The Aviators by Winston Groom
In the meantime, after several stays of execution, Governor Hoffman of New Jersey at last stopped meddling in the Hauptmann case, and on the evening of April 3, 1936, the German carpenter was strapped into the electric chair at the state prison in Trenton and electrocuted. Not only did he never confess to the kidnapping but after his death a statement prepared by him was released, proclaiming his innocence, which has provided fodder for crime sleuths from that day to this. The press naturally sent inquires to Lindbergh seeking comment, but from Long Barn came only silence.
It was not as if Charles and Anne spent all their nights at Long Barn reading by the fireside. To the contrary, they had an active social life in England; they were frequent guests at the American ambassador’s dinners and became friends with Lady Astor and her set at Cliveden. They even stood for an audience—and later a dinner—with the new king, Edward VIII, and his lady friend Mrs. Wallis Simpson of Baltimore, Maryland.
In May, Lindbergh received a letter from Major Truman Smith, a U.S. Army military attaché at the American embassy in Berlin. Like all military attachés, the tall, handsome Smith was basically a spy, expected to report regularly to his superiors on the conduct of Germany’s army, including its airpower. Smith was an infantryman by training who knew his limitations in estimating something so complicated as aircraft, but he was intelligent enough to know that the Germans—against the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno—were going all out to build the most modern and destructive kinds of planes.‖ When Smith heard tell that Lindbergh had moved to England, he asked if Charles would be willing to come to Germany if he, Smith, could put together a tour of Nazi aircraft facilities.
That summer Charles and Anne flew to Berlin. The Germans arranged for the Lindberghs to attend the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Olympic Games the last week in July—as the special guest of Hermann Göring, Germany’s air minister. Charles A. Lindbergh in Berlin! It was too grand a propaganda opportunity to waste. Meanwhile, it took only a few days for Lindbergh to make his preliminary assessment of German air strength, which, as it had Doolittle and Rickenbacker before him, must have sent a shiver up his spine.7
“I realized,” he said, “that Nazi Germany intended to become the greatest air power in the world.… Obviously, Germany was preparing for war on a major scale with the most modern equipment … I got the impression the Germans were looking Eastward [toward the Soviet Union],” Lindbergh said, “but it was obvious that bombing planes would not find the Maginot Line a formidable obstacle.”a8
At the Berlin Air Club Lindbergh made a speech that was reprinted around the world—even in Germany, purportedly on the orders of Hitler—in which he called for martial restraint, particularly in the air. “Aviation, I believe,” Lindbergh told the guests, “created the most fundamental change ever made in war. It has turned defense into attack. We can no longer protect our families with an army. Our libraries, our museums, every institution we value is laid bare to bombardment.” The fact that the speech was made in Germany, and sounded somewhat like an appeal to the Germans to stop building an invincible air force, suited the Nazis fine, because even as early as 1936 it made them sound fearsome and dangerous. Nevertheless, it was a respectable speech and praised around the world except by some Jewish publications, which even then were pulling for intervention over the Nazis’ mistreatment of their fellow Jews.
Lindbergh made a point of writing his friend Harry Guggenheim, saying, “There is no need for me to tell you that I am not in accord with the Jewish situation in Germany.”9 He apparently wanted to reassure Guggenheim, who of course was Jewish, that while he did not directly condemn the Nazis in his speech he disapproved of their methods. It was, in fact, an apology to Guggenheim for not condemning them, which would have been extremely awkward for Lindbergh to have done as a guest of the Berlin Air Club in 1936.
Göring, in his usual ebullient, glad-handing way, resplendent in a white gold-braided and bemedaled uniform, had the Lindberghs to lunch at his sumptuous Berlin home with its richly decorated table “in a room lined with mirrors and many carved madonnas ‘borrowed,’ ” Lindbergh emphasized, “from German museums.”
