Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Awakening the Spirit of America with Paul Sparrow

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

If you are interested in the 1930s and 1940s, or have wondered how the rapid growth of authoritarianism in today’s political climate mirrors that of WWII, this is an episode for you. Sharon McMahon is joined by author Paul Sparrow to discuss his new book, Awakening the Spirit of America. It’s a story of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his surprising opponent, Charles Lindbergh, and their war of words. Learn how far back the “America First” slogan goes, and how persuasive language changed the course of history.  Special thanks to our guest, Paul Sparrow, for joining us today. Host: Sharon McMahon Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Production Assistant: Andrea Champoux Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

here's where it gets interesting is now available ad-free. Head to sharonmcmahon.com slash ad-free to subscribe today. Hello, friends. Welcome. Delighted that you're with me today. My guest is the director of the FDR Presidential Library. His name is Paul Sparrow, and he has a fascinating book out called Awakening the Spirit of America. And it is about FDR, Charles Lindbergh, and their war of words. And I really think if you are interested in the 1930s and 40s, if you're interested in World War II, this is going to be a very, very interesting conversation for you. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting.

I'm really excited to be joined by Paul Sparrow today. And I, let me tell you, Paul, your book is extremely interesting. I absolutely loved reading Awakening the Spirit of America, and I'm so grateful that you're here today. Well, thank you for having me. And I love your show. I'm honored to be amongst such a galaxy of guests you had on, Kamala Harris and Jeff Rosen and Jared Cohen. I know Jared, all of those were great conversations. So I feel very honored to be here. Thank you for having me. It's truly my pleasure. Listen, your book topic is one that is just right in my wheelhouse. It's one of those like immediate add to carts. Like I definitely want to learn more about that. And the subtitle of the book is FDR's War of Words with Charles Lindbergh and the Battle to Save Democracy. So let's start. First of all, everyone knows FDR was a president, our longest serving president. Everyone knows that. But for any listener who doesn't know who Charles Lindbergh is or why FDR would even engage in a war of words with him, fill us in, Paul. Who was Charles Lindbergh and why does he matter to this story? In 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic from New York to Paris, the first person to do so.

And he instantly became a global celebrity, unlike any other. He was a hero at a time when the world needed heroes. He was young, he was handsome, he was sort of shy, had this Midwestern demeanor. And it was a phenomenon. This was the early age of aviation. And he did something in basically a hand-built airplane that many people thought was impossible. And so he became this global celebrity. When he flew to Mexico City, a part of an international goodwill tour he was doing after the flight, 150,000 people came to the Mexico City airport to see him, many of them sleeping on the ground overnight so they wouldn't miss it.

I mean, that's the level of his global celebrity. And then, of course, in the early 1930s, he married Anne Murrow. They had a baby boy, and the baby boy was kidnapped and murdered. And this became the trial of the century. And Hoffman, who was the one who was arrested and eventually convicted, was executed. And it was a moment in time where the paparazzi media had emerged because newspapers and magazines had become so profitable. And so the Lindberghs were hounded by the press everywhere they went. I mean, a photographer broke into the morgue and took a picture of their baby's corpse and put it on the front page of newspapers. It was horrible. It was so bad that after a few years, they left the

country. They went to England first and then to Europe to get away from it. So they were in Europe in the mid to late 1930s. And then after it appeared that war was coming, they came back to the United States, but not before Lindbergh had been a guest of Hermann Göring and other German Nazi leaders, the Luftwaffe, leaders of their air force, who had taken him to their facilities and their airfields and let him fly some of their planes. And Lindbergh was absolutely impressed and astounded by the level of technology and how good German aviation was. Now, he filed reports back through the military attaché in Berlin and kept the American army informed, but he really had an enormous amount of respect for Germany and for the Nazi regime and how effective and efficient they were. And so then when war broke out,

