.  

Morrow Lindbergh groups together the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany as what she calls “the Forces of the Future.” She writes: “I am not here defending the forms this revolution has taken: aggression, terror, class or race persecution. I oppose these as deeply as any American...I cannot see this war, then, simply and purely as a struggle between the ‘Forces of Good’ and the ‘Forces of Evil.’ If I could simplify it into a phrase at all, it would seem truer to say that the ‘Forces of the Past’ are fighting against the ‘Forces of the Future.’” (p.17-18) It’s good that Morrow Lindbergh is against “aggression, terror, class or race persecution,” but she is oddly unable, or unwilling, to more broadly condemn fascism or communism as systems of government. She also doesn’t seem to understand that the United States might have to fight against these forces in the future. She wants to separate “the scum on the wave of the future” from the rest of the wave, but there’s no separating the scum from the wave with fascism or totalitarianism. 

Morrow Lindbergh is advocating for a weirdly nonspecific change in America. “We might be able to meet the new world order without the violence we abhor—if only we could open our eyes to our present failings and admit our problems.” (p.37) Sure, America had plenty of problems in 1940, like racism, sexism, you name it—but Morrow Lindbergh doesn’t write about any of these issues.  

The strangest passage in The Wave of the Future is a section where Morrow Lindbergh writes: “Our answer should not and will not be the answer of any European nation...It should be as American as the white steeples of New England or the skyscrapers of New York; as American as a boy’s slang, as backyard life in small towns, as baseball and blue jeans.” (p.26) Again, she’s not quite advocating for fascism in America, but she’s also not condemning fascism, so what on earth does she mean? I have no idea, and I’m not sure she knew the answer either.  

In a letter written to her mother on September 4, 1940, Morrow Lindbergh writes of the book: “I feel, of course, almost impelled to write it, because of my personal loyalty and desperate feeling of injustice to C {Charles} but I wouldn’t do it on that alone. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t feel convinced of his integrity and the integrity of his stand (whether or not I agree with the details and whether or not I agree with the presentation).” (War Within and Without, p.127)  

That quote really says it all, that Anne wrote the book to defend Charles’ position, even if she didn’t completely agree with it herself.  I don’t think that’s a good reason to write a book. Let Charles write his own book about isolationism and non-intervention. The quote also highlights the fact that since Anne herself was not necessarily passionate about the details of her philosophical argument, it might not have been rigorously thought out.  

In the index of War Within and Without, a 1980 collection of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s letters and diaries from 1939-1944, there are 12 entries under The Wave of the Future for “criticism of,” which gives us an idea of the intense criticism that greeted the book upon its release.  

It’s impossible to separate The Wave of the Future from Charles Lindbergh’s views on American neutrality, non-intervention, fascism, and the Nazis. Lindbergh was a staunch believer in eugenics, and he was clearly a Nazi sympathizer. The Lindberghs were actually looking for a house in Berlin in the fall of 1938. Then Kristallnacht happened and Lindbergh thought better of moving to Germany. But for whatever reason, Lindbergh was never able to repudiate the Nazis with the force that he should have.  

The Wave of the Future was written just as Charles Lindbergh was starting to speak more publicly about the war as part of the America First Committee. Charles’ involvement with America First took him around the United States, making speeches about the need for the United States to remain neutral and remain uninvolved in the war. For a man who valued his privacy so much, it was curious that he chose to be so public in his political activities.  

Lindbergh gave a notorious speech in Des Moines on September 11, 1941, where he resorted to antisemitic stereotypes, saying that the Jews controlled the U.S. news media, and were one of the groups pushing for the U.S. to enter the war.  The backlash was fierce and immediate against Lindbergh’s speech. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the America First Committee sputtered into oblivion. Lindbergh ended up taking part in air raids and combat missions in the Pacific theater in 1944, as a civilian. (Lindbergh had resigned his commission in the U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve in April of 1941, and when the U.S. entered the war, FDR refused to take Lindbergh back.)  

It’s so curious to think about smart people, like the Lindberghs, who were not able to see the dangers that fascism posed to the United States. But then again, we’re living in an era now where Americans need to be reminded that the Nazis were the bad guys in World War II. If people in 2025 can’t understand the dangers of Nazism, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that people in 1940 couldn’t understand the dangers of Nazism as well.  

The Wave of the Future has never been reprinted since 1940, and it remains a curious oddity and blemish in Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s bibliography. Fortunately, Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote many more books, like the wonderful Gift from the Sea, that have securely established her literary reputation.  

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.