Charles And Hermann

T. Willard Hunter’s letter in the September issue makes me want to shout, “Oh, come off it!” Charles Lindbergh did not have a medal “thrust” on him by Hermann Goering three weeks before the “horrendous anti-Semitic pogroms . . . started” with Kristallnacht in November 1938. For five years Jews had been beaten, humiliated, boycotted, and expropriated as part of the public, ongoing program of the Nazi government to purify Germany racially. It was no secret to anyone who read the newspapers. For three more years Lindbergh continued to oppose American efforts to aid the Allies in resisting the Nazi war machine and openly stated his belief that interventionism was largely the creation of the Jews. It is “misleading” to pretend anything other than that he knew exactly what statement he was making by accepting the decoration. “Lindy” may have been a hero, a great aviator, and a patriot after December 7, 1941, but he was also an admirer of the discipline, order, and public loyalty of fascist regimes and blind to their coercive side.