he decided that he was going to speak out against FDR's policies. FDR was an interventionist. He thought we should support the allies despite the Neutrality Act, which put a lot of restrictions on what he could do. And Lindbergh came out very strongly opposing this and basically saying he wouldn't take sides in favor of Britain over Germany, that he thought neither side should win. And in congressional testimony, he officially said neither side should win. He did radio broadcasts, he did rallies around the country, and eventually became the spokesperson for what was then known as the America First Movement, which was an isolationist movement that was being surreptitiously funded by the Nazis. So that was the conflict that was set up between a private citizen, a very, very famous one,

and the President of the United States in a very, very unusual contest. And both of these people, being so well known known had the ability to bend the ear of the average American. What they said carried weight. This was not just, as you laid out, he's one of the most famous people in the world because of his flight on the Spirit of St. Louis. One of the most famous people in the world. This is not just any old private citizen saying things that are world. This is not just any old private citizen saying things that are antithetical to the American experiment. This is a man for whom many millions of people deeply respect and what he said mattered to them. And because of his ability to bend the ear of Americans, that's what made FDR feel like, I have got to do something about this. democratic capitalism had almost failed. And a majority of Americans were isolationists. A large majority of Americans, as many as 75%, based on when you look at the polls,

supported Lindbergh's position and opposed FDR's idea that we should come to the aid of Winston Churchill and England just because they're being bombed by the Nazis. So Lindbergh was speaking for what he considered a majority of the American people. And so his rallies, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40,000 people would show up for these rallies he would did. He would sell out, you know, Chicago Arena and Madison Square Garden with these messages that he would give. And when he would do radio broadcasts, millions and millions of people would listen.

So he was reflecting an important component of the American population. And to be honest, that thread, the isolationist thread, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic isolationist thread goes all the way back to the earliest days of America. So it was a firm belief held by a majority of Americans. of Americans. It's so important to note exactly what you just said, that Charles Lindbergh was not some outlier where people were like, what? He's crazy. What kind of crazy talk is that? He was reflecting the overwhelming sentiment of Americans at that time. And sometimes that's a difficult thing to reconcile in Americans' minds. America has a very long history with simultaneously being the land of immigrants and being anti-immigrant. Like, how does that work? America has a very long history of being anti-Semitic and being racist.

Those are things that a lot of Americans don't like about our past, but they're important things to grapple with. And this is an excellent example of why it's important to grapple with these issues. You're absolutely right. And it's critically important to understand that similar things are happening today. There are speeches that FDR gave or that Lindbergh gave that could easily be delivered today with slightly change of words and context. It's important to understand the world of early 1940s because America is still in many ways a broken country. The Great Depression had shattered the illusion that we were this sort of success story, an inevitable success story. And I think it was a moment in time where so many Americans had lost faith and they were xenophobic and they felt if

every immigrant was going to take a job that could have gone to an America. I mean, 25% of the population had been unemployed. There were over 6 million unhoused people, homeless people during this period. To give you some example, with twice the population today, the estimated homeless population today is, you know, 600,000, which is terrible, but a fraction of the 6 million that were homeless for a much smaller country. So for Franklin Roosevelt, when he becomes president in 33, his first mission is to rebuild America. And that's the whole idea of how do we get a more equal playing field? How do we fix the economy?

How do we get people back to work? And by 1939, things had improved, but there were still deep emotional scars and a tremendous fear that still permeated American society. So when we were trying to come up with a title for the book, I wanted to try to find something that would go to what FDR's mission was at this point. He was a great leader, but he had this deep belief in the American system. He really believed in American democracy. He believed in the American people. He thought that, you know, the founding core of American democracy, of the soul of America, as he called it, was the willingness

to fight for freedom. And so the title, Awakening the Spirit of America, is about him trying to get Americans to realize who they are, both historically and how we got to where we were, but more importantly, what our core essence was. How does he get America to embrace this role as eventually the first superpower and the champion of freedom? And of course, it was a hard fought battle. And the outcome wasn't certain at all. It really wasn't until Pearl Harbor that America fully engaged in the idea of, okay, we have to stand up to fascism and totalitarism and run the world. If we don't defend democracy, we're going to lose our own. It's such an important point that you make. And it's, as you mentioned, these are issues we continue to grapple with. To what extent is democracy around the world our job versus up to

