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.
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