Following lunch, the party went into some sort of large drawing room when Göring’s pet lion wandered in and jumped up on the couch, sprawling beside him. A servant followed the young beast carrying a litter box, but this proved unnecessary because the lion proceeded to urinate on the field marshal’s splendid uniform. From Anne’s diary: “Someone laughs … Göring leaps up and throws [the lion] away. All laugh. [Göring] mock-scolds the lion.” After he had retired for a change of clothing, Göring proudly began to tick off Germany’s aviation accomplishments in an attempt to show that the Nazis were invincible, as he had done with Rickenbacker. He displayed for Lindbergh photographs of the scores of new German airfields under construction; Lindbergh already knew from his recent inspections that “warplanes were being built for those fields.”
Lindbergh knew perfectly well what modern bombs could do to cities but, seeing Nazi Germany for the first time, the idea of a new and very dangerous war became real to him. The streets of Berlin were draped in the red-and-black banners of the Nazi swastika; uniforms were everywhere, on adults and children alike. The German officers that Lindbergh met were not “preparing for a game. Their discussions gave me a sense of blood and bullets, and I realized how destructive my profession of aviation had become.”
But beyond that Lindbergh found himself impressed by the robustness and organization of Germany—the ceaseless activity of its citizens and the explosive creation of new manufactories and scientific laboratories—all products of a dictatorial fascist government. In stark contrast was the lethargy of England, which had been so worn down by the last war that it merely shambled on without direction or purpose. “Germany,” Lindbergh said, “had the ambitious drive of America, but that drive was headed for war.” He was even more discouraged about France, warning, “There is [in France] an air of discouragement and neglect on every hand … such fear of military invasion, such depression, such instability.”10
Flying back to England, Lindbergh’s thoughts turned to the helplessness of cities and their citizens to planes carrying high-explosive bombs. As the coast of Great Britain appeared ahead, he contrasted the image of Napoleon standing with his great army of conquest on the shores of Normandy, wondering how he could possibly get across the English Channel, to the present fifteen minutes it would take a modern bomber to cross over.
Back in England, Lindbergh told people what he had seen and what he deduced from it, but he was usually met with stony silence; the British were war weary. A generation of their boys—more than a million of them—had been wiped out on the fields of France and Flanders. Only Churchill warned of Hitler, and no one paid him much attention. Lindbergh helped Major Truman Smith prepare his report on the German military, with special emphasis on the mighty air force the Nazis were building. Back in Washington, it was received and noted by the U.S. Army Air Corps authorities, but because of the Depression little was done in the way of rearmament.
Harold Nicolson, an ardent Nazi hater, summed up Lindbergh’s position in his diary entry for September 8, 1936; he wrote, “He has obviously been much impressed by Nazi Germany. He admires their energy, virility, spirit, organization, architecture, planning and physique. He considers that they possess the most powerful air-force in the world, with which they could do terrible damage to any other country … He admits that they are a great menace but denies that they are a menace to us … he contends the future will see a great separation between Fascism and Communism. He believes that if Britain supports the decadent French and the red Russians against Germany there will be an end to European civilization.”
Apparently Lindbergh had gone on to say that Great Britain had to take a stand—make a choice—whether to be on the side of fascism or of communism, since there was no middle way between the two. In this, Nicolson conceded. “I very much fear that he is correct in this diagnosis, and that our
It was the unhappiest of notes to end the year on, but Lindbergh had big plans. He had a fast new low-wing monoplane built for him, a Miles Mohawk, and he intended to break it in by flying to India.
