The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

From Michael O’Conner, for About.com

What if America had adopted an isolationist stance during World War II? Or, worse, what if the American president had openly supported Adolph Hitler, and signed a pact of agreement with the Nazis declaring America would not enter the war? What would America have looked liked if the "Greatest Generation" had never existed?

Philip Roth addresses this alternate history in his latest novel, The Plot Against America, in which he imagines the 1940 election of Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh, the aviator famous for being the first man to traverse the Atlantic on a solo flight, was also an open supporter of Hitler and the Nazi party. (Roth supplements the novel with a real chronology of Lindbergh's life, including several quotes indicating his Nazi sympathies.) Yet, Lindbergh remained tremendously popular in the States. This dichotomy (a vocal proponent of dictatorships gaining a following in the land of the free) is the bouncing point for Roth's novel.

In classic Roth style, The Plot Against America is narrated by a young boy from urban New Jersey, in this case a youthful version of the author. As the novel opens, young Philip describes his Jewish neighborhood as like any other ethnic enclave in the city; the residents being ten times more likely to buy a racing form at the newsstand than a copy of the daily Yiddish paper. They were Jews, certainly, but they were American first. "Our homeland was America" states Roth, "Then the Republicans nominated Lindbergh and everything changed."

The story is restricted mainly to the Roth family and their close circle of relatives and friends, explaining how the Lindbergh presidency directly effects their livelihood. The Roths are quickly introduced to the new America when they take a family vacation to Washington, D.C. soon after the election, encountering their first bout with anti-Semitism as they are turned away from the hotel at which they had reservations. But has the hotel really instituted a policy of turning away Jewish clientele, or have they just made a mistake? It is clear to Philip's father to be in the first category, but throughout the novel, the Roths run into situations that may or may not be part of a larger undercurrent of discrimination, and Roth (the author) often leaves it up to the reader to determine when anti-Semitism against the Roths is real, and when it is just perceived as a result of the climate of heightened tension among Jews.

While many of the Roths' early conflicts in the novel may not be a direct result of anti-Semitic policy, it becomes clear that President Lindbergh's support of Hitler and the Nazi Party comes to lend validation to widespread anti-Semitic feelings that are already hedging under the surface of American society. The effect on the Roths is intensified by the family's close relationship to Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf, a prominent Jewish leader, who is also a supporter of Lindbergh and a member of the president's cabinet. Bengelsdorf is engaged to Philip's aunt Evelyn and the rabbi and his wife try to convince the Roths of the legitimacy of the Lindbergh plan for America, claiming the president's best interest in wanting to empower Jews through assimilation into the larger American culture.

As head of the Office of American Absorption, Rabbi Bengelsdorf is in charge of an insidious Lindbergh program called Just Folks. The program, designed to take ethnic (mainly Jewish) children away from their families and place them in the home of a Midwestern American family for a summer, is reminiscent of a real American program of the late 1800's that removed Native American children from their homes and placed them in non-Native schools with hopes of "Americanizing" them. "Kill the Indian, and save the man" was a slogan used by one of the men responsible for that program, and one that could easily be modified to fit the goal of Just Folks.

As leader of Just Folks, Rabbi Bengelsdorf conscripts Philip's older brother Sandy to be among the first run of boys in the program. Despite his parent's protestations, Sandy is excited about the opportunity to see the country, accepts his uncle's invitation. When Sandy returns from the program a changed boy, spouting the rhetoric of Lindbergh supporters like his aunt and uncle, Philip's father battles to retain control of his sons, whom he feels slipping away from him.

Sandy is nearly gone already, and Philip, who looks up to his older brother, is confused by Sandy's newfound political affiliations and begins to question his father's ideology. If Sandy and a well-respected Jew like Rabbi Bengelsdorf both support Lindbergh, maybe his father is wrong. "How could I not be confused," wonders Philip about Bengelsdorf, "when our disgrace and our glory were one and the same?"

As the novel progresses, the Roths and the larger Jewish community continue to disintegrate as new Lindbergh policies chip away at strongholds of Jewish heritage like Newark. The most damaging blow comes in the form of the Homestead '42 program, which, like the Just Folks initiative, aims to assimilate minorities by transplanting urban Jews like the Roths to the Midwest. The Roths are one of the early