Secret Lives of Charles Lindbergh - The Lindbergh Nobody Knew

lindbergh, lindberg, lindbergh baby, charles lindberg, the world is not enough
Secret Lives of Charles Lindbergh - The Lindbergh Nobody Knew
When Charles Lindbergh died in Maui in 1974—by then an environmentalist so dedicated he refused burial with any article of clothing that might contaminate the earth—there seemed little new of consequence left to discover about the once world-celebrated aviator who had, at age 25, made the first solo flight from New York to Paris back in the ’20s. The “Secret Lives of Charles Lindbergh” (Monday, 9-10 p.m. EDT, on the National Geographic Channel) provides documentary material that argues otherwise, and then some.

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Aviator Charles Lindbergh, the subject of National Geographic’s revealing documentary.
.If those proofs are credible—and they seem to be, given the inclusion of a cache of some hundred letters from Lindbergh himself—they would do little to alter Lindbergh’s place in history, such as it is, or the ineradicably squalid image of this briefly golden hero who would, not long after that pioneering flight, become one of the country’s foremost proponents of racist ideology, particularly impassioned in arguments that the white race must be preserved, unsullied. He was a vocal admirer of Hitler’s Germany—in particular, of the glories of its social order, efficiency and devotion to the ideals of race purity. Though he would never allow, the length of his life, that there might be any reason for him to regret his bedazzled regard for the Nazis—a regard still apparently so tender, after the war, that he found the Nuremberg war crimes trials intolerable: a proof, as he announced at the time, of America’s vengefulness against Germany—he came, in his later years, to a seeming broader view on other matters. He became an enthusiastic visitor to Africa, interested in indigenous tribes, even as he was becoming less enthusiastic about aviation, once his life’s passion. He had become a kind of true believer now in the faith that machines were destroyers—enemies of the natural world.

The secrets this film divulges testify to still broader views of an entirely different kind than the sort that his early history might suggest. From the time he came to the attention of the world at age 25, down through his years of fame and, finally, semipariah status, the Lindbergh persona remained, consistently, that of an ascetic of sorts, with a touch of the puritanical about him. From the evidence put forward by the filmmakers, Lindbergh in fact lived an extraordinarily active romantic life, particularly in the period beginning in 1957 and extending nearly till his death.

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.Lucky Lindy (as he hated being called) had, by the time that period ended, fathered a total of seven children by three different German women (in addition to the five he had fathered by Anne Morrow Lindbergh). The score card is impressive, the orderliness of these arrangements beyond anything a film writer might have conceived, including the setup in “The Captain’s Paradise” (1953), in which Alec Guinness portrays a serene master of only two separate families. According to one of the adult children, their father, whom they understood to be an important businessman, had time to visit only a few times a year, as their mother explained to them when they asked questions. Still, we’re given to understand, he was a most devoted father during those few days. Lindbergh’s American children apparently had a similar sense of his dutifulness as a father, though one considerably darkened by the burden of his stringent, unyielding demands on them during their childhood.

The film points to the results of positive genetic tests as proof of the claims of Lindbergh’s three other families, as well as the letters in the hands of the children. On his deathbed, Lindbergh wrote farewells to them promising that they would be taken care of, and urging that they continue to maintain the utmost secrecy. It is, at the least, a curious chapter in the Lindbergh saga—the man so determined that the genes of the white race must be preserved had in the end, perhaps, found a way to contribute to the cause. One of those European sons, indeed, recalls that the man they claim as father had always urged them to be sure to have children so that their genes would be passed on.

All this remains, ultimately, a footnote to the larger drama of the Lindbergh story—a fact the filmmakers apparently recognize. The best of this documentary, packed with eloquent period pictures, concerns the Lindbergh of that prewar era of his flight, his fame, the chaos that followed the kidnapping of his son—and his dizzyingly quick and permanent fall into disrepute. That evidently came as a great surprise to Lindbergh, who could never quite understand what was so offensive in his devotion to the Reich, his acceptance of a Nazi medal, his denunciation of aid to a beleaguered England, his campaign to preserve the white race, and his charges that the unduly influential Jews were trying to take the country to war.

One of the film’s commentators observes, with captivating succinctness, how strange it was, after everything, that Lindbergh would continue to express amazement about these things. Decades after the notoriously ugly 1941 speech he gave in Des Moines, Iowa, charging that President Franklin Roosevelt, the British and the Jews of America were dragging the country to war—the speech that well and truly finished him, which caused overnight mass resignations from America First organizations and editorial denunciations from even the most isolationist sectors of the American press—Charles Lindbergh still complained that nobody had paid attention to the rest of his speech. That he may have found peace and satisfaction in the creation of a few extra families—in Munich, Baden-Baden and Switzerland, respectively—each grateful to see him whenever he popped in, seems, for a man with so complicated a relation to reality, not entirely surprising.

Write to Dorothy Rabinowitz at Dorothy.Rabinowitz@wsj.com



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