The last episode was paced very well unlike the earlier ones and the race to Kentucky and avoiding the klan was very intense. I felt like Mrs. Lindbergh’s speech was a deus ex machina. Everything is now better because the First Lady says to the radicals to please stop?
And they never did say what happened to Lindbergh. I know that the show implied that the Nazi conspiracy to kidnap his son angle was portrayed as a save his ass measure by the backstabbing Rabbi, but did they find Lindbergh’s body? Is he dead?
ETA: I also felt that the show’s portrayal of Lindbergh was very unfair. As noted above, he was casually anti-semitic as many Americans were at the time, but there is no evidence at all that he would have participated in a forced relocation program or anything of the sort. Unfair to his legacy and his family.
Also, why did Congress (the same party as the President) go along with the First Lady’s recommendations when they had Top Men, including the Vice President, telling them that this was a grand Jewish conspiracy to murder the President? I must have missed something.
I read it back in 2004 when it came out but my memory is there was none of that mentioned. I think that stuff was added because of what is happening and has happened with voter suppression in our reality in the last few decades. I also think it is purposely left vague as to who it was meant to benefit in the show.
I was a bit disappointed in the series, but I did buy the book as a result of watching it. Some scenes were just a little out of place- did we really need to see the boy showing the other boy his mother’s underwear? Why? That rabbi was a piece of work, sucking up to the bigots in the White House for what? And then merrily going along with the disbursement of Jews? I was hoping he’d get killed. Yes, everybody calming down because the First Widow gives a speech. Right. Then calling a special election in 1942- no that wouldn’t have passed muster with the courts.
About Lindbergh- I’ve always thought he was the most overrated person in history. So he performed a feat that was amazing in its time and he could have easily died. But why the hero worship?
A lot of people think Lindbergh was first to fly the Atlantic. He was first to fly it solo. He planned to land in England but he had enough fuel left so he went to Paris instead.
He was not in the military during WW 2 but he did help the AAF make improvements to planes. For example he made the P38 get a much longer range. He asked to join the AAF for WW 2 but the Whitehouse turned him down. He flew 50 missions anyway in the Pacific as a civilian.
In 1927 there were not a lot of people who did risky things so that’s one reason he was popular.
The trial for the guy who killed his son pretty much led to cameras being banned from courtrooms for a long time. There were way too many guys trying to take pictures so they banned them all and that spread all around country. Even now not all courts allow pictures or video.
Minor trivia about the Lindbergh kidnapping: the lead investigator for the state police was Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. His son, Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., led the coalition forces in the 1991 Gulf War.
Lindbergh always planned to fly to Paris. His business plan was to reimburse his backers for the cost of his plane and the trip expenses by claiming the $25,000 prize offered by hotel owner Raymond Orteig, which would go to the first non-stop flight between New York City and Paris, in either direction.
I read somewhere (possibly the A. Scot Berg biography) that Lindbergh did briefly consider flying beyond Paris (Rome IIRC) when he reached Ireland and found he had more fuel left than he expected. He ruled it out because no one was expecting him there, and everyone was expecting him in Paris (250,000 people were gathered at Le Bourget airport for his arrival).
Lindbergh was a remarkable person, a renaissance man of sorts. In addition to the aforementioned contributions to aviation, he collaborated with Nobel Laureate Dr. Alexis Carrell on the invention of a perfusion pump which helped pave the way to organ transplant surgery.
As noted above, he had plenty of flaws. The press of the day was more forgiving of such things than today, and covered most of these up. Combined with his charisma, you can make the case that people had an undeservedly high opinion of him prior to his controversies regarding WW2 (and this was before the second volley of 'Little Lindy’s came along). As long as you make note of the ‘warts’. his achievements still IMO merit admiration.
