[On September
20, 1945, the first group of Nazi scientists repatriated to the US under
Operation Paperclip arrived at a
landing point in Boston Harbor. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful
of histories and stories of American Nazis, leading up to a special post on
that fraught anniversary.]
[NB. As of my
drafting of this post, I haven’t had a chance to watch David Simon’s HBO
miniseries adaptation of Roth’s novel, so my thoughts here will focus on
the book. I hope to get to that soon and will add an update here when I do!]
On three telling
& compelling layers to Philip
Roth’s 2004 alternate historical fiction.
One of the
consistent pleasures of reading alternate histories
(as with historical fiction in general, of course) is seeing how they
incorporate actual historical figures into (and refigure them within) their
imagined histories. Roth’s novel includes dozens of such figures in both important
and minor roles, but three of the most central are ones I’ve featured or
referenced in prior posts this week: in Roth’s central premise, Charles
Lindbergh is elected president in 1940 and aligns the US with Nazi Germany; he
appoints Henry Ford as his Secretary of the Interior; and one of Lindbergh’s
most consistent adversaries in the novel is New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia
(who in real life pushed back on the 1939 Madison Square Garden Nazi rally,
among many other anti-Nazi
and pro-Jewish efforts during his tenure as mayor). These historical
figures make Roth’s novel a juicier read for any student of American history,
but they also reflect a profound understanding of how the actual course of
1930s and 40s American history already intersected with Nazi Germany in many
different ways. That is, this may be an alternate history, but it’s a potently
realistic one.
Roth’s novel
does also include Father Coughlin, but in a briefer and more minor role,
perhaps because one of Roth’s central fictional characters is a religious
leader in his own right: Newark’s Conservative Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf, who
becomes a prominent Lindbergh supporter and who later marries the narrator
Philip’s Aunt Evelyn. As far as I’ve been able to learn, no prominent Jewish
American figures or leaders supported movements like the German American Bund
or the America First Committee (which I wrote about in Monday and Tuesday’s
posts, respectively), which makes sense given their overt and defining
antisemitism. But it’s also the case that no one linked to those movements ran
for president, nor gained the widespread popular support of a frontrunner for
that highest office; both of which are true of Roth’s Lindbergh by the time
that Bengelsdorf endorses him. So it certainly seems plausible that a
conservative Jewish figure like Bengelsdorf would under those circumstances
hitch his wagon to Lindbergh’s star—but it is even more plausible that doing so
does not spare Bengelsdorf from the rising tide of Nazism and antisemitism, as
he is later arrested when widespread white supremacist riots target Jewish
Americans throughout the nation.
To my mind the
novel’s most compelling characters are its younger generation Jewish Americans,
however, a group that includes not only the narrator Philip, but also and most
complicatedly his older brother Sandy (among others). Sandy is selected by the
Office of American Absorption (OAA) for its “Just Folks” program, which places
Jewish boys with Southern and Midwestern families in order to “Americanize”
them; Sandy is sent to a farm in Kentucky and returns home highly critical of
his family (calling them “ghetto Jews”). This complex and fraught plotline
echoes the experiences of young Native
Americans sent to the late 19th and early 20th
century boarding
schools, as well as the broader “Americanization”
movement of that same period. But it also allows Roth to explore an
uncomfortable truth likewise revealed by the Washington’s birthday 1939 New
York rally—that American Nazis could, and did, make the case that their beliefs
and movement aligned with foundational elements of American identity. One more
historical echo of this profoundly, painfully historical (and, yes, frustratingly salient)
alternate history novel.
Next
NaziStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?
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