[dropcap]G[/dropcap]lobe-trotting newspaper reporter Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker spoke at Southern Methodist University in Dallas on Nov. 20, 1941, but as usual his pro-war message fell on deaf and hostile ears.
For years the award-winning journalist had implored the public to take a hard second look at Adolph Hitler and the threat fascism posed to democracy around the world. But he was drowned out by the greatest American hero of the century, who emphatically insisted that events in Europe did not concern this country.
Knickerbocker was a native of Yoakum and a graduate of Southwestern University at Georgetown. A short tour of army duty along the Mexican border and a job delivering milk in Austin preceded his 1919 departure for New York City.
Although Knickerbocker planned on a career in psychiatry, between classes at Columbia he moonlighted as a cub reporter for two Manhattan newspapers. Returning to Texas in 1922, he chaired the journalism department at SMU for a term before leaving for Germany to continue his studies.
Knickerbocker no sooner arrived in Munich than he witnessed first-hand the Nazis’ Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923. After selling his top-notch report of the crushed coup, the young Texan decided the newspaper business rather than the lucrative couch game was for him.
He moved to Berlin and by 1928 was the chief correspondent for the New York Evening Post and the Philadelphia Public Ledger. Mastering the unfamiliar foreign language, he wrote two regular newspaper columns and six books all in flawless German.
A 1931 Pulitzer Prize did not protect Knickerbocker from the wrath of the Nazis, after they took power two years later. Quickly deported for his critical coverage of the fascist regime, he interviewed dozens of important Europeans for a best-seller that accurately predicted the Second World War.
Meanwhile, most Americans were trying hard to ignore the disturbing developments on the distant continent. Reinforcing this traditional head-in-the-sand isolationism was none other than pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh.
On four occasions between 1936 and 1938, the Lone Eagle visited the Third Reich and each time came back with a positive impression of the Nazis. “Don’t believe anything you read about them in the press,” he said. “It’s lies. All lies.”
Even as the German blitzkrieg rolled through Poland in September 1939, Lindbergh went on nationwide radio to argue more strongly than ever the case for neutrality. Urging millions of listeners to be “as impersonal as the surgeon with his knife,” he advised Americans “not to permit our sentiment, our pity, or our personal feelings of sympathy to obscure the issue.”
While the British endured incessant bombing by the Luftwaffe, a Gallup poll taken in April 1941 showed that 80 percent of the American people still opposed going to war. That same month, Knickerbocker addressed an Austin audience on a hectic speaking tour, and Lindbergh enlisted in the largest noninterventionist lobby.
In the weeks following the recruitment of the Lone Eagle, the membership of the America First Committee nearly tripled to more than 800,000. Although the organization included the standard assortment of kooks and crackpots, the overwhelming majority was made up of respectable citizens committed to keeping the U.S. out of another bloodbath in Europe.
Although President Roosevelt had confided the previous year to a key aide, “I am absolutely convinced that Lindbergh is a Nazi,” he dared not openly attack the national idol. But after Lindbergh officially endorsed the America First movement, FDR compared him to the northern “copperheads” that sided with the South in the Civil War.
However, it was Lindbergh himself who orchestrated his own downfall. In a September 1941 speech he expressed pity for the plight of persecuted Jews in Europe but in the next breath warned American Jews of similar treatment, if they insisted upon pushing the country into war.
The rash remark was immediately condemned by prominent figures from all walks of life. With a thundering crash Charles Lindbergh fell off his unique pedestal leaving his priceless reputation in pieces. America’s love affair with the conqueror of the Atlantic was over.
The domestic debate abruptly ended eight months later on Dec. 7, 1941. The unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor made the war issue a moot question.
Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker derived no personal satisfaction from Lindbergh’s disgrace nor the tragic fact that it took an act of Japanese aggression to bring Americans to their senses. He would have much preferred to have been wrong and have world peace than to be right and watch the world go up in flames.
Bartee welcomes your comments and questions at [email protected] or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 and invites you to visit his web site at barteehaile.com.
