When Charles Lindbergh takes the presidency as a Republican candidate in Philip Roth’s fictionalized version of the 1940 U.S. election, he runs on an anti-war, “America First” platform, determined to make sure that America stays out of World War II and to keep American lives from being lost in what Lindbergh claims to see as a European squabble. Seen as a staunch defender of American lives, Lindbergh’s popularity soars—yet his isolationist policies, his diplomatic meetings and signed agreements with Adolf Hitler himself, and his simmering anti-Semitism worry many Democrats and American Jews. As the novel unfolds, Lindbergh’s support of American isolationism successfully keeps Americans out of the war—but it leads to nothing short of a de facto alliance with Nazi Germany and a surrender to Hitler’s thirst for global dominion. Ultimately, Roth uses his alternate history of 1940s America in order to warn against the dangers of isolationism and to argue that the world must always stand in solidarity against evil.
As The Plot Against America unfolds, Philip Roth showcases his alternate America’s descent into isolationism through the eyes of a Jewish family terrified by their country’s lack of solidarity with the Jews of Europe. In showing how horrified the Roths and their neighbors are at the very idea of American isolationism, Roth implicitly condemns the instinct to selfishly protect oneself at the cost of doing what is right. The first character to rebel against the Lindbergh administration’s “America First” isolationist policies is Philip’s older cousin Alvin—the orphaned son of Philip’s father, Herman’s, brother who lives with the Roths as their ward. Alvin, furious with the direction his country has taken, flees to Canada, enlists in the army, and, within months, is sent back home from Europe after losing most of his left leg in a battle. Alvin returns home emaciated, traumatized, and reliant on the use of a prosthetic leg—but he’s nonetheless stoically proud of what he’s done. Though others, such as Rabbi Bengelsdorf, insist there was no need for Alvin to join the Canadian Army and make such a sacrifice, Roth uses Alvin’s story to make a profound point about the dangers of isolationism and the importance of solidarity. Alvin could have stayed in Newark forever, gone to college on his employer’s dime, and proceeded along the conventional, middle-class path laid out for him—but instead, he chooses to make a huge sacrifice and go off to war to fight for what he believes in and against what he cannot accept. Roth uses what happens to Alvin to show that even when there is great personal cost, it is of the utmost importance for those who can to stand up for what is right. Alvin’s disgust with the idea of American isolationism—and America’s collaboration with the Nazis in order to secure exemption from a war being fought against the ultimate evil the Nazis represent—functions to refute the temptation that Lindbergh and his administration created to do what is easy rather than what is right.
Another instance in which Roth examines the struggle between isolationism and solidarity—and simultaneously ties this struggle to the rapidly escalating anti-Semitism within American government and society alike—comes about midway through the novel, when young Philip describes the activities of the German American Bund in the middle months of 1942. At Bund rallies, “the deep fascist fellowship” of Nazi sympathizers gather in public places like Madison Square Garden and wave banners reading “Smash Jewish Communists!” and “KEEP AMERICA OUT OF THE JEWISH WAR.” Roth uses this instance to show how Nazi sympathizers see World War II as “the Jewish war”—and view any involvement in the crisis as frivolous and unnecessary, given their hatred of Jews. This passage suggests that many Americans—and more with each passing day under Lindbergh’s presidency—see Jews as communists, agitators, and fringe members of society whose wellbeing (or lack thereof) should not influence the actions taken by or the directives assigned to “mainstream” Gentile society. American isolationism under Lindbergh, then, is inextricably tied to a lack of solidarity with the Jews of the world borne out of a refusal to see Jewish people as real members of society.
