Isolationism and non-interventionism

Isolationism and non-interventionism are the political doctrines around which Charles A. Lindbergh builds his appeal to keep the United States out of the war in Europe. The novel presents that appeal as more than a foreign-policy position: it becomes a promise of safety, a test of national loyalty, and a vehicle for antisemitic accusations. Its popularity rests on the hope that avoiding war can preserve American life; its danger lies in the way Lindbergh and his supporters turn that hope against those portrayed as favoring intervention.

Origins and Political Appeal

After returning to the United States in April 1939, Lindbergh was activated as a colonel in the United States Army Air Corps and traveled on behalf of the government to promote American aviation and a stronger, modernized air force. As war spread across Europe, he added a political purpose to that work: preventing the United States from entering the conflict or aiding Britain and France. He argued publicly that Franklin D. Roosevelt was promising peace while secretly leading the country toward war. This position made him an increasingly prominent opponent of the president and drew support from Republicans who saw him as a potential challenger to Roosevelt.

The dispute sharpened as Roosevelt urged the United States Congress to repeal the arms embargo and ease restrictions on neutrality to help Britain. Lindbergh’s response was not limited to opposing a particular measure. In the Des Moines speech, he named Jews as one of the groups pressing the country toward war, while presenting Jewish political activity as a threat to American interests. The accusation supplied an ethnic explanation for a policy disagreement: rather than treating intervention as a contested choice among citizens, Lindbergh cast Jews as a group with suspect motives and divided loyalties.

The America First Committee continued to support Lindbergh after the speech provoked denunciations from liberal journalists, Jewish organizations, officials in Roosevelt’s cabinet, and prominent Republicans. Lindbergh resigned his reserve commission rather than serve under Franklin D. Roosevelt, but remained the most popular advocate of the neutrality argument. The novel emphasizes that antisemitic ideas were not confined to a few prominent figures: assertions about Jewish influence in the press, movies, radio, and government were shared among many America First supporters. The movement’s political reach therefore exceeded its formal opposition to entering the war.

Campaigning on the Promise of Peace

Lindbergh made non-intervention the organizing message of his 1940 campaign. After flying unexpectedly to California, he told a crowd that the choice was between Lindbergh and war. The statement reduced a complicated election to a stark alternative: voting for him meant preventing American participation in another world war. It also fused his political identity with his celebrated career as a pilot, making the promise of peace inseparable from the image of an individual who could act decisively and independently.

Over the following month and a half, Lindbergh spent a day in each of the forty-eight states. He moved between cities, small towns, and rural communities, sometimes landing on highways or pastures, while local radio stations carried his remarks. From state capitals, he repeatedly warned that Roosevelt would take the country into the war and urged voters to choose him instead. The repetition gave the campaign a simple, portable argument; the aerial tour gave that argument a spectacle that reached beyond conventional party events.

That style contrasted with Roosevelt’s decision to remain in the White House and address the international crisis from the presidency. Roosevelt discussed the danger of a German invasion of Britain, proposed a peacetime draft, and defended assistance to the British war effort. The difference was not merely between campaigning and governing. Lindbergh made non-intervention the test of whether the president could be trusted, while Roosevelt treated military preparation and aid as responses to the possibility that events abroad could threaten American interests.

The campaign culminated in an enormous rally at Madison Square Garden, organized as the election approached. Its speakers described the consequences of war for farmers, workers, industry, and young men. Lionel Bengelsdorf also argued that the conflict was Europe’s war and invoked American casualties from the First World War to warn of the price of intervention. He condemned Nazi persecution of German Jews, yet maintained that American entry would not relieve their suffering and might make their situation worse. His address shows how non-intervention could be presented as compatible with sympathy for Jews abroad, even as Lindbergh’s movement elsewhere used antisemitic claims to discredit American Jews who opposed its policy.

Electoral Victory and Government Policy

Lindbergh won fifty-seven percent of the popular vote and carried forty-six states, losing only New York and Maryland. The novel describes several elements of his appeal: voters’ attachment to the two-term tradition, his youth and athletic image, the promise of aviation’s future, and a widespread desire for normalcy after years of crisis. His pledge not to take the country to war offered a direct answer to that desire. For many voters, the assurance that there would be no war seemed sufficient in itself.

The new administration’s policy made neutrality more than a campaign refrain. In a national address after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Lindbergh praised Adolf Hitler for striking against communism and argued that the German army might be fighting a war that American troops would otherwise have had to fight. At the same time, he defended a peacetime draft that required twenty-four months of military training for eighteen-year-olds, followed by eight years in the reserves. The combination is significant: the government prepared a large reserve force while presenting its purpose as keeping the United States out of foreign wars and foreign wars out of the country.

This doctrine was framed as an independent destiny for America. In the novel, however, the phrase means turning away from former allies and making common cause with their enemies, as Franklin D. Roosevelt explains to his son. That interpretation exposes the gap between the reassuring language of independence and the political choices made in its name. The policy does not simply remove the country from international conflict; it alters its relationships with other nations and gives approval to some belligerents’ actions.

Opposition, Insecurity, and Social Consequences

After the election, public confidence in Lindbergh’s ability to deal with foreign leaders helped sustain the belief that his personal prestige could secure peace. Many Americans repeated that figures such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito respected Lindbergh. Jewish families, by contrast, feared what his statements and reported conversations with Hitler might mean for them. Children encountered frightening rumors at school; adults debated whom they could rely on and how to protect themselves. The contrast makes clear that a policy celebrated by the majority as protection from war could be experienced by a threatened minority as growing exposure at home.

That vulnerability became more pronounced as political violence escalated. Walter Winchell used his public campaign to accuse the administration of fascism and to warn that dissenters might be silenced. In Boston, a crowd attacked him during a speech; after unrest in Detroit, Newark’s Jewish leaders began preparing for possible violence in their own city. The Newark Committee of Concerned Jewish Citizens sought contingency plans from municipal and state authorities. Separately, Longy Zwillman arranged for Bullet Apfelbaum to recruit young men into a Provisional Jewish Police in case official protection failed. These actions are not identical to opposition to non-intervention, but they show the conditions in which Lindbergh’s politics operated: institutional appeals and community self-defense emerged alongside street-level intimidation.

Non-intervention remains compelling in the novel because it speaks to a real fear of renewed mass death and promises a clear limit on national sacrifice. Yet the story follows the cost of treating that promise as proof that no danger exists. Lindbergh’s appeal joins a popular desire for peace to suspicion of dissenting groups, while his administration’s assurances coexist with military preparation and the growing alarm of American Jews. Isolationism is therefore depicted both as an electoral doctrine and as a political arrangement whose protections are unevenly distributed.