the self-determination of another country? How much of it is our job is something Americans probably also always will grapple with. It's never going to be determined. It's 48% our job and 52% theirs. That's not going to happen. We're going to continually wrestle with this question. But why didn't Charles Lindbergh think it was America's job? Because again, Charles Lindbergh is a mouthpiece of the overwhelming sentiment of Americans. What was the reason that he was so against involvement in World War II?

You mentioned that he had an affinity for Germany, that he traveled there, had great admiration for it's so clean, it's so efficient. Look at their cool stuff. We should be more like this. Was it pure Nazi sympathy? Was it economic? What was it that made Charles Lindbergh such an isolationist? Well, it's a great question. I spend a whole book trying to answer it. I've read almost all of his speeches and his wartime diaries and everything. And he was a very complex person. There isn't a simple answer. It's a multi-level answer. The things he said over and over again in his speeches were that America has nothing to fear. We're protected by these two oceans.

We're a large country with an industrial base. No one would ever risk attacking us and invading America. So we're safe. Therefore, we have to look between these two sides and quote-unquote what is the lesser of two evils. But he felt that England and France and the traditional Western powers were corrupt, that they had expanded their empires at the point of a bayonet for centuries, and they were just trying to protect their empire. And he didn't think it was fair that Germany, who is now trying to expand its empire through the point of a bayonet for centuries. And they were just trying to protect their empire. And he didn't think it was fair that Germany, who is now trying to expand its empire through the use of military force, was any different than what they did. He said, you know, George Washington was a traitor until they won the Revolutionary War, then he became the president. And so he really

used that as a core part of his rationale. He also thought that Germany was dynamic and energetic. And his wife wrote a book called The Wave of the Future, basically saying that, you know, fascism and totalitarianism may have some problems, but it's the wave of the future. Democracy is the past. So there was that sort of geopolitical perspective that he had. But then as time goes on and his speeches become more and more radical and more and more militant, you start to hear his anti-Semitism coming forward, where he says things like, you know, the media is controlled by a small cabal of people and, you know, we have to be wary of propaganda. And then finally, the summer of 1941, he comes right out and says, there are three main groups who are trying to force us

into this war, the Roosevelt administration, Great Britain, and the Jews. And that's the point at which there's a crisis within the America First movement. Many of the more sort of neutral, non-antisemitic members left, but it attracted even more of the pro-Nazi movement in America. And Lindbergh had very, very powerful allies. William Randolph Hearst, largest publisher in the world, who went on to build Hearst Castle and owned many, many newspapers. Robert McCormick owned Chicago Tribune and WGN Radio and was also extremely conservative and an anti-Semite, Henry Ford, the Henry Ford, who published an anti-Semitic newspaper, was also doing business with Hitler and received the Golden Eagle of the German Cross as a reward for his support of Nazi Germany.

So this was a powerful alliance. And I think that anti-Semitism, which comes more to the surface and becomes more and more obvious in the lead up to Pearl Harbor Harbor was one of his motivating factors. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office

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Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Do you feel like he got radicalized by people like Henry Ford? Did it start out in your estimation, having spent a lot of years studying this, did it start out as more of a latent low level of like, well, I don't know about them? You know, like a lot of people have that sort of low level, I don't know about them. And then it becomes like, I'm willing to put my entire reputation on the line to talk about how dangerous I think those other people over there are. So the question emerges initially as a refugee question. So prior to the start of World War II, as Nazi Germany and fascist Italy put more and more pressure on the Jewish populations in their

countries, and those members of the Jewish faith were trying to get out of Germany and go somewhere, there were very, very strict immigration quotas in America and in every country in the world. And those immigration quotas became more and more focused on preventing Eastern European Jews and German Jews from coming to America. much tied in with anti-Semitism. And again, in 1940, the polls showed 50 or 60% of Americans not only didn't want to let any more Jewish refugees in the country, they wouldn't even allow for a special exception to allow 10,000 children, Jewish children to come into the country. And they knew that these people were fleeing for their lives. So again, the anti-Semitism was not uncommon at that time. And it was certainly a widely held belief that the Jewish cabal owning the banks and the communist Bolsheviks in Russia. So you read some of these things that people were saying, and it's hard to believe, but it was widely held.

