Charles Lindbergh's Secret Lives, White Supremacist Nazi, Multiple Families
Last edited Sat Jan 16, 2021, 03:22 PM - Edit history (3)
'Uncovering Charles Lindbergh's Secret Lives,' Children's Book, by Steve Sheinkin, NYT, *Feb. 20, 2020. - Excerpts, Ed:
When writing nonfiction for young readers, it’s never a bad idea to start with someone cutting off his arm. It’s a definite grabber, and, as Candace Fleming tells us in this rich and unflinching biography, THE RISE AND FALL OF CHARLES LINDBERGH, the scene sheds light on one of the most famous and controversial Americans of the 20th century. What happened is simple enough: In the Minnesota woods in the summer of 1861, Lindbergh’s grandfather, a recent immigrant from Sweden, got his arm caught in a sawmill. The wound was horrific; the man’s beating heart was visible through the hole in his side. He was expected to die. But he refused. By sheer force of will, according to family lore, he was soon out of bed and back to work.
- The aviator with many secrets.
Born 41 years after the incident, Charles Lindbergh grew up enthralled by the tale, coming to see himself in the story. He was born of special stock, he concluded, stronger than others, destined for greater things. Fleming calls this section “The Origin Story,” and that’s fitting. Lindbergh developed an “exaggerated confidence,” as she puts it, that became a kind of superpower. Examples of Lindbergh using and misusing it run like a spine through his story. Charles was a restless kid, a loner and a terrible student, the kind of person who was only happy when obsessed with a challenge of his own choosing. He had no use for the flashy lure of the Roaring 20s, but the budding field of aviation — that was worth his time. At 25, he flew solo from New York to Paris, a feat of skill and daring that catapulted him to a level of public scrutiny beyond anything we’ll ever see with today’s crowded 24-hour news cycle. Lindbergh was badly suited to stardom.
He looked the part, but was intensely private and socially awkward, and he came to resent the relentless adulation.
Fleming does a masterly job juggling story lines, from Lindbergh’s marriage and flying partnership with Anne Morrow, to the kidnapping of their son and the resulting media circus, to Lindbergh’s quest to invent machines that could prolong the “right” sort of human life — a demented vision born of his belief in white supremacy. He began spending time in Nazi Germany, impressed with what he saw as strength and order. He parroted Nazi talking points about Germany’s “Jewish problem” and dismissed Hitler’s increasingly violent anti-Semitism as trivial. When World War II erupted in Europe, Lindbergh jumped into the “America First” movement, an isolationist group that came to be dominated by Nazi sympathizers. At raucous rallies, Lindbergh attacked American journalists as “dishonest parasites” under the control of “dangerous elements.” He urged the country to close its borders to “alien blood,” while loyal crowds berated protesters with chants of “Throw him out! Throw him out!”
Reading the book becomes an interactive experience, with Lindbergh inspiring awe in one chapter, empathy in another, then disappointment and disgust, with a steady supply of “Who is this guy?” We get the sense even Anne didn’t understand the man she was living with, and this suspicion is confirmed when Lindbergh’s stunning secret life is revealed in the book’s final section.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/books/review/the-rise-and-fall-of-charles-lindbergh-candace-fleming.html
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- Sen. Burton K. Wheeler (L) and Charles Lindbergh (R) at an 'America First' rally in New York, May 23, 1941.
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- Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of 1940s Nazi Sympathizers, Smithsonian Channel. Lindbergh may have been known as a legendary pilot, but he had another, more sinister position in American History: as a Nazi sympathizer and spokesperson for the America First Committee. From the Series: America In Color: The 1940s, http://bit.ly/1940sinColor
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- 'Lindbergh's Double Life,' The Charles Lindbergh House & Museum, Minnesota Historical Society
https://www.mnhs.org/lindbergh/learn/family/double-life
After World War II, Lindbergh served as a consultant to the US Air Force and to Pan American World Airways. He continued to travel frequently. In 1957, Lindbergh, then 55, met and fell in love with Brigitte Hesshaimer, a 31-year-old hat maker living in Munich, Germany. They began a long-term affair that only ended with his death in 1974. They kept their relationship a secret, even from their children, Dyrk, Astrid, and David. Lindbergh would visit Brigitte two or three times a year, introducing himself to the children as Mr. Careu Kent.
At the same time, Lindbergh was also involved in secret long-term relationships with Hesshaimer’s sister, Marietta, and a third woman, Valeska, Lindbergh’s German translator and private secretary. Lindbergh had two children with each of these women and again kept the identity of his fatherhood a secret. Ten days before his death in 1974, Lindbergh wrote letters to his three mistresses, asking them to continue “utmost secrecy,” which they did until Astrid confronted her mother in the 1990s...
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*'Charles Lindbergh's Double Life,' DW (German World), 2005,
New biography of 20th century icon Charles A. Lindbergh reveals more about his secret double life: he had three families & seven children in Europe in addition to his American one. https://www.dw.com/en/lindberghs-double-life/a-1620936-0
- German Lindbergh sons Dyrk (left) & David Hesshaimer wanted to end the secrecy.
= new reply since forum marked as read
if his Deutsche kindertribe is also right wing, jawohl!
When the photos of Carl, Anne and Adolph surface I'll be ready.
Hitler with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in1937 after the abdication.