ANNE FOUND OUT SHE WAS PREGNANT AGAIN, but she never let a thing like that stop her from flying. In the winter of 1937 the couple took off for Calcutta via Rome where, like Rickenbacker, they watched Mussolini’s Blackshirts in action, then flew over the old world of Carthage, Tripoli, Alexandria, Cairo, and Jerusalem and landed in a sandstorm at an oasis in the desert near the Dead Sea. They made various stops in India where Lindbergh tried to divine the secrets of the swamis and yogis and other holy men who were said to have mystical powers.11
Engine problems in Nagpur forced them to take a train to Calcutta. When they arrived at their private compartment they found that British friends had arranged for a “huge block of ice to be placed in the center of the floor. ‘Without ice, the heat on these Indian trains becomes unbearable,’ the friends said. ‘This ice will keep you a little cooler. Be sure that the window stays closed.’ ”
The Lindberghs were appalled by Calcutta. “Human life here had sunk to levels we had never seen before,” Charles wrote. “Ragged hungry people milled about on filthy streets. At night we stepped around stretched-out sleeping bodies on the sidewalks close to our luxurious European-style hotel. ‘You never know the difference,’ we were told, ‘but sometimes one of them is dead.’ I could hardly believe this country had once produced a civilization of art and architecture and religion—or that conditions were even worse before the British took over,” Charles said.
They were back at Long Barn by April, and on May 12 Anne presented Charles with another baby boy—the same day as the coronation of George VI, after the abdication of Edward VIII over the scandal regarding his lady friend Mrs. Simpson. They named the boy Land, after Evangeline’s family. “A coronation baby!” Anne exclaimed in her diary.
Life in England, however, had grown tedious for Charles. Even though it had created “the greatest empire ever to exist on earth,” Lindbergh felt “a sense of heaviness of life in England that pressed like a London Fog.… England did not look to the future, but to the past,” Lindbergh said, and refused to acknowledge scientific advances such as the fact that warplanes could now fly over long distances and wreak unimaginable destruction. Too much of the conversation ran to grouse shooting, the “hunt,” the royal family, and their collections of everything under the sun and not to military preparedness and the specter of a rearmed and aggressive Germany.
In the fall of 1937 the Lindberghs were invited once more to Germany, a trip again quietly arranged by Truman Smith, the military attaché. This time, it was ostensibly to participate in the Lilienthal Aeronautical Society conference in Munich.
They arrived on October 11 in the Mohawk, and Charles spent five days visiting airfields, factories, and installations. His guide was none other than the ubiquitous Ernst Udet, erstwhile Luftwaffe air ace and self-styled pistolero, who was by then a major general in charge of German aircraft production. Udet let Lindbergh fly the new Messerschmitt 109 pursuit, or interceptor—perhaps the most modern plane of the day—and escorted him to top secret bases where he was allowed to examine German bombers, fighters, and reconnaissance planes.b
At the end of the tour, based on Lindbergh’s information, Charles and Truman Smith wrote a report for Washington titled “General Estimate” of Germany’s airpower, in which Lindbergh concluded that Germany was “once more a world power in the air,” that her air industry—though approximately three years from full maturity—was technically ahead of both France and Great Britain. Based on what Udet and others had told him, Lindbergh estimated that Germany had ten thousand aircraft (she had fewer than half that many) and that German factories were turning out twice the number of planes they in fact were.
Much has been made of this report. It has even been suggested that Lindbergh’s estimate was the direct cause of the appeasement of Hitler by Great Britain and France at the notorious Munich Conference of 1938.c This author has found no such direct connection, although Lindbergh had in fact repeatedly made clear to many high-ranking British officials that in his judgment Germany was far ahead of England, France, and Russia in airpower.d After Lindbergh joined the anti-interventionist America First movement, some even suggested Lindbergh’s overestimation of German air strength was a deliberate attempt to sabotage diplomacy; others called him a willing dupe of the Nazis. None of that is accurate. He was trusting of the Nazis who hosted him, that much is true. As late as 1937, the National Socialists had yet to prove themselves as duplicitous as they certainly were. There is reason to think, however, that Göring and other high-ranking Nazis lied to Lindbergh (and to Rickenbacker and to Doolittle) about the progress of their aircraft production, and that Lindbergh believed them. Any trained intelligence officer, however, would have known to discount those parts of Lindbergh’s report that he indicated came from foreign (Nazi) officials. They teach you that during the first week of intelligence school.
