Political Relations Between Charles Lindbergh and Adolf Hitler

The political relationship between Charles A. Lindbergh and Adolf Hitler moves from Lindbergh’s expressed admiration for Nazi Germany to formal presidential dealings that reshaped the United States’ stance toward the war. In the novel, Lindbergh’s visits, his refusal to renounce a German decoration after the persecution of Jews intensified, and his agreement with Hitler in Iceland make their relationship a measure of the distance between declared American neutrality and accommodation of the Axis powers.

Private Visits and Public Admiration

Following the Lindbergh family’s departure from the United States after the kidnapping of their first child, Lindbergh settled in a village in England and traveled to Nazi Germany as a private citizen. Across five visits, he saw the German war machine at first hand. Hermann Göring entertained him conspicuously and decorated him in Hitler’s name; Lindbergh, in turn, voiced high regard for Germany and its leader. The visits thus joined privileged access to Germany’s military power with an unmistakable public expression of admiration.

That admiration is presented against the reality of Nazi rule. By the time of Lindbergh’s visits, Germany’s 1935 racial laws had stripped Jews of civil, social, and property rights, revoked their citizenship, and prohibited intermarriage with Aryans. The contrast between what Lindbergh could observe of German power and the persecution already embedded in the regime gives his praise political weight beyond that of a private traveler’s impressions.

The Test of Kristallnacht

In November 1938, the Nazis instigated Kristallnacht: synagogues were burned, Jewish homes and businesses destroyed, and thousands of Jews taken from their homes to concentration camps. In response to the pogrom, Lindbergh was urged to return the gold cross bearing four swastikas that Göring had presented on Hitler’s behalf. He refused, arguing that publicly surrendering the Service Cross of the German Eagle would be an unnecessary insult to Nazi leaders.

The refusal gave the relationship a public and moral dimension. Lindbergh did not merely retain a German honor; he declined to disavow it at a moment when the violence against German Jews had become unmistakable. The narrator recalls that Lindbergh’s name provoked indignation in his household, placing the refusal within the family’s growing alarm about antisemitism and the political significance of Lindbergh’s admiration.

From Contact to State Policy

After Lindbergh’s election as president, the relationship acquired direct diplomatic force. Soon after his inauguration, he traveled to Iceland to meet Hitler. Following two days of talks described as cordial, the two signed an understanding guaranteeing peaceful relations between Germany and the United States. The choice of Iceland carried its own political implication in the narrative: Denmark’s kingdom had been conquered by the Nazis, and Lindbergh’s meeting in Reykjavík appeared to accept that altered reality.

On his return to Washington, Lindbergh announced that the United States would take no part in the war in Europe. He coupled that promise with continued military training and the development of American aviation and rocket technology, presenting neutrality as a policy backed by preparation for defense. The agreement with Hitler therefore did not simply express personal regard; it became part of a presidential program that promised nonparticipation while building military capacity.

Ten days after the Iceland meeting, Lindbergh signed a separate understanding in Honolulu with Japanese officials whose government had already joined Germany and Italy in a triple alliance. That agreement recognized Japan’s sovereignty in East Asia and guaranteed that the United States would not oppose its expansion there. Although it was not an agreement with Hitler, its timing and terms extend the political consequences of Lindbergh’s diplomacy: the administration’s declared neutrality accommodated the territorial ambitions of Germany’s ally as well as seeking peaceful relations with Germany itself.