Yeah. A lot of the Jews at the time were like, how can we be both the world's most powerful and evil capitalists and also the world's most powerful and evil communists? These are diametrically opposed. That is an oxymoron. We can't be both. A lot of it doesn't make sense. And in fact, when you look at the facts, there were certainly some very high profile Jewish owners of motion picture companies and newspapers and magazines. But in fact, an actual analysis was done and less than 6% of the major media companies in America had Jewish ownership. So the idea that they controlled the media was false. And actually,

if you look at the New York Times coverage of World War II and the years leading up to World War II, they were not at all sympathetic to Jewish immigration. They underreported the atrocities that were being committed in Germany up to the war, and even during the war. Even if they reported the news, they sort of buried it in such a way that a lot of Americans didn't have to confront what was really happening because everything we know about the Holocaust was known by people then. It just was not believed. And then you had people like Father Coughlin on the radio with all of his millions of listeners. Again, such a popular radio figure. Picture some of the big name radio broadcasters that

a lot of people know if somebody's never heard of Father Coughlin. You picture, let's say, a Rush Limbaugh type character. And again, I'm not saying Rush Limbaugh is Father Charles Coughlin. I'm saying that picture a big name radio broadcaster that lots of people listen to, that have millions of listeners, that have a lot of influence over their millions of listeners. That's who he was during that time. And he is very pro-fascism. And it's difficult for Americans today to be like, who is pro-fascism? Nobody. That's a terrible idea. No one believes in that. Both Republicans think that the Democrats are fascists and the Democrats say the Republicans are fascists and everybody thinks fascism is the boogeyman that we have to avoid. And it's weird to think about people being like, yeah, fascism is the wave of the future, you guys. Democracy is not it.

Well, and again, this goes back to the Great Depression where democracy had failed its people because the American government at that point, prior to Franklin Roosevelt, there was no mechanism for the federal government to help people, right? There was no Social Security. There was no unemployment insurance. There was no retirement. There was nothing. And people, Republicans had been in control of Congress and the White House for 12 years.

And they were very, very pro-business, pro-Wall Street, anti-labor. business, pro-Wall Street, anti-labor. And even after the Great Depression started, President Hoover came out and said, taking care of people who are hungry and starving and homeless isn't my job. Churches and charities should take care of them. And of course, when it's 25% of the population, churches and charities don't have the resources to do that. So that was that structure. And so fascism, they look at Italy and they look at Germany, and these are thriving economies. Everybody's working. They're building these great militaries. They're building these great, you know, technological advancements. And so the evidence on the ground for people who were out of a job and hungry and homeless was, you know, well, maybe we should give fascism a try. You know, it can't be worse than this. fascism a tribe. It can't be worse than this. It can't be worse than this. It can't be worse than 6 million people homeless. It can't be worse than my children starving. At least those people have basic necessities. Unless you were Jewish or homosexual or a communist or an intellectual, in that case, you had no rights and the Nazis could do whatever they want to put you in

concentration camps and gas you. It was definitely this whole like fascism is the wave of the future was definitely a viewpoint held by the privileged. Yes. Anybody who was not part of the upper caste. Paul, you are a scholar of FTR. I feel like your work has led you to undercover a few things about him. You're working at the FTR library and writing this book and all these things. I feel like you know a thing or two. And so I would love to hear from sort of an insider's perspective, somebody who has really gotten to know FTR intimately as much as one can when somebody's dead. What was he thinking when all of this was going down? What was he saying to people privately? We know what he was saying on the radio by and large.

