Skip to main content

The Lone Eagle

March 2023
1min read

It takes away nothing from the moving and beautifully written personal tribute that Harry Miles Muheim has paid to Charles Lindbergh (“My Life With the Lone Eagle,” May/ June issue) to try to straighten out the record on the transfer, at a private dinner in Berlin in 1938, of a medal thrust on the American aviator by Hermann Göring.

Mr. Muheim is distressed that the hero’s image was “tarnished” when he “accepted” the award. In fact, Hugh Wilson, the American ambassador in Berlin, had enlisted his famous guest to help persuade the German leader to allow emigrating Jews to take property out with them. When one is engaged in such a delicate negotiation, one does not kick sand in the face of the person one is trying to persuade.

It must also be remembered that the horrendous anti-Semitic pogroms had not yet started. Three weeks later, outraged at the nightmare known as Kristallnacht, Lindbergh canceled his plans to stay on in Germany, saying he would not remain in a country that treated its own people that way.

It is utterly misleading to imply that Lindbergh’s “acceptance” of the medal, like hundreds of others he received after 1927, in any way represented approval of the granter or what he stood for.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "September 1997"

Authored by: Frederic D. Schwarz

The Big Question

Authored by: Frederic D. Schwarz

New York Knickerbockers

Authored by: Bernard A. Weisberger

…and grow, and grow, from almost no employees to three million. Don’t blame the welfare state, or the military; the truth is much more interesting.

Authored by: Steven L. Kent

THE VIDEO GAME turns twenty-five this year, and it has packed a whole lot of history into a mere quarter-century

Authored by: The Editors

WHOEVER WANTS to know the heart and mind of America had better learn Space Invaders. A traveling exhibition makes it easy.

Authored by: David Lehman

At the height of the American avant-garde movement, Fairfield Porter’s realistic paintings defied the orthodoxy of Abstract Expressionism— and risked rejection by the art world. But today his true stature is becoming apparent: He may just be the best we have.

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.