Talk Elections

In 1940 the Republicans didn't like any of their choices. Thomas Dewey and Wendell Wilkie were too leftist, and Robert Taft was too boring and unelectable. Senate Minortiy Leader Charles McNarry offered a compromise, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. He was well known, a Conservative, electable, and able to run a strong campaign against President Roosevelt. Lindbergh was sweapt into the Republican nomination on the 4th Ballot, winning all but one vote. That vote was a curtisy vote for former President Herbert Hoover. To balance out Lindbergh's staunch isalationism and Conservatism the Republicans chose Wendell Wilkie for Vice President.

Now the Campaign of 1940 has began. Will president Roosevelt be defeated by an isalationist America. How well will Lindbergh do?  

Anybody But Roosevelt!  That socialist.

I would have voted for Lindbergh

Lindbergh, but his theory of isolationism was clearly wrong pre-WW2.

Yikes...is this poll serious?
Lindbergh was rather clearly a Nazi sympathizer and would have been a dreadful President.

Better than FDR.

exectly

FDR would still have won in a romp....

...bit like if it had been John Glenn vs Ronald Reagan in 1984...

...things where good in the USA in 1940, FDR was very popular the economy was roaring back into life and people felt optimistic... Republicans could only conceivable beaten FDR in 1944 with a  number of events happening to hurt Franklin in the run up...


Lindbergh would have done better than Wilkie but there would have been very very little chance he could have beaten FDR at the height of his power and prestige...


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As much as it would hurt me to vote against someone with Sweidsh heritage I have to vote for FDR here.

Well it's a tie and I can't make a map with a tie. No vote for the Socialist or the Prohibitionist! WOW!

Lindbergh warned US against Germany's improved air force. Combined with his isolationism this led people to think that he was actually a Nazi, but he wasn't. However I voted FDR. Isolationism wasn't really an option here.

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Based on poll tie and the real 1940 results.

FDR: 213

Lindbergh: 318

Whoa! That means Hitler takes over Europe.

Lindbergh's Top Cabinet Officials:

Secreatary of State: Herbert C. Hoover
Atorney General: Thomas Dewey
Secretary of Defense:Douglas MacArthur
Secretary of the Treasury: Andrew Mellon
Secretary of the Navy: Dwight Eisenhower

sh**t happens... ;) :(

FDR

This map just reminded me that the South has dominated American politics since 1930.

Lindbergh was a closet nazi :P

FDR flaunted his socialism.

FDR, absolutely, even if he were a true Northern European/Israeli style full out democratic socialist (which he wasn't). Lindberg was a Nazi, nobody wanted it said for a while. (Oswald Mosley was protected until like the 60s, after all, and he had nothing like Lindbergh's popularity). If Lindbergh wins, either the Nazis will conquer all of Europe, or the Soviets will. Britain will not be able to liberate diddly squat even if the USSR does really really well. (If Britain occupies Narvik, the Peloponessos, and Sicily, It'll be a miracle).

Oh yes, but I would write in a veep. Garner, Truman, Ike, Marshall, Hull, Morgenthau, Patton just for laughs. Even that slimy Isolationist Joe Kenedy, just not Wallace!

FDR

I'd rather have a Democratic Socialist than an undemocratic Nazi puppet (and in the end that’s what it would have boiled down to) any day of the week…

And FDR was no Socialist, check out Conrad Black’s Biography of him (Black’s was until recently the owner of the leading conservative English newspaper “The Telegraph”), Black gives a well written, detailed and balanced analysis of FDR and his life…very interesting, if very long to boot!

…but to repeat Huey Long was a socialist FDR was a populist open to giving the country a radical Keynesian program to get it working again and further more FDR was a patriot.. Lindbergh was a Fascist and a Nazi sympathiser who would have sold this nation down the river and allowed Japan and Germany free reign while he would have not given a care about defending democracy or the USA’s interests or allies…    

I'm pleased to say that FDR is now hammering the not-so-closet Nazi

rotflmao

If the poll was still around I'd vote for Lindbergh.

Lindbergh sounds really really familiar, but I don't know why...

Oh, the Lindbergh kidnapping. I did a research paper on it.

He also was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic.

Lindbergh was a Nazi.

Led by none other than H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr.

I mean, the investigation was led.

General Norman Schwarzkopf is not Charles Lindbergh's son.

Just needed to make that clear.

Ah, Hitler did take over Europe.

The key would have been Lindbergh's policy toward Japan.  He may have been more aggressive, expecially with the Phillipines threatend.

Conversely, Hitler might have been reluctant to support the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.  We could have een "The second World War," as a European War and the Nippo-American War, as a Pacific War. 

It would have to be Secretary of War (or possibly Secretary of the Navy).  Eisenhower was a colonel at the time, so it's unlikely.  Maybe someone who was a follower of Billy Mitchell.

I also would class Lindbergh as a Nazi, though he was sympathetic to Hitler.  He was the leader of the "America First" movement, so I'm not sure he would have compromised that position.

this is funny, im actually doing a project on lindbergh now, there is actually a what if book written about thsi topic, lindbergh beating FDR. It's called The Plot Against America : A Novel by Philip Roth...

I think that's how this thread was inspired.

This would be a good President Forever scenario.

I would vote for FDR. I wouldn't vote.

Is this thread serious?  FDR against a nazi?  FDR would win in a landslide with or without Lindbergh's popularity

Hey buddy. Lindbergh wasn't a nazi. The nazis were a political party in Germany. Lindbergh was an isolationist like Joe Kennedy. Lindbergh ran an isolationist organization and he, like Senator Taft, supported the war against Japan. He gets tarnished with the Nazi label for visiting Germany, why doesn't Chamberlain or Kennedy get tarred with that name?

An active supporter of Nazi Germany vs. FDR.  Never thought I would say this, but I vote for FDR.

lol. He accepted the German medal of honor and refused to return it after the outcry because he thought it would be an insult to the Nazi leadership. His letters and diaries showed that he admired Hitler and considered him a great leader. One of his speeches at an anti-war rally blamed "the Jewish race" for trying to get the US involved, and claimed he didn't consider American Jews to be fully American.

FDR

Dave

Write-in Thomas Dewey. He's not a conservative, but he's not as far left as FDR and he's not an isolationist like Lindy.

I think Hitler was a great leader. Leadership isn't always a good characteristic. Leadership is getting people to follow you. So, Lindbergh admires his abilities to lead people, that makes him a NAZI? And about him being anti-semetic, you forget that alot of people are anti-semetic. The church was anti-semetic for hundreds of years, doesn't mean they're NAZIs.

What Lindbergh was:
an isolationist
a patriot
an anti-semite
not a NAZI

Gee. Lindbergh seems like a total waste of sperm after his transatlantic flight.

to be honast I find the Roth novel to be extremely offensive saying that a Lindburg presidency would be a fasicst presidency when FDR was the one who put Japenese in concentration camps while Lindburg was a libertarian.

I don't think you read it in the right spirit. Besides, Lindbergh may have been a libertarian, but he was also indisputably, at least for a time, a Nazi sympathizer and at least a borderline anti-Semite.

And are'nt you the definition of a caring, kind Libertarian?;)

In 1940, isolationism was becoming a dying tendency as one after another ethnic group became anti-Nazi. Jews were obvious enough -- then Czechs, Poles, Dutch, Belgians, French, Danes, and Norwegians. Nazism became an embarrassment for German-Americans. Almost anyone with strong ties to Britain of course was anti-Nazi.