We know what his public speeches were, but what was he thinking and saying behind the scenes, watching people like Charles Lindbergh take the stage, listening to these radio addresses, knowing that 70% of Americans disagree with his perspective? What was going on in his mind? Well, this is the ultimate question for all historians when it comes to Franklin Roosevelt. He didn't live long enough to write a memoir. He didn't keep a diary. He was very circumspect about what he did say. But one of the things I tried to do in the book was I really wanted to put the reader in the room where it happens. I wanted to, whenever possible, create these scenes so they can hear how they're crafting these speeches, how they're

developing their strategy, how they're trying to deal with this. What is their thought process? And the best example I was able to find, so you have to go through diaries and transcripts and things like that. So starting in 1939, well into 1941, FDR is saying, we're not going to send American troops overseas. We're not going to get involved in this war. It's much better for us to send weapons to the British and let them fight the war, right? Rather than us having to send American troops over there. And I'm opposed to sending American troops over there. I've said it time and time again, I hate war. So that's what he was saying publicly. But privately, he was doing everything in his power to prepare America,

to build up our military industrial complex, to increase the size of the U.S. Army, to increase funding for it, to find ways around the rules that were imposed on him by the Neutrality Act. James, his oldest son James, wrote many years after his father died and after the war that at one point he confronted his father about this. And I write about this in the book. He says, you know, Dad, are you lying to the American people? You know we're going to get in this war. You're doing everything to get into it. Why are you telling the American public we're not going to get in this war? And he said, basically, you can't give your enemies ammunition.

If I had come out and said, I'm the president of the United States. I know things you don't know. We're going to have to fight this war. Before the American public was ready to hear it, they would have turned on me. And, of course, he was running for re-election in 1940, an unprecedented third term. No one had ever run for a third term. So he needed the popular support. And I think, again, it's a sign of his great leadership that he used persuasive language. He used patience. He just kept saying these things over and over and over again. And as the situation overseas became worse and worse and worse, and it sort of bolstered his case about how bad Hitler was and Imperial Japan was, that the American public gradually and slowly was convinced. But if he had acted too soon, without the support of the American public, Congress would not have passed the bills that they passed. And so, yes, I think he, as far as we can tell, all the evidence we have from his private conversations and from the diaries of the people who are closest to him, even from the drafts of the speeches where you see what he originally said and then it gets crossed out and someone else said, is that he knew he had to convince America.

He couldn't just order America. You know, at the end of the book, I say that, you know, FDR was not a perfect man. He was not a perfect man. He was not a perfect president, but he was the perfect man to be president at that critical time. He was playing a long game. Yes. He had some long game. He had some long game. And he was not alone.

He had a tremendous team around him as well. I mean, of course, his number one ally being Winston Churchill, one of the greatest orators of all time. And you look at how their speeches worked together in trying to sway public opinion. I mean, the fireside chats, which are, in my opinion, extraordinary document. If you really read through them, you see his persuasive language. One of them is the speech from the first fireside chat on March 12th. He's only been in office seven days.

And the banking crisis, the entire American banking system has basically collapsed. And his first act as president was to take a bank holiday and close every bank in America because people were just rushing to take their money out. So he does this Fireside Chat where he says, your money is safer in a reopened bank than it is under your mattress. This is a Sunday night. So the banks are reopening Monday morning. So the question is, what's going to happen? And that one speech completely changed a majority of Americans' opinion about the banking crisis. He had said it in his inaugural address. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. That's about the banking crisis. And so he eliminated that fear. And that Monday morning opened up, there were long lines outside

the banks and people were bringing their money back to the banks. So to me, I even get chills about this now. To me, I kept saying, how did he do that? How does one 13-minute speech end a banking crisis that had been going on for several years at the height of the Great Depression? that have been going on for several years at the height of the Great Depression. So interesting. What did FDR think was the spirit of America? I mean, I think if you ask 10 people, you'll get 10 different answers, but he was so adept at persuading Americans to his viewpoint of what the spirit of America should be. When you really look at the long game that he played, if he had just gone on the radio and been like, Charles Lindbergh is a Nazi. If he had spent all of his time overtly attacking his enemies,

