June 18, 2025: American Nazis: The Plot Against America

[In the summerof 1945, Nazi scientists began arriving in the United States, recruited towork in the US government and eventuallyits space program as part of OperationPaperclip. But they weren’t the first American Nazis by any means, and thisweek I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of others, leading up to a weekend post on aninteresting and fraught recent cultural representation of Paperclip.]

[NB. As ofmy drafting of this post, I haven’t had a chance to watch David Simon and Ed Burns’ HBOminiseries adaptation of Roth’s novel, so my thoughts here will focus on thebook. I hope to get to that at some point and will add an update here if and whenI do!]

On threetelling & compelling layers to PhilipRoth’s 2004 alternate historical fiction.

One of theconsistent pleasures of reading alternatehistories (as with historical fiction in general, of course) is seeing howthey incorporate actual historical figures into (and refigure them within) theirimagined histories. Roth’s novel includes dozens of such figures in both importantand minor roles, but three of the most central are ones I’ve featured orreferenced in prior posts this week: in Roth’s central premise, CharlesLindbergh is elected president in 1940 and aligns the US with Nazi Germany; heappoints Henry Ford as his Secretary of the Interior; and one of Lindbergh’smost 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-Naziand pro-Jewish efforts during his tenure as mayor). These historicalfigures 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 of1930s and 40s American history already intersected with Nazi Germany in manydifferent ways. That is, this may be an alternate history, but it’s a potentlyrealistic one.

Roth’snovel does also include Father Coughlin, but in a briefer and more minor role,perhaps because one of Roth’s central fictional characters is a religiousleader in his own right: Newark’s Conservative Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf, whobecomes a prominent Lindbergh supporter and who later marries the narratorPhilip’s Aunt Evelyn. As far as I’ve been able to learn, no prominent JewishAmerican figures or leaders supported movements like the German American Bundor the America First Committee (which I wrote about in Monday and Tuesday’sposts, respectively), which makes sense given their overt and definingantisemitism. But it’s also the case that no one linked to those movements ranfor president, nor gained the widespread popular support of a frontrunner forthat highest office; both of which are true of Roth’s Lindbergh by the timethat Bengelsdorf endorses him. So it certainly seems plausible that aconservative Jewish figure like Bengelsdorf would under those circumstanceshitch his wagon to Lindbergh’s star—but it is even more plausible that doing sodoes not spare Bengelsdorf from the rising tide of Nazism and antisemitism, ashe is later arrested when widespread white supremacist riots target JewishAmericans throughout the nation.

To my mindthe novel’s most compelling characters are its younger generation JewishAmericans, however, a group that includes not only the narrator Philip, butalso and most complicatedly his older brother Sandy (among others). Sandy isselected by the Office of American Absorption (OAA) for its “Just Folks”program, which places Jewish boys with Southern and Midwestern families inorder to “Americanize” them; Sandy is sent to a farm in Kentucky and returnshome highly critical of his family (calling them “ghetto Jews”). This complexand fraught plotline echoes the experiences of young NativeAmericans sent to the late 19th and early 20thcentury boardingschools, as well as the broader “Americanization”movement of that same period. But it also allows Roth to explore anuncomfortable truth likewise revealed by the Washington’s birthday 1939 NewYork rally—that American Nazis could, and did, make the case that their beliefsand movement aligned with foundational elements of American identity. One morehistorical echo of this profoundly, painfully historical (and, yes, frustratinglysalient) alternate history novel.

NextNaziStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?