"JDupre5762" wrote in message
...
"codefy" wrote
Some American hero.

When Lindbergh died in Hawaii did he consider the people there with
any more maturity than when he made his racist comments or did he just
consider them his coolies ?

Lindbergh died in what 1973? There had been a lot of change in Americans
views
toward race by that time. I think above all Lindbergh was an American and
while he probably echoed the prevalent racial and isolationist views of
the
1920's and 1930's in his heyday, ultimately he would be swayed by
performance
and character.

Seems to me that the essence of a Great Man is to be able to see beyond
conventional wisdom and to examine persons and situations independently and
reach one's own conclusions and where possible, act on them. When it came to
race and to anti-Semitism, Mr. Lindbergh, although IIRC a minister's son,
seems not to have conducted such a self-examination. One wonders whether
Lindbergh ever was in touch with the so-called "average American" or whether
he could recognize and relate to views other than those fashionable in the
circles in which he habituated.

By the end of his life he could not have been ignorant of the
Tuskegee Airmen, Chappie James and Jesse Brown let alone Jackie Robinson.
I
can't prove it but I dare say he would have rather forgotten any racist
remarks
he might have made. Don't forget that after Pearl Harbor Lindbergh
volunteered
for active duty and was denied several times by Roosevelt who harbored a
grudge
over Lindbergh's comments on the superiority of the Luftwaffe in the late
1930's. A superiority that was as much Roosevelt's responsibility as it
was
Hitler's.

Actually, FDR desired to harness the charisma and persuasiveness which
Lindbergh possessed. Although FDR was certain, because of access to sources
of his own, independent of Lindbergh's, that Nazi Germany's aircraft
industry had not the prowess its propaganda claimed for it, and that the US
armaments industry, and especially the aircraft portion thereof, could be
resuscitated and could become strong enough in a rather short period of time
so as to be able to interpose effectively against any expansionist ambitions
held by the Axis, it is apparently not widely known that FDR, in the wake of
Lindbergh's German tour, offered the latter the position of US aircraft
acquisition czar, with wide delegation of authority in overseeing US R&D and
contracting; he wanted Lindbergh "on the team" instead of jeering from the
sidelines and counseling caution, if not defeatism. Lindbergh refused,
believing that FDR merely wanted to remove an irritating naysayer and
silence his independent voice of opposition.

Whereas FDR's attitude was "We'll show them!", Lindbergh's attitude
reflected a certain defeatism, "We'll never be able to match them, and let's
not waste our energies trying to" attitude, and he appeared to be ready to
accept a second-rate status for the US in world affairs, because intimidated
by a Nazi/Axis show of force.

As for his return to active duty, I submit that such a thing would have
opened a can of worms. Would Lindbergh have been able to submit to military
discipline? Would he have been able to contribute effectively in a system
where his word or opinion was not necessarily considered tantamount to
revelation?

It is well to remember that no nation, including the US, forced the Nazis to
re-arm in defiance of the WWI peace accords. FDR bore no responsibility for
the collapse of the world-wide economy, other than to try to bring the US
portion of it back to life.

Lindbergh's comments in those days were that the German's were so superior
to
us and we were so hopelessly outclassed we could not possibly affect the
outcome of a modern war in Europe so why bother. He was right of course
the US
Army was not even in the top ten in size in the world. Bulgaria had a
larger
standing army. A single Luftflotte in 1940 had more aircraft than the
entire US
Army Air Corps.

Again, a Great Man has to have matching vision. In this case, he seemed
determined to Think Small and seemed to lack an understanding of the latent
manufacturing potential of the US, which was still badly scarred by the
economic depression of the 1930's. As is well-known, once Gen Marshall's
system was in place, the US began producing trained divisions at such a pace
that, for example, WS Churchill initially could not comprehend how it was
being done. Lindbergh could not envision a dramatic increase in the number
of training a/c, pilots, transports, bombers, fighters, etc. which the US
proved to be capable of producing in relatively short order. Lindbergh also
appears to have missed out on the inter-allied information interchange which
kick-started US electronics and airframe development efforts.

Lindbergh was rightly called "Lucky Lindy" due to his successful solo
Atlantic crossing. However, the intense and universal celebrity (and wealth)
that became attached to him attendant thereto seems to have caused him, (as
well as many a person in other fields), to wrongly consider himself expert
at everything to which he turned his attention, and to believe that his
every opinion was sacrosanct. But Lindbergh was not a trained engineer, as
he demonstrated when the Nazis showed him around their alleged production
facilities, and was clueless in assessing the current and potential
industrial prowess of the US. Any of Gen Marshall's top staff could have
told him that the US would expand its army many-fold in a brief time, if
tasked to do so. Any of Adm Stark's top staff could have alerted him to the
swelling size and strength of the US Navy, similarly.


Lindbergh was guilty more of naivete' than Nazism. Lindbergh was taken in
many ways by such ruses as the only handful of a bomber type being flown
from
factory to factory and put back in the "production line" for him to
examine all
over again.

According to author "Ladislas Farago", intercepted German documents showed
that the Germans considered Lindbergh to be akin to one of their propaganda
agents who could be relied upon to cause their sentiments to become widely
heard in the US. They were especially impressed by Lindbergh's expressed
anti-Semitism.

SNIP