Andrew Nagorski - Hitlerland

Smith and Koenig remained convinced that Lindbergh’s visits provided them with crucial information about Hitler’s aviation buildup, which they regularly conveyed to Washington. At the end of World War II when some columnists attacked Smith for his close ties to Lindbergh, FDR advisor Bernard Baruch wrote to then Chief of Staff General George Marshall on June 13, 1945: “How well and how timely were his [Smith’s] warnings about German preparations! And what little attention we paid to them!”

Of course, the reason why the Smith-Lindbergh relationship became controversial in the first place was the political trajectory of the aviator and his wife that can be traced to that first visit to Germany, which ended with his brief appearance at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in a VIP seat. By inviting Lindbergh and rolling out the red carpet for him everywhere, the Nazis hoped to demonstrate the strengths of the new Germany—both political and military. They would continue to do so during his subsequent four visits before the outbreak of the war in 1939.

Right after their first visit to Germany in 1936, both Charles and Anne were full of the kind of impressions that their hosts had tried so hard to convey. In a letter to her mother from Copenhagen on August 5, Anne wrote: “I have had ten days in Berlin—bursting to talk about it… The feeling that one was right in the center of the volcano of Europe…” She described the shock of seeing in person what she had been viewing through “the strictly puritanical view at home that dictatorships are of necessity wrong, evil, unstable, and no good can come of them, combined with the funny-paper view of Hitler as a clown.”

As for the real picture, as Anne saw it, “there is no question of the power, unity, and purposefulness of Germany. It is terrific. I have never in my life been so conscious of such a directed force. It is thrilling when seen manifested in the energy, pride, and morale of the people—especially the young people.” But Anne admitted this unity could also be terrifying as “a weapon made by one man but also to be used by one man.” Hitler, she added, “is like an inspired religious leader, and as such fanatical—a visionary who really wants the best for his country.” She pointed out many things she disliked about the new Germany: “their treatment of the Jews, their brute-force manner, their stupidity, their rudeness…” But she concluded “it could be a force for good in the world” if only the world would seek to acknowledge Germany’s new rulers, turning them “in the right direction” rather than ignoring or insulting them.

Also from Denmark, Charles wrote to Truman: “While I still have many reservations, I have come away with a feeling of great admiration for the German people.” As for Hitler, Lindbergh wrote in a letter to the banker Harry Davison, “he is undoubtedly a great man, and I believe he has done much for the German people.” While conceding that Hitler and the German people exhibited fanaticism, he added: “It is less than I expected…” And many of Hitler’s accomplishments would have been impossible “without some fanaticism.”

The event that would cement Lindbergh’s reputation as pro-Nazi took place on October 18, 1938, during the flyer’s third visit. Hugh Wilson, who had recently returned to Germany to take up the post of ambassador, hosted a stag dinner that included Goering and other German aviation officials and experts. When Goering arrived with his aides, he greeted Wilson and then, with the ambassador at his side, made straight for Lindbergh. Holding a small red box in his hand, the Luftwaffe chief made a short speech in German and awarded Lindbergh the Service Cross of the German Eagle, one of the highest decorations for civilians. As Wilson confirmed later in a letter to Lindbergh, both of them were caught by surprise by this award, which was given for his services to aviation. Truman Smith, who was also present, noted there was “no possibility” for Lindbergh to have turned down the decoration. “To have done so would have been a personal affront to Ambassador Wilson, his host for the evening, and to Minister Goering, who in a sense was a host in Germany,” he wrote.

Lindbergh’s subsequent vocal campaign to keep the United States out of the war in Europe, his involvement in the isolationist America First movement, and his conviction that the Soviet Union represented the real threat to European civilization—and that, in a war between those two powers, “a victory by Germany’s European people would be preferable to one by Russia’s semi-Asiatic Soviet Union”—only confirmed how well he had been played by the Nazis. His critics were right that he had become, in effect, an apologist for Hitler. Ironically, though, the flyer’s political blindness also allowed him to help Smith and his team gather more data on the Luftwaffe’s modernization and ambitions than any of their counterparts in other embassies. For his part, Lindbergh was pleased to be part of this effort; as he saw it, this information on Germany’s growing strength only bolstered his argument that the United States should avoid any new conflict with that country.

Not all of the intelligence Smith gathered was on target—and, by his own admission, he overlooked the early signs of German plans for rocketry. He also made some erroneous predictions about the degree of disaffection between the Nazis and the military, and certainly about “Hitler’s realistic and reticent foreign policy,” as he put it in 1937. But on balance, the regular air intelligence reports Smith sent to Washington demonstrated his team’s accomplishments. And Smith’s reputation as the best-informed attaché in Berlin on the Luftwaffe was fully merited, something he always stressed was only thanks to the fact that Lindbergh had cooperated with him so extensively and opened so many doors.

At a reception at the British Embassy in 1938, Cardinal Pacelli, the Vatican secretary of state who had served earlier as the papal nuncio in Germany, sent an aide over to Smith asking him to join him. “I was astonished when… he quizzed me in perfect English as to the state of readiness of the Luftwaffe,” he recalled. “One of his questions that I remember distinctly was, what did we Americans think of Germany’s new two-motored fighter: the Messerschmitt 110.” A year later, Pacelli was elected pope and took the name Pius XII.

Of all the people Hitler surrounded himself with, Putzi Hanfstaengl was a special case—and he liked it that way. It wasn’t just the fact that his mother was an American or that he had gone to Harvard that made him different from most of the Nazi leader’s entourage. He would later explain to everyone and anyone that he had wanted to educate and civilize Hitler, but unfortunately he was thwarted at every turn by the radicals around him. “I could feel that the rabid extremists of the Party had got their claws into him again and the arguments of the more reasonable of us were constantly being countered,” he wrote in a typical passage of his memoir.

Note the wording: “the more reasonable of us.” What he really meant was that he was the only reasonable one. When John Toland, the Hitler biographer, interviewed Hanfstaengl in 1970, he asked him whether there were any intelligent men in Hitler’s circle. “No!” Putzi shouted.

Hanfstaengl would also claim that his misgivings about Hitler’s leadership grew steadily. “It would be reasonable to ask why, in view of all my misgivings about the character and intentions of Hitler and his circle, I continued for so long in association with them,” he wrote. His answer: “I was an idealistic National-Socialist, I make no bones about it.”

While many Americans in Berlin, especially the correspondents who relied on him to gain access to Hitler, viewed Hanfstaengl as a highly useful contact—and some, like the AP’s Lochner, considered him to be a friend—others were more suspicious and antagonistic. Even Wiegand, the veteran Hearst correspondent who had often taken advantage of Hanfstaengl’s interventions to get to his boss, found himself in tense exchanges with Putzi after Hitler came to power. In a memo dated October 23, 1933, Wiegand wrote that Hanfstaengl complained to him that Hitler was holding him responsible for the fact that the American correspondent was now “one of my most bitter opponents.” There were also tensions over money; from Wiegand’s correspondence, it’s clear Putzi had taken fees for articles he may have either contributed or helped on in the past, although he wanted to return some of the money after Hitler came to power.