Throughout the novel, Roth openly condemns the isolationist, nationalist policies of Charles Lindbergh—and, in so doing, condemns the ways in which those ideologies have streaked their ways through real, contemporary American politics and policy. By providing an alternate history of the early 1940s and America’s involvement in World War II, Philip Roth demonstrates the dangers of nationalism and isolationism while showing how important it is for a country—or even an individual—to always stand in solidarity with the side of good and fight for what’s right. Roth ultimately suggests that to put one’s head in the sand and look out only for oneself, whether on a personal or global level, is to blatantly allow evil to flourish.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Isolationism vs. Solidarity ThemeTracker
Isolationism vs. Solidarity Quotes in The Plot Against America
“Alvin’s going to go to Canada and join the Canadian army,” he said. “He’s going to fight for the British against Hitler.”
“But nobody can beat Roosevelt,” I said.
“Lindbergh’s going to. America’s going to go fascist.”
Then we just stood there together under the intimidating spell of the three portraits [of Lindbergh.]
Harmless enough, and yet it drove some of the mothers crazy who had to hear us at it for hours on end through their open windows. “Can’t you kids do something else? Can’t you find another game to play?” But we couldn’t—declaring war was all we thought about too.
“An independent destiny for America”—that was the phrase Lindbergh repeated some fifteen times in his State of the Union speech and again at the close of his address on the night of June 22. When I asked my father to explain what the words meant […] he frowned and said, “It means turning our back on our friends. It means making friends with their enemies. You know what it means, son? It means destroying everything that America stands for.”
“The Jews of America […] are unlike any other community of Jews in the history of the world. […] The Jews of America can participate fully in the national life of their country. They need no longer dwell apart, a pariah community separated from the rest.”
“Alvin can’t bear your president,” my father replied, “that’s why he went to Canada. Not so long ago you couldn’t bear the man either. But now this anti-Semite is your friend. The Depression is over, all you rich Jews tell me, and thanks not to Roosevelt but to Mr. Lindbergh. The stock market is up, profits are up, business is booming—and why? Because we have Lindbergh’s peace instead of Roosevelt’s war.”
Gone were the wall banners proclaiming “Wake up America—Smash Jewish Communists!” […] and the big white buttons with the black lettering that had been distributed to Bund members to stick into their lapels, the buttons that read:
KEEP AMERICA
OUT OF
THE JEWISH WAR
“I lived in Kentucky! Kentucky is one of the forty-eight states! Human beings live there like they do everywhere else! It is not a concentration camp! This guy makes millions selling his shitty hand lotion—and you people believe him!”
“I already told you about the dirty words, and now I’m telling you about this ‘you people’ business. ‘You people’ one more time, son, and I am going to ask you to leave the house.”
“Well, like it or not, Lindbergh is teaching us what it is to be Jews.” Then she added, “We only think we’re Americans.” “Nonsense. No!” my father replied. “They think we only think we’re Americans. It is not up for discussion, Bess. It is not up for negotiation. These people are not understanding that I take this for granted, goddamnit! Others? He dares to call us others? He’s the other. The one who looks most American—and he’s the one who is least American!”
A previously unpublicized section of the homesteading plan called the Good Neighbor Project [was] designed to introduce a steadily increasing number of non-Jewish residents into predominantly Jewish neighborhoods and in this way “enrich” the “Americanness” of everyone involved. […] The underlying goal of the Good Neighbor Project like that of Just Folks, was to weaken the solidarity of the Jewish social structure as well as to diminish whatever electoral strength a Jewish community might have in local and congressional elections.
My father was a rescuer and orphans were his specialty. A displacement even greater than having to move to Union or to leave for Kentucky was to lose one’s parents and be orphaned. Witness, he would tell you, what had happened to Alvin. Witness what had happened to his sister-in-law after Grandma had died. No one should be motherless and fatherless. Motherless and fatherless you are vulnerable to manipulation, to influences—you are rootless and you are vulnerable to everything.
This was how Seldon came to live with us. After their safe return to Newark from Kentucky, Sandy moved into the sun parlor and Seldon took over where Alvin and Aunt Evelyn had left off—as the person in the twin bed next to mine shattered by the malicious indignities of Lindbergh’s America. There was no stump for me to care for this time. The boy himself was the stump, and until he was taken to live with his mother’s married sister in Brooklyn ten months later, I was the prosthesis.