it would have had a very different, potentially very, very different outcome. So he had to lead by inspiration. And he has to inspire Americans that they want to believe in his vision of the spirit of America. And what was that? What was his vision that he was trying to inspire people to follow? Well, he believed that America was founded on this idea of allowing people an opportunity to express their own personal freedoms. You know, his four freedoms, you know, the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from fear, freedom from want. His famous State of the Union address where he outlines those four speeches in January of 1941 really goes to the heart of what he believed was not just the soul of America, but that it should be the guiding principles for the whole world. And so he said, you know, he often, like when the first peacetime draft was initiated less than two weeks before the November 1940 election, you know,

a peacetime draft, talk about an unpopular political action, but one he really believed in. In his speech, he talked about mustering the troops in Lexington and Concord, and the idea of the citizen-soldier coming to defend their freedom. And so to him, that was like this core underlying principle of what America is all about. Not only do we welcome immigrants that come to this country to help us build and expand, but we are willing, your responsibility as a citizen, as a patriot, is to be willing to fight to protect that freedom, whether it's from the British Empire in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, or whether it's from internal rebellion, or whether

it's from fascists externally. And he really believed that. And he understood that America was unique in the unbelievable natural resources we have. During World War II, America produced something like 65% of all oil supplies in the world. Not to mention the industrial base that we had built up, the iron things, almost unimaginable level of resources that were still even untapped in that period. So he believed it was an American responsibility to do those things, to use our unique position in the world to fight fascism and to fight to save democracy. that I frequently talk about when people ask me about World War II. And again, I'm not the world's foremost World War II expert, but America's defense production and our ability to feed people, our farm output went up during World War II. First of all, let's take a second for the hundreds of thousands of women who started running America's farms. And that our farm output increases markedly during World War II when it potentially should have done the

opposite. And the willingness to do it is in part provided by the inspiration of FDR. Again, that goes to the spirit of America, the can-do spirit. Now, some of the American exceptionalism of the 19th and 20th century has sort of fallen into passe usage these days. We're not supposed to think of ourselves as some exceptional country. But there is a unique quality to the people who came to America. to the people who came to America. Many of them got on ships with $5 in their pocket and came to America knowing no one, knowing nothing, not being able to speak the language. And so they had an initiative. They had a courage. They had a commitment that was included in this mixing bowl of American cultural ingenuity. So these people were coming from all over the world, but they had this shared

vision that there was opportunity for them in America. They might not be rich, they might not become millionaires, but they would have an opportunity to live up to their potential. And in many of the countries they came from, their role was very constricted. What they were going to be allowed to be, who they could become, what they could achieve was very, very limited. And they looked at America as an opportunity, a land of opportunity. And so that's, again, that's part of this core belief that he had. If we're the land of opportunity, that gives us great responsibility to help people who don't have that opportunity. What was Charles Lindbergh's reaction to all of this? Did he just quiet down? Did he just accept it? joined the Army Air Force. I mean, again, he's one of the greatest pilots in the world and a true aviation expert. But of course, he was blacklisted. None of the military branches would take him, even though they were desperate for experienced pilots. None of the aerospace

industries, companies that were building the planes would hire him. Why? Why was he blacklisted? Why was he blacklisted? Because everybody knew FDR hated him. And at one point, FDR is alleged to have said, I've never been able to find this in documentation, but he was talking to some senators and one of the senators reported it later. I'm going to clip that young man's wings. And so he couldn't get back in the war effort initially. But Henry Ford, his partner in the isolationist America First movement, had just completed what's known as Willow Run, which was a mile-long factor that he built that was going to build the B-24 bombers.

