The Greatest Generation..We Called them Mom and Dad…Part II Then Pearl Harbor Happened…. It’s hard to imagine just how deeply Pearl Harbor ingrained itself into our parents imagination. We can have some sense of it when we think back at our own reactions to the news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy or when we heard about the planes hitting the World Trade Center. And like those events, the question “Where were you when you heard…” became an ice breaker question that would be repeated over, and over again for decades. Pearl Harbor was different. Most of our lives would go on pretty much the same after the death of John F. Kennedy and even after the attacks on 9/11. In 1939 fewer than half a million men and women were in the combined Armed Forces of the United States. By 1941 that number had swelled to almost two million, as war loomed over the horizon, made possible by a controversial peacetime draft. The drift toward involvement in War was by no means popular. America had a strong anti-war movement that brought together people today that we would call Tea Party types , Nazi sympathizers, establishment Republicans, religious pacifists and dedicated party line Stalinists. It was called the America First Movement. It’s leading spokesman was “Lucky” Charles Lindbergh, easily the most admired man of his era., Lindbergh captured the hearts of America when, 1927, he flew a flimsy single engine plane from an airfield in Garden City Long Island to Le Bourget Airfield just outside Paris France. He would be hailed for his feat of daring-do with a packed tickertape parade through Manhattan. I don’t know if my Dad, 10 yrs old at the time, saw that parade, but he was thrilled by the news, even at that young age. Lindbergh, would go on to marry Anne Morrow, daughter of Dwight W Morrow, a prominent financier, politician and ambassador. Anne was an aviation pioneer in her own right, a glider pilot as a teenager . A few short years after they married, the country would be riveted by the kidnapping for ransom and murder of their first child a twenty month old toddler. The entire country was riveted on the case, which ultimately ended with the execution of one Bruno Richard Hauptmann, after a lurid trial that still inspires conspiracy theories. What was most striking in the public mind was the dignity and reserve of the mourning Lindbergh family. Already immensely popular, the Lindberghs were seen by some as secular saints. By the Fall of 1941 the America First Movement was in full court press against the Roosevelt Administration’s sympathetic policies toward the Allies. . In his 1940 campaign for a third term FDRs pledged to keep America out of the War, despite his clear tilt in favor of the Allies. Emboldened by a landslide electoral victory, The FDR administration shepherded passage of the Lend Lease Act early January of 1941. Americans might not enter the battle, but our factories would, with a bit of stimulus, become the arsenal of democracy. Shortly thereafter, a peacetime draft was instituted. My dad, hoping for a shorter tour of duty by volunteering, enlisted in March of 1941, going through miserable hot and humid basic training at Camp Campbell South Carolina, not far from Myrtle Beach, and making his way to Schofield Barracks a few short miles from the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. In late June of 1941, Hiltler double crossed his old pal Joe Stalin and launched Operation Barbarossa which aimed to bring down the Soviet Empire by Christmas of 1941. The Left wing of the America First Movement did an about face as Communists and their sympathizers in various circles became ardent supporters In the War Against Fascism. This was the backdrop for Charles Lindbergh as he took to the podium on September 11th, 1941 to speak in Des Moines, IA to the leaders of the America First Movement and to millions of Americans across the land. In a speech that today would be tainted by vague anti-Semitic allusions, Lindbergh spoke fo r a huge swath of Americans who wanted nothing to do with going to war. Charles Lindbergh looked to many like a future president. By and large Americans firmly did not want to go to war. That changed when in the early hours of December 7th, 1941, the naval and ai rforces of the Empire of Japan, brought he war to us. To be Continued...
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 14:53:00 +0000
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