'The Plot Against America': How much of the HBO show on alternate US history is fact and how much is fiction?
In another addition to the 'What If' tales, HBO has churned out 'The Plot Against America', which follows a different version of American history where Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh becomes the US President and not Franklin D Roosevelt in 1940.
The tale unfolds through the eyes of a Jewish family, who almost collapse under the weight of this victory. They're caught in an America that heads towards fascism — a homeland where Anti-Semitism becomes norm and violence against Jews becomes commonplace and normalized.
Though 'The Plot Against America' is primarily a work of fiction, it does feature several true stories and historical facts. So what is real and what's not on the show?
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh was a venerated US aviator, writer and activist. He became famous in 1927 after he flew the first non-stop solo trans-Atlantic flight. He was named "Lucky Lindy" and grew into an American icon. Crowds greeted him everywhere.
His book 'We' became a bestseller and he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross medal. His statue was erected in Maryland. He began to promote the field of aviation around the world.
However, his politics came to light when he became the leader of the 'America First' movement. As Uriel Heilman wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2016: "Created in 1940 after Hitler already had invaded Poland, the America First Committee argued that the US should take a neutral approach toward Nazi Germany and even do business with it because the Nazi regime did not threaten America directly."
The America First committee supported isolationism and and opposed America's involvement in the War. The company cultivated a reputation for its rousing speeches and agitation. In fact, Roosevelt was so furious with Lindbergh that he referred to him as a "copperhead".
Donald Trump received much backlash in 2016 when he used 'America First' in his presidential campaign back in 2016.
Anti-Semitism
Lindbergh's speeches as well as his letters and journals showed that he was an Anti-Semite. In 1939, he wrote in Reader’s Digest: "We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races."
Lindbergh was also under the impression that Germany had a "Jewish problem" and that the influence of Jews in society should be constrained.
In the first episode of 'The Plot Against America', Herman Levin is furious after listening to a speech by Lindbergh where he gives a coarse Anti-Semitic speech. "The greatest danger to this country lies in their [the Jews’] large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government," he says.
These excerpts are taken from a real speech that Lindbergh made in Des Moines, Iowa, 1941.
However, unlike the show where people seemed to be enraptured by him, there was public rage against these sentiments and his speech was denounced. He rapidly lost support with the public, as his statements became more inflammatory. He argued that the "real threat did not come from Germany, but from Asia, Africa and Russia."
Lindbergh, for example, did accuse Jews of being "war agitators". He also warned against "the infiltration of inferior blood" and "dilution by foreign races".
However, unlike the book 'The Plot Against America', he did not declare that with the German invasion of the USSR, "Adolf Hitler has established himself as the world's greatest safeguard against the spread of communism and its evils."
Lindbergh did not run for president, though some Republican isolationists wanted him to. Philip Roth, the author who wrote the book on which the show is based, found this piece of information in an autobiography by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
"That’s all there was, that one sentence with its reference to Lindbergh and to a fact about him I'd not known," Roth said, "It made me think, 'What if they had?'"
While the Levins in the show are partly based on Roth's family, Philip being Roth, and are dramatized versions of the real people, the narrative is contrived. Alvin, Evelyn and Rabbi Bengelsdorf are fictional.
The Plot Against America' airs on HBO on Mondays at 9 pm.
