Phillip Roth (1933-2018) is one of America’s most award-winning authors. In 1959 he won acclaim for his collection of short stories, Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. His subsequent work, American Pastoral, earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1998. Readers may also recognize some of his other works, which include Portnoy’s Complaint and The Human Stain, which was made into a 2003 movie starring Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris.
In 2004, Roth published The Plot Against America, which received the Society of American Historians Award for “the outstanding historical novel on an American Theme for 2003-2004.” It was made into a TV miniseries that aired on HBO from March 16-April 20, 2020.
The novel is a work of alternative fiction in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt is defeated in the 1940 presidential election by Charles A. Lindbergh. “Lucky Lindey” was famous because of his 1929 solo transatlantic crossing from New York to Paris, making him an international superstar in today’s parlance.
When his son, Charles A. Lindberg Jr., was kidnapped and murdered in 1932, the case became the “Crime of the Century.” The events surrounding the child’s death caused Congress to enact the famous Lindbergh law that made kidnapping a federal crime, a law that still stands today. Bruno Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter, was convicted and executed in 1936 for the abduction and murder of the Lindbergh baby.
According to the novel, when a deadlock occurred in Republican Convention of 1940, Lindbergh makes a surprise appearance in the wee hours of the morning. He wins the nomination, promising to keep America out of World War II, which was raging in Europe. In the subsequent election, he goes on to defeat FDR.
While this scenario may seem bizarre, it must be considered in the context of the time and the thinking of many Americans in the 1930s. Roth does an excellent job of interspersing facts and real-life political figures of the day into the story which adds to the novel’s credibility and appeal. In addition, the postscript provides historical information about the characters and an insightful account of America in the 1930s.
Such organizations the German Bund, also known as the German American Federation, which had chapters right here in Cleveland, the America First Movement and the KKK, were a part of the lives of many Americans. Black Americans lived under the thumb of Jim Crow in the South as well as the North. Ethnic groups lived in their own neighborhoods.
On February 20, 1939, a Nazi rally took place at Madison Square Garden, organized by the German American Bund. More than 20,000 people attended. The rally was billed as a pro “Americanism” and featured a stage with a huge portrait of George Washington with swastikas on each side. Fortunately, more than 100,000 anti-Nazi counterprotesters gathered outside.
The voices of such demagogues as Father Charles Coughlin, the Roman Catholic priest from Detroit whose radio listeners relished his anti-Roosevelt, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic rants through most of the 1930s, were loud and clear. “Kingfish” Huey Long, who made a career out of controlling Louisiana politics and criticizing Roosevelt and the New Deal, had a huge following with his Share Our Wealth program as an alternative to the New Deal. And then there were the anti-Semitic preachings of Henry Ford, all of which combined to establish a subculture focused on fascism, isolationism, antisemitism, xenophobia and downright racism.
While today’s society condemns the Nazi party, support for fascism and the Nazis was not that uncommon in the 1930s. That is the thesis of television news host and political commentator Rachel Maddow’s 2023 book, Prequel: American Fight Against Fascism. Maddow demonstrates how close America came to becoming a fascist nation in the 1930s.
Her point is reinforced in two other works of nonfiction dealing with the same topic: Hitler’s American Friends — The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States by Bradley Hart (2018) and Awakening the Spirit of America — FDR’s War of Words with Charles Lindbergh — The Battle to Save American Democracy by Paul Sparrow (2024). There is also another novel with a similar theme — It Can’t Happen Here, a 1935 work by Nobel Prize winning author Sinclair Lewis, which tells the story of a dictator who comes to power in America.
In Roth’s novel, Lindbergh, who in real life had visited Nazi Germany and played cozy with Hitler in the 1930s, signs a treaty with Nazi Germany that promises that the United States will not interfere with German expansion in Europe and another with Imperial Japan that promised noninterference with Japanese expansion in Asia as one of his first acts as president.
The story, as told through the voice of the eight-year-old Phillip, demonstrates the creeping anti-Semitism of the time and how his family and community are disrupted and nearly destroyed by it.
Phillip’s family is prevented from staying in the hotel they reserved for a vacation trip to Washington when the hotel manager finds out they are Jewish. Phillp’s aunt becomes involved with a rabbi who is a sellout to the Lindbergh administration, helping Lindbergh and his administration to further oppress the Jewish population. Phillip’s father loses his job because he will not go along with a government-sponsored program that will disperse the Jewish population around the country to reduce their ability to vote in blocks. Phillip’s older brother, an impressionable teenager, falls under the spell of the Lindbergh philosophy and struggles to see his identity as a Jew, while neighbors of Phillip’s family flee America for Canada.
I read this book some years ago and watched the miniseries. While I found it interesting at the time, it did not really strike a chord with me. But reading it again considering today’s politics, I found it not only scary but believable. Consider the consequences of a candidate for president who says that he will become a dictator on day one of his administration and pardon all the January 6 rioters. Consider the prominent Republicans who worked in the Trump administration who have come out publicly to urge voters not to vote for him. And for one of the only times in presidential history, Trump’s former vice president will not support him. That must tell you something.
Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction can sometimes predict the future. But in this case, we hope Roth’s work is only fiction. If you take the time to read it, you will find The Plot Against America is a page-turner that will make you have an entirely different perspective of what elections can mean to individual Americans.
If you are not inclined to read the book, binge on the miniseries. You will not be sorry. It will make you want to work harder for the Democratic ticket, from Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to Sherrod Brown and every Democrat running for office.
This election is too serious to take lightly. We cannot trust the polls. The polls told us that Hillary was going to win in 2016 and look what happened. We do not want to wake up on November 6 and face the prospects of #45 becoming #47 and Project 2025 the law of the land.
Get out and vote and make sure everyone in your family, on your job and in your neighborhood does also. It’s just that important. Democracy depends on it.
C. Ellen Connally is a retired judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. From 2010 to 2014 she served as the President of the Cuyahoga County Council. An avid reader and student of American history, she is a former member of the Board of the Ohio History Connection, and past president of the Cleveland Civil War Round Table, and is currently vice president of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission. She holds degrees from BGSU, CSU and is all but dissertation for a PhD from the University of Akron.
One Response to “The Plot Against America: Could Fiction Become Reality? by C. Ellen Connally”
Mel Maurer
We laugh at Trump but he’s not funny – he’s dangerous. They laughed at Hitler too until it was too late. Trump has exposed fascism in half of our population. Our ballots are our bullets.