He had disagreements with FDR stemming from the latter’s decision to cancel government airmail contracts in the early 1930s. Lindbergh criticized the decision, saying that the proposed alternative of having Army pilots deliver the mail was unsafe, since they had not been trained to fly at night. When lots of Army pilots crashed (proving Lindbergh’s criticism warranted), a butthurt FDR began privately pushing a narrative that Lindbergh’s criticism was solely out of self interest (he was a highly paid consultant to one of the carriers). This grudge snowballed with Lindbergh’s later dissent from FDR on joining in the war. When the U.S. declared war, FDR stated publicly that Lindbergh was too valuable to put in jeopardy, but his motivation was clearly a result of their feud.
Why the special election rather than the vice president being sworn in? I think someone on the show mentioned the Presidential Succession Act of 1886 but that also suggests the vice president should become president.
The first Transatlantic flight was the US Navy in the Curtiss seaplane NC-4 ,between 8 and 31 May 1919.
The first NON-STOP was 14–15 June 1919, the British aviators Alcock and Brown flew from Newfoundland to Ireland. Technically that is trans atlantic. This is the flight the Brits always crow about as being the first- but it wasnt.
In between several dirigibles few across the Atlantic, with passengers even.
20 May 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew New York to Paris, which was the big deal- and did it solo also.
He was actually like the 200th person to make the flight. But Non-stop NY to Paris was a big deal.
The show had lots of problems- they had Herman Levin who was supposed to be the hero- but was just a rude asshole.
They villainized a great American. Lindy was no Nazi.
For no reason the underlying antisemitism turns into murder and burning shops- and all the police and FBI do nothing.
Not to mention- getting people out of the Ghettos , like the kids spending a summer on the farm- is actually a pretty good idea. Not Forced relocation, true, but the Ghetto isnt that great a place.
Then a mysterious and unexplained ending, with a Deus ex Machina ending-or is it? :rolleyes::eek:
Isn’t most of that (particularly the portrayal of Lindbergh as a Nazi sympathizer and appeaser) straight out of the novel (although I confess I have not read it)? And the review of the book from The New York Times says, “Lindbergh, in real life as in the novel, famously admired Hitler and even accepted a medal from Hitler’s government. He looked on the American Jews as a pretty suspicious group, all in all.”
And as for getting the kids out of the “ghetto”, to be honest where the family lived didn’t seem so horrible on the show, while the “summer on the farm” was sponsored by a federal government agency called the “Office of American Absorption”, as if American-born Jewish kids weren’t American enough.
Yes, Lindberg, along with many other world leaders- admired Hitler *at first. *There was a lot to admire. Few knew how crazy and evil he was to start.
Churchill: “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.” and “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”
and then this:
*If FDR regarded a particular issue as important, the news media usually took it seriously. If he ignored or downplayed a certain topic, they were less likely to pursue it.
The result, according to Laurel Leff, the leading expert on American coverage of the Holocaust, was a “feedback loop”: The Roosevelt administration, which carefully monitored 425 newspapers daily, downplayed the plight of the Jews, and then “used the lack of prominent news stories to confirm its judgment that the public was not interested and to justify its lack of response.”
In the 82 press conferences FDR held in 1933, the subject of the Nazi persecution of the Jews arose just once, and not at Roosevelt’s initiative. It would be five years, and an additional 348 presidential press conferences, before anything about Europe’s Jews would be mentioned again by the president.
During the 1930s, the position of the White House was not just to sidestep the plight of the Jews, but also to combat any domestic criticism or protests that might interfere with U.S.-German diplomatic and economic relations.*
*Chamberlain believed that Hitler was making extreme statements only to gain publicity and that he was essentially a reasonable man who would choose negotiation rather than conflict.
Several prominent British politicians were very impressed by Hitler.
During the early 1930s a number of British people expressed their admiration for Hitler’s achievements. After the ruinous end of WWI, Hitler appeared to have rebuilt Germany and made it a powerful country again.
The former Prime Minster, David Lloyd George, expressed his support for Hitler’s demands and even travelled to meet him in 1936. He described Hitler as a man of supreme quality.
The Labour MP and former party leader George Lansbury, who was a pacifist, wrote in 1937 that Hitler would not go to war unless other people pushed him into it.*