The Plot Against America

by Philip Roth

The body of Walter Winchell, slain that day at a political rally in Louisville, Kentucky, by a suspected American Nazi Party assassin working in collaboration with the Ku Klux Klan, will be carried overnight by train from Louisville to Pennsylvania Station in New York City. There, by order of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and under the protection of the New York City police, the body will lie in state in the great hall of the train station throughout the morning. According to Jewish custom, a funeral service will be held that same day, at two P.M. in Temple Emanu-El, New York’s largest synagogue. A public-address system will broadcast the proceedings beyond the temple to a gathering of mourners on Fifth Avenue expected to number in the tens of thousands. Along with Mayor La Guardia, speakers will include Democratic senator James Mead, New York’s Jewish governor, Herbert Lehman, and the former president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. “It’s happening!” my father cries. “He’s back! FDR is back!” “We need him bad,” Mr. Cucuzza says. “Boys,” he asks, “do you understand what is happening?” and here he throws his arms around Sandy and me. “It’s the beginning of the end of fascism in America! No Mussolini here, Cucuzza—no more Mussolini here!”