The Wartime Journals Of Charles A. Liondbergh (October 1970 | Volume: 21, Issue: 6)

The Wartime Journals Of Charles A. Liondbergh

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October 1970 | Volume 21, Issue 6

Forty-three-years ago Charles A. Lindberghflew out of the West into immortality, a shining figure of hope and courage in a frivolous, uninspiring time. Yet within less than fifteen years all had changed. Lindbergh and his brilliant young wife had been the victims of an atrocious crime and had been driven into exile by a sensation-seeking press. Finally, as World War II drew on and Lindbergh came home to warn his country against getting into it, he became to many a figure of obloquy and sinister rumor. In his travels around Europe, studying its aviation, flying its fighters and bombers, he had seen many Nazis, hadn ‘t he? Was he pro-German? His resignation from the Air Corps Reserve was accepted with alacrity. President Roosevelt attacked him by name. He seemed to drop out of sight, although it was known he was doing something in military aviation. Such, roughly, was the public impression.

What Lindbergh was really doing and thinking he kept to himself, writing a detailed daily report on everything he saw and heard in his public and private life. He began his diary not long before the war, a war that, he says, “I felt would be catastrophic for our civilization, one that might still be prevented. Aviation constituted a new and possibly decisive element in preventing or fighting a war, and I was in a unique position to observe European aviation—especially in its military aspects.” The records of all this experience have just been published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., as The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh . Unrewritten although somewhat abridged, they cover the years 1938 through mid-lQ45; his travels and visits before the war; his dealings with the President; his part in the America First movement; his wartime work as an expert with Ford and United Aircraft; his experiences in action as an observer and a pilot (with one Japanese plane to his credit) in the Pacific; and the horrors he observed m Germany immediately after the war.

The appearance of this huge book is a notable event, not for the controversy that will certainly erupt, not for the genuine surprises it contains, not even for the skill and humor of the writing, but for the revelation it affords of General Lindbergh himself. The Journals show a man of action who is also a man of reflection; a scientist who worries about where our technology is taking us; a man who has maintained a consistent love of nature, his fellow creatures, and his country through experiences more shattering and, on occasion, more uplifting than those that come to most of us. AMERICAN HERITAGE is pleased to present the first excerpts from this remarkable book in the next few pages. —Oliver Jensen.

[ Weald, England, April 1, 1938 ]

Morning dictating and thinking. Consider plans for summer and next winter. Also try