At Tuesday’s council meeting, Buena Park Councilman Connor Traut signaled his desire to re-name the city’s Charles Lindbergh Park after a woman, claiming the famous aviator was a “known Nazi sympathizer.”
Charles Lindbergh was a giant of American aviation and made history in 1927 be becoming the first person to successfully complete a non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic in his iconic “Spirit of St. Louis” airplane.
Councilman Jose Castaneda enthusiastically agreed with Traut’s remarks, saying “thumbs up” and saying he would like to re-name the park in honor of Bessie Coleman, the first African-American and Native American female to hold a pilot’s license. Coleman died in a plane crash in 1926.
The 31-year old Castaneda moved from Fullerton to Buena Park in 2021, and shortly afterward announced his candidacy for Buena Park City Council.
However, there is no evidence Lindbergh was a Nazi sympathizer – known or otherwise – while the historical record indicates the opposite is true.
The 28-year old Traut made his claim about Lindbergh after complaining all city parks are named after men, and saying he’d like more named after women.
“Right now we have over a dozen parks in our city. All of them are named after men,” said Traut, ran for council in 2018, shortly after moving into Buena Park from Anaheim.
“Some of the parks are many of the parks are very worthy of their name, but I think a good example of a great one Rick Gomez park, but we also even have one that is named after a known Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh Park. So I think we’ve got to be able to do better,” said Traut.
Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh was an isolationist who staunchly opposed American involvement in European affairs and involvement in World War II – a position shared by the large majority of Americans.
The “Nazi sympathizer” myth stems from two incidents.
During the latter half of the 1930’s, Lindbergh made several visits to Nazi Germany to inspect aerospace and Luftwaffe facilities – visits he made at the request of the State Department to gather intelligence on the growing air power of the Third Reich.
Lindbergh was a huge international celebrity, and during a dinner at the American Embassy in Berlin in October 1938, Nazi Air Minister Hermann Goering recognized his service to world aviation with the Service Cross of the German Eagle (which had previously been presented to other foreign luminaries). A press photo of the Lindbergh receiving the medal from Goering sparked much criticism of Lindbergh in the American press.
Lindbergh and his wife were living in Europe at the time. A month after the embassy dinner, the Nazis carried out their sinister Kristallnacht pogrom against German Jews. This prompted Lindbergh to cancel plans for his family to take up temporary residence in Berlin.
The other source of the pro-Nazi myth was a speech Lindbergh made in 1940 while campaigning across the country for US neutrality in World War II. On September 11, 1941, during a speech in Des Moines, he alleged the “three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.”
Lindbergh’s speech provoked severe public criticism and accusations of anti-Semitism, which Lindbergh denied.
In the same speech, Lindbergh also said: “It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them.”
A. Scott Berg, who is Jewish and won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1999 biography of Lindbergh, told the Minneapolis Star-Times that Lindbergh “certainly bought into traditional anti-Semitic stereotyping” but did not believe Lindbergh hated Jews.
The damage to Lindbergh’s reputation was significant and he resigned from the America First Committee.
Less than two months later, the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on the United States.
Lindbergh tried to enlist in the US Army Air Force, but was stymied by the Roosevelt Administration. Lindbergh went to work in the wartime aircraft industry. In 1944, he went to the Pacific Theater to evaluate American aircraft in combat conditions, and taught pilots how to conserve fuel and fly long-range missions.
During that time, Lindbergh participated in more than 50 combat missions against Imperial Japanese forces and was credited with at least one kill.
Following the remarks by Traut and Castaneda, Mayor Art Brown attempted to correct the record.
“He became an instructor in the Pacific and trained our pilots in the Pacific to better fly the Lockheed Lightning and shoot down many Japanese airplanes,” said the 84-year old Brown. “He actually he shot down one himself.”
“So he did one thing bad but he did a hell of a lot of good during World War Two,” Brown, a Navy and Marine Corps veteran, continued. “So, before we vilify the man and throw him under the airplane tire, let’s take a look at both sides of that story.”
OC Independent has reached out to Councilman Traut to ask if he stands by his claim that Lindbergh was a “known Nazi sympathizer” given the historical record to the contrary.
UPDATE: Councilman Traut responded to our request for comment. He did not respond as to whether he stood by his claim that Lindbergh was a “known Nazi sympathizer,” but changed the subject by alleging Lindbergh was an anti-Semite and re-stated his commitment to re-naming Charles Lindbergh Park after a woman:
“In Buena Park, we have criteria to name our parks after people with enduring positive importance to our community. I am concerned about countless reports pertaining to Charles Lindbergh’s record of antisemitism, including support for eugenics, negative statements against Jewish people, and links to Nazi leaders. I encourage our Parks & Recreation Commissioners to review re-naming Lindbergh Park after a person more deserving of this honor, and for that person to be a woman – becoming the first park named after a woman in our city.“
Traut provided the following to back his claim:
“A war within our own family of nations, a war which will reduce the strength and destroy the treasures of the White race. … We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.” – Charles Lindbergh (Reader’s Digest, 1939)
“We must limit to a reasonable amount the Jewish influence. … Whenever the Jewish percentage of total population becomes too high, a reaction seems to invariably occur. It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country. … A few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos. And we are getting too many.” – Charles Lindbergh (his personal journal).