When, in March of 1938, Hitler invaded Austria there was concern but not alarm in England. What worried Lindbergh most was that the British seemed to disregard the danger of German aviation—acting as if the Germans were still flying the boxy little fabric-covered crates of the previous war. What all of it added up to was that Lindbergh got out. He gave up his lease on Long Barn and bought an island off the coast of France, of all places, a nation he had come to despise.
Illiec was one of hundreds of small, rocky islets scattered off the northern coast of the Brittany peninsula. Barely four acres, it lay less than a mile from a much larger island owned by Dr. Alexis Carrel and his wife. Twice daily the receding tide swept all of the water away, leaving only tidal pools and a sandy bottom filled with clams, oysters, abalone, and seaweed to walk across to the other islands or the mainland. Illiec was a starkly beautiful isolated slip of sun-burnished, storm-tossed rocks, with craggy formations spiraling forty feet above the sea and trees gnarled by the wind. It came with a three-story, slate-roofed stone manor house, “like a scaled-down castle,” Lindbergh said, with a large turret and a chapel—but no plumbing, electricity, or running water—built in the 1860s by the author of the opéra comique Mignon.
Lindbergh snapped it up for $16,000, even though he was fully aware of the deteriorating conditions in Europe. “Even one summer at Illiec would almost justify buying it,” he said with the air of a man who knew how to spend money.
During the spring and summer of 1938, still in England at Long Barn while the Illiec house was being made livable, the Lindberghs embarked on a whirlwind social spree, lunching with the playwright George Bernard Shaw and former prime minister David Lloyd George; dining with the Astors and such luminaries as the duke and duchess of Kent and U.S. ambassadors William C. Bullitt and Joseph Kennedy; attending formal balls with the king and queen of England—the latter, when asked for a dance with Lindbergh, was told, “I’ve never danced a day in my life,” and so the two of them (Lindbergh in white tails and satin knee breeches) sat and talked of many things: of worlds gone mad, and privacy, and what next year might bring.
It might have been a poignant time for Anne, leaving this glittering existence for life on an isolated rock in the English Channel, but actually she was unaffected. She’d discovered that for all its intense socializing English society was essentially closed. Before she left Next Day Hill a friend of the family told her, “You will find your own group wherever you are, anywhere.” “But I haven’t,” she confided to her diary, right before they left. “I haven’t found anyone in England—not one single soul. I have been here almost two and a half years and I have not made a single friend.”
It was during this time that Harold Nicolson penned in his diary an erroneous, if not treacherous, entry that would cause Lindbergh muc
It was a damning statement when it was released, in 1966, because it reopened all the old sores about Lindbergh’s loyalties, a matter we shall come to presently. But by then Nicolson was in his eighties and dying, and Lindbergh was unable to engage him enough to retract the assertion. It was a gross and overblown exaggeration of Lindbergh’s actual sentiments, but Charles knew nothing about the diary entry at the time and continued to consider Nicolson a friend.
In Washington, meanwhile, the Smith-Lindbergh report on German airpower had caught the attention of Hap Arnold, commander of the Air Corps, who began to circulate it widely, though with top secret clearance, to high officials, including embassies around the world. This prompted interest by some air attachés, including the one in Moscow, in having Lindbergh visit their host countries and provide his opinion of their air capabilities. Unfortunately, the Smith-Lindbergh report apparently had little or no effect on the U.S. Congress, which actually lowered the Air Corps appropriation for the following year.
The notion of visiting the Soviet Union appealed to Lindbergh even after there were reports of the Stalin regime’s wholesale slaughter of its population. He accepted the invitation, but obtaining a visa took six weeks. Nevertheless, in mid-August 1938, he and Anne flew the Mohawk to Russia, where they were shown “two museums, a new subway, a ballet, an operetta, a shoe factory, an ice cream factory, a trip on a canal, a collective farm, and a Young Pioneers’ camp.” What they were not shown was any appreciable portion of the Soviet air force and its manufacturing arm—whether out of secrecy or embarrassment. Lindbergh stated afterward, “We were shown so little of the Soviet aviation industry that I could make no estimate of its production capacity.”12