Charles Lindbergh’s Des Moines Speech

September 11 is a black day in American history. But six decades before planes flew into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, it stood out as a shameful day. On September 11, 1941, Col. Charles Lindbergh delivered one of the vilest foreign policy speeches ever given by a prominent American.

A Global Celebrity

Charles Lindbergh may be a trivia question today. In 1941, however, he was among America’s greatest heroes. Fourteen years earlier, and just two years after graduating first in his flight training class with the United States Army Air Service, he became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic. That feat aboard the Spirit of St. Louis made him a global sensation. Time magazine named him as its first Man of the Year.

Lindbergh’s fame and his status as an officer in the Air Service Reserve Corps—President Calvin Coolidge promoted him to colonel after his transatlantic flight—gave him tremendous credibility with Americans as a military and geopolitical expert. He spent much of the second half of the 1930s living in Europe to escape the glare of publicity and the possible threats to his family that he faced in the United States. He made several visits to Germany at the request of the U.S. military, where he came away impressed with the quality of the Luftwaffe, the new German air force.

War Comes to Europe

Two weeks after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Lindbergh gave a nationwide address calling on the United States to stay out of the war because “America has little to gain.” He quickly became the face of the noninterventionist movement in the United States. As Wayne Cole, a leading historian on the topic, later wrote, “no other noninterventionist speaker aroused such enthusiastic support.” Indeed, General Robert E. Wood, the chairman of the America First Committee, which had formed to fight what it saw as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s push to involve the United States in the war in Europe, repeatedly tried to persuade him to lead the group because of his immense fame.

Lindbergh declined the invitations to lead the America First Committee, but he became its most popular speaker. He regularly spoke to packed crowds at major arenas like Madison Square Garden, and his speeches were widely broadcast on radio. In January 1941, he testified before Congress in opposition to the Lend-Lease bill and called for negotiating a neutrality pact with Germany. Throughout it all, he remained consistent in his message—attacking Germany would be a mistake that would cost the United States dearly.

“A Peripatetic Appeaser”

Not everyone loved Lindbergh, however. In 1938, he accepted a medal from Hermann Göring, the head of the Luftwaffe, honoring his transatlantic flight. Several weeks later, the Nazis launched Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”), a pogrom against Jews in Germany, Austria, and Sudetenland. Lindbergh dismissed calls that he should return his medal to signal his disgust at what the Nazis had done. He insisted that “the returning of decorations, which were given in times of peace and as a gesture of friendship, can have no constructive effect.”

Lindbergh’s subsequent campaign to keep the United States out of the war in Europe further expanded his legion of critics. At the top of the list was FDR. For months, the president kept his low opinion of Lindbergh to himself, though one cabinet member had called the aviator “a peripatetic appeaser.” By April 1941, FDR had had enough. At a press conference, he likened Lindbergh to Clement Vallandigham, the infamous leader of the Northern Copperheads who opposed the war with the Confederacy. Lindbergh correctly interpreted being compared to someone who was convicted by a military tribunal of sympathizing with the enemy as an attack on “my loyalty to my country, my character, and my motives,” and resigned his military commission.

“Who Are the Agitators?”

In his speeches during the first two years after Germany invaded Poland, Lindbergh had implied that “powerful elements” were pushing the United States into war. But he had always stopped short of saying who he thought those elements were. That changed on September 11, 1941.

As he took the stage before 8,000 Iowans in the Des Moines Coliseum, he wanted to name names. Calling his speech “Who Are the War Agitators?,” Lindbergh claimed that “the three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.” He went on to analyze what he saw as each group’s motives, saying of “the Jewish” in particular:

It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race.

No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.

Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.

Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.

Standing on the stage, Lindbergh viewed the speech as a triumph. He wrote in his diary that night: “When I mentioned the three major groups agitating for war, the entire audience seemed to stand and cheer. At that moment, whatever opposition existed was completely drowned out by our support.” He soon discovered that most Americans felt differently.

The Backlash

Lindbergh’s speech immediately came under fire from newspapers and politicians across the political spectrum for its implicit threat against American Jews and the claim they controlled the media and government. The Des Moines Register denounced it as “so intemperate, so unfair, so dangerous in its implications that it cannot but turn many spadefuls in the digging of the grave of his influence in this country.” The Hearst papers, normally sympathetic to the isolationist cause, called “the assertion that the Jews are pressing this country into war is UNWISE, UNPATRIOTIC, and UN-AMERICAN.” Wendell Willkie, the GOP presidential candidate in 1940, called it “the most un-American talk made in my time by any person of national reputation.”

Things did not stop there. The Texas House of Representatives passed a resolution saying that Lindbergh was not welcome to speak in the state. His hometown of Little Falls, Minnesota, stripped his name from its water towers, and his mother-in-law and sister-in-law publicly denounced the speech.

FDR said nothing about Lindbergh, content to let him be pummeled by others. But the White House press secretary left no doubt about what the president thought of the speech, noting a “striking similarity” between what Lindbergh said and “the outpourings of Berlin in the last few days.”

No Remorse

Lindbergh could not have been surprised by the reaction to his speech. His wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, had read the speech in draft and begged him not to blame Jews for the country’s drift toward war. She feared that the remarks would inflame religious hatred, and she knew people would conclude that her husband was an anti-Semite. His only concession was to add a few words sympathizing with the plight of American Jews.

Lindbergh was no more deterred by the public criticism of his Des Moines speech than he had been by his wife’s private criticism. He denied that he had done anything wrong. He wrote in his diary:

My Des Moines address has caused so much controversy, that General Wood has decided to hold a meeting of the America First national Committee in Chicago. I must, of course, attend. I felt I had worded my Des Moines address carefully and moderately. It seems that almost anything can be discussed today in America except the Jewish problem. The very mention of the word “Jew” is cause for a storm. Personally, I feel that the only hope for a moderate solution lies in an open and frank discussion.

The leaders of the America First Committee debated whether to distance themselves and the organization from Lindbergh. They ultimately decided against repudiating either him or his remarks. Their reasoning? Much of what Lindbergh had said was true—most Jewish Americans favored intervention. Even as the committee’s leaders insisted that this sort of thinking did not constitute anti-Semitism, their decision only encouraged the anti-Semitic forces in their movement.

A Damaged Reputation

Lindbergh’s Des Moines speech justifiably damaged his reputation and set back the noninterventionist cause. The America First Committee’s efforts to block FDR’s push to repeal legislation limiting aid to Britain sputtered, as the organization found itself on the defensive trying to justify or explain away Lindbergh’s remarks.

Within three months, Pearl Harbor settled the matter of whether the United States would enter World War II. After the attack, Lindbergh sought to be recommissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army Air Force. The War Department, however, turned him down at the White House’s direction. Lindbergh ended up working in the Pacific theater as a civilian technical adviser to plane manufacturers and flew dozens of combat missions in that role.

After World War II ended, Lindbergh enjoyed a rehabilitation of sorts as President Dwight D. Eisenhower restored his commission and promoted him to brigadier general. But Lindbergh would never again be a significant voice in American political life after his Des Moines speech.

Oscar Berry assisted in the preparation of this article.

The United States celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026. To mark that milestone, I am resurfacing essays I have written over the years about major events in U.S. foreign policy. A version of this essay was published on September 11, 2012.