This is John Batchel, a conversation with Professor H.W. Brands, Bill Brands. His new book,

America First, Roosevelt versus Lindberg in the Shadow of War. These are the critical years,

1939, 1940, and then the Japanese attack in 1941. Lindberg was the hero of the age.

FDR, running for a third term,

was a genius at political success.

H.W. Brands introduces here Lindberg and his thinking

about the New Germany and the old Britain.

More of this tonight, much more.

Finberg had a stubborn admiration for German culture. He thought the Germans knew how to do

things right. And he was quite dismayed at this strange and alarming turn that German politics

had taken. So he did not know what to make of Christalmacht. He did not know

what to make of Adolf Hitler. He did not know what to make of the rise of the Nazi party and the

apparent, obvious, embraced by the German people of these strange new movements. So this puzzled him.

He was very discouraged about the British and Britain's approach to world affairs because he

thought Britain at one time had been a great country, but it had allowed itself to fall into

complacency and apathy. And this seemed to be marked by the fact that the British and the French

had established this post-war regime

at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. And they'd imposed these restrictions on Germany,

which were unrealistic at the time, as almost everybody realized. And then they refused to enforce

them afterwards. So it was as though the British thought that they could

continue to cruise on the momentum that their empire had had in the 19th century. But Lindbergh thought

that Britain's day was behind it. Its great time was behind it. And this was why he was so puzzled

...