And there was a lot of problems with getting this thing up and running. And finally, he hired Lindbergh to come in and help with the production of these bombers and to improve efficiency, to make better engines, to make them more durable, to make them easier to fly, to make them more efficient. So he worked with Henry Ford for a number of years. And then very interesting and little known fact about him was that towards the end of the war, he left Willow Run and Ford and became a private consultant and went to the Pacific Theater and was working with the Marine Corps to help them refine and improve their fighter planes. And that he dramatically increased the efficiency of the way their engines were tuned, the way they would fly these planes, how they would use them in air combat or for bombing runs.

And he ended up flying, as a private citizen, 50 combat missions in the Pacific at the end of World War II. After FDR dies, Eisenhower becomes president after Truman. Eisenhower becomes president. And Eisenhower, who had known Lindbergh in various stages of his career, reinstated him as a reserve officer in the Army Air Force. So in some ways, he was redeemed by his actions in the war. And then the postscript of Charles Lindbergh is, again, I didn't know this at all, and it's a fairly recent development. So he sort of ended up living in Hawaii, became an environmental activist, one of the earliest environmental activists. And then after he died, I think this was in the last 10 years, these women came forward and said that they were his children from two additional secret marriages in Germany that their mothers

who were sisters had sworn them to secrecy. And after their mothers died, they came forward, they had DNA testing, and sure enough, they were Lindbergh's children. So he actually marries these women in Germany or he air quotes marries them in Germany? I would say air quotes. I don't know if there was legal documents. I mean, it would clearly have been, you know, bigamy and because they were sisters. I mean, the whole thing is it's pretty strange. And there has been speculation. And then again, I can't attest to this. But the speculation was that he didn't think his American children were Aryan enough.

So he wanted Aryan children of good German stock. So, yeah, complicated, very complicated man, a fascinating character. And now, like so much with history, as time goes on, all the nuance gets squeezed out. And now Charles Lindbergh is just this amazing pilot who was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic and then became a Nazi sympathizer in World War II. You're right. The nuance gets squeezed out as history becomes flattened. And now what we know about Lindbergh is he was the first man to do something cool with an airplane, and then he becomes a villain. That's what we know. And it's, of course, like so many people, it's much more complicated.

What do you hope that the reader, when they finish reading Awakening the Spirit of America, when they finish reading it, what do you hope that they take away and tuck into their pocket and carry with them moving forward? To me, it's FDR's absolute commitment, his belief in America and the American system. This was the darkest period in America history, perhaps the Civil War, you know, but certainly the second darkest moment in American history coming out of the Great Depression. I mean, the fate of the free world literally hung in the balance. And FDR never lost faith. And I think if anything comes out of this book, it's that we should all have that level of faith in the American system. Sure, we're going to disagree on policies. We're going to disagree on how we should fund things. We're going to disagree on a lot. That's the way the system is set up. We're supposed to disagree because through compromise, you end up with a better outcome. And if people will just take a moment and step back and look at how incredibly lucky we are to be Americans, to look at where we are in the world today, despite the misinformation and the propaganda by Russia and China and the social media and the toxicity of that whole environment. Take a step back, take a deep breath, think about FDR, paralyzed from the waist down, suffering from polio, rose himself up to become the president of the United States and the leader

of the free world, all on his belief that the American system works. And I think that's a powerful message. I love that. Paul, thank you so much for being here today. This was absolutely fascinating. I really loved learning more about this time period. I loved reading your book, and I'm just really grateful to have you here. Well, thank you for having me on. I really enjoyed our conversation and you do a great job. I love this podcast. Thank you. You can buy Paul Sparrow's book, Awakening the Spirit of America, wherever you get your books, visit your local bookshop or go to bookshop.org if you want to support independent

bookstores. I'll see you again soon. support independent bookstores. I'll see you again soon. This episode is hosted and executive produced by me, Sharon McMahon. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. Our production assistant is Andrea Shampoo. And if you liked this episode, we would love to have you share it to social media or to leave us a rating or review. All of those things help podcasters out so much. Thanks for being here and we'll see you again soon.