In THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, Philip Roth imagines Lucky Lindy, having defeated FDR, as president of the USA.
Earlier this year DNA results proved conclusively that Lindbergh had a second family living in Germany. And now this. Philip Roth has written a "What If?" novel portraying Lindbergh as the 33rd president of the United States, having defeated FDR running on an isolationist platform. In short order, Lindbergh meets with Hitler in Iceland, signs a non-aggression pact with the Nazis and the Japanese, and begins a limited resettlement program for the Jews.
As a resident of Little Falls, Minnesota, I was a bit bothered by Roth's apparent assault on a local hero. Little Falls is home to an elementary school, a street, a park and an interpretive center dedicated to Charles A. Lindbergh. Our sports teams are called The Flyers. However, the reader should know that Lindbergh delivered a famous speech for an organization called America First in Des Moines on September 11, 1941, that forever tarnished his reputation (Roth includes the speech at the end of the book). The speech is entitled "Who Are the Agitators?" and it targets FDR, the British, and the Jews as war mongers. Roth was eight years old when Lindbergh gave the speech. Other anti-Semitics were rampant in the news of the day. Henry Ford targeted the Jews in his own newspaper; Father Coughlin spewed hatred on his radio program. Then there was the Bund, the American Nazi party led by Fritz Kuhn, with a membership of 25,000. Now how would a seven-year-old Jewish boy and his family react to this constant barrage of hatred? If you were going to write a "What if?" book about a Nazi collaborator president, who would you choose? There was Republican movement to nominate Lindbergh for president prior to WWII and his nomination was a real possibility before the speech.
So then, this book is really about a very real fear Roth had as a child and his giving vent to his imagination, a strategy all novelists employ. Roth inserts himself as the protagonist. He has an older brother, Sandy, who becomes a Lindbergh collaborator when he is chosen to participate in a summer program similar to the Hitler Youth where young Jewish boys are sent to the heartland to live with salt of the earth Americans, a tobacco farm in this case. Sandy is enthralled, as is his aunt Evelyn who falls in love with another Jewish Quisling, Rabbi Bengelsdorf, a Lindbergh proponent and eventual member of his administration. For me, the most compelling character is Philip's first cousin, Alvin, who volunteers to fight in the Canadian army, joins the commandos and loses a leg in battle. Alvin returns to New Jersey, where he must learn to use a prosthesis and little Philip must help him. Philip is horrified at first until the stump "breaks down" and Philip must learn to help Alvin wrap it to prevent swelling. He becomes more expert at this than Alvin. This plot line adds some comic relief to an otherwise rather somber novel. Alvin and Philip's father do not get along; Alvin gambles and hangs out with hoodlums and this leads to a combative confrontation.
Roth must have felt a bit skittish himself about besmirching a former American hero because there's a wild twist at the end that rehabilitates Lindbergh to some extent. But not entirely, as Roth feels the need to include the speech and an excerpt from A. Scott Berg's Lindbergh biography in which Lindbergh talks about repelling an infiltration of inferior blood from American shores.
Dave Schwinghammer's unconventional mystery, SOLDIER'S GAP, is available on authorsden and at Amazon.com, new and used, as well as Goodreads.com, where you will find alternative retailers. Click here to post or read comments.
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