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February 09, 2004
Lindbergh Right, PowerLine Way Wrong
PowerLine chooses to denigrate Charles Lindbergh because of his anti-war stance prior to Pearl Harbor. But the bottom line is that Lindbergh was entirely correct in his arguments. The war was about "the division of territory and wealth between nations". Lebensraum was the German rallying cry. The injustice of Versailles, (perceived or otherwise), was not lost on Hitler, who forced the French leaders to surrender in the same train car that the Germans had used in the Great War.
I've read Lindbergh's diary, and leading up to 1938 he used his celebrity to tour the Eurpoean nations including Russia, and report back to U.S. intelligence about their current condition. He found a German war machine that was almost completely rebuilt, well armed, and ready for action, while the forces of the rest of Europe including France, Poland, Russia, and Great Britian were woefully unprepared. Göring's Luftwaffe was churning out hundreds of modern aircraft, while the French Air Force consisted mostly of World War I biplanes.
In short, Lindbergh came to the reasonable conclusion that Germany was more than capable of defeating all of Europe. Is it any surprise that he wanted the United States to stay out of yet another bloody European conflict?
In the end, it was Hitler's madness that prevented total German victory. If not for the broken truce with Stalin and the deadly Eastern Front that followed, it is doubtful whether the United States and Great Britian would have been successful in recapturing Europe. Or, possibly, success would have come only after the cities of Europe had been reduced to radioactive fireballs instead of the traditional incendiary kind.
Posted by crandal at February 9, 2004 02:02 PM