Roth Novel on Lindbergh Doesn't Cause Stir, by Jeff Baenen, Yahoo! News (from Associated Press), November 17, 2004 " In his new book, "The Plot Against America," novelist Philip Roth imagines an America where aviator Charles Lindbergh wins the Republican nomination for president and beats Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940. After running on an isolationist platform, the fictional Lindbergh of Roth's best seller keeps the United States out of World War II, strikes a nonaggression pact with Adolf Hitler, then begins an assimilation program for American Jews. While Roth's book raises the old issue of whether Lindbergh was anti-Semitic, it's causing barely a ripple in Little Falls, the central Minnesota town where the man who would become the first person to successfully fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean spent his boyhood summers ... In Roth's book, Lindbergh campaigns in the "Spirit of St. Louis" — the plane he flew across the ocean — and defeats Roosevelt, a Democrat seeking an unprecedented third term, in a landslide. Roth — whose works include "Goodbye Columbus," "Portnoy's Complaint" and the Pulitzer Prize-winning "American Pastoral" — wrote in an essay for The New York Times Book Review that he became intrigued after reading that some Republican isolationists wanted to run Lindbergh for president in 1940. In explaining why he chose Lindbergh, Roth wrote: "Lindbergh as a social force was distinguished not solely by his isolationism but by his racist attitude toward Jews — an attitude that is reflected unambiguously in his speeches, diaries and letters." (Roth is already at work on his next book and was not available for an interview. Lindbergh's family has no comment on the book, family attorney Patton Hyman said.) ... Brian Horrigan of the Minnesota Historical Society, who was curator of an exhibit on Lindbergh's life at the Lindbergh Historic Site, disputes that Lindbergh was an anti-Semite. "It was very, very widespread in the culture, and there were people on whom you could hang that accusation of anti-Semite much more firmly than on Lindbergh," Horrigan said. Lindbergh became an international hero after piloting the "Spirit of St. Louis" from New York to Paris in 33 1/2 hours in May 1927. His name inspired everything from perfumes to songs to a dance, the "Lindy Hop' ... After a wave of sympathy when the Lindberghs' young son was kidnapped and killed in 1932, Lindbergh was criticized as pro-Nazi in the years leading up to the United States' entry into World War II. In 1936, Lindbergh and his wife were invited to Germany by Hermann Goering and the German Air Ministry. The couple attended the Olympic Games in Berlin, where Lindbergh glimpsed Hitler but never met him. But it's now known that the U.S. government had arranged the visit, to learn more about Nazi Germany's growing Luftwaffe. And the Nazis were all too happy to show off their air fields to Lindbergh, who reported back that the United States needed to boost its defensive air power in case of attack. Two years later, Goering presented Lindbergh with an award from the German government. Lindbergh never apologized for accepting the swastika-studded medal and never returned it. Roth's book envisions a parallel United States where a facist-sympathizing Lindbergh creates an Office of American Absorption for breaking up Jewish families ... Before World War II, Lindbergh became a spokesman for the America First Committee, which advocated keeping the United States out of a European war. Lindbergh was mocked in caricatures by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), who showed Lindbergh patting the head of a Nazi sea serpent, and in song by Woody Guthrie. Lindbergh's isolationism was rooted in his family history. His father, C.A. Lindbergh, was a Republican congressman from Minnesota from 1907 to 1917 and had opposed America's entry into World War I. It all came to a head on Sept. 11, 1941, with a speech Charles Lindbergh gave in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he said: "The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration." For his remarks, the historical society's Horrigan said, Lindbergh was "pilloried around the country' ... Lindbergh instead became a consultant to U.S. air forces in the South Pacific and flew 50 combat missions — downing a Japanese Zero, an act for which he felt remorse."