The Peculiar Truth about Lindbergh’s Dark Side

• Charles Lindbergh was an American hero. In 1927, he gained fame as the first pilot to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic. Ticker tape parades were given in his honor. Then in 1932, he and his wife suffered the widely publicized kidnapping and murder of their child, which was called the crime of the century.

• In 1935, Lindbergh and his wife Anne left their native United States to live in the English countryside. They relocated to an island off France, and Lindbergh spent time in Germany. Later, his political beliefs tarnished his all-American image.

• In time, he went from national hero to tragic victim to Nazi sympathizer and moral reprobate.

• While in France, Lindbergh befriend Dr. Alexis Carrel, a pioneering surgeon. Carrel had expressed beliefs that many interpreted as eugenics, the controversial philosophy of selective breeding to eliminate inferior humans. Lindbergh believed in racial superiority, too, specifically the white race. He wrote about “the importance of genetics in mating” and the “dilution of foreign races.”

• Adolf Hitler and the Nazis openly promoted the same ideas.

• 1936: During the Olympics, Lindbergh toured Germany. He was shown airfields, airplane factories, and new aircraft. His host was Hermann Goering, leader of the Luftwaffe and one of the most powerful Nazis. Lindbergh was impressed and praised what Hitler’s Germany had achieved. He and his wife Anne even considered moving to the country.

• 1938: Acting on Hitler’s behalf, Goering presented Lindbergh with the Service Cross of the German Eagle.

• Americans wondered why their national hero was accepting a medal from the Nazis. Especially when one month later came Kristallnacht, the assault that killed many Jews and sent tens of thousands to concentration camps.

• Lindbergh didn’t return or get rid of the medal, but he did change his mind about moving to Germany. Instead, he returned to the US and began advocating for America’s neutrality in Europe’s war as a member of the America First Committee.

• In an Iowa speech he gave in 1941, two months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh stated that pro-war groups posed a threat to the US. He singled out Jews by saying, “Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.” That inflammatory statement was essentially right out of the Nazi handbook.

• His fellow Americans quickly began distancing themselves from Lindbergh, even in his Minnesota hometown. Streets named after him were renamed.

• After WWII ended and Nazi atrocities were discovered, Lindbergh showed little remorse for his rhetoric. By advocating that the US stay out of the war he was seen as a Nazi puppet, if not an outright Nazi.

• Then came the revelations that further tarnished his hero status. Lindbergh was revealed to be a bigamist.

• Brigitte Hesshaimer, a German hat maker, was the mother of three children. They rarely saw their father who only visited two to three times per year. He called himself Carou Kent. He was in fact Charles Lindbergh.

• He also had an affair with Brigitte’s sister, Marietta. Then another with his German secretary, Valeska.

• Between the three women he sired seven children. In secret. Despite being one of the most famous men in the world.

• Whether or not Lindbergh’s American wife ever knew of the other families is unclear, but the German offspring waited until after Anne Lindbergh’s death in 2001 to reveal the truth.

• They showed over 100 letters between Brigitte and Lindbergh. DNA evidence proved he was their father.

• Just before his death in 1974, Lindbergh wrote to his mistresses asking them to keep his secrets.

• His memoir was published four years later. The ironic title was An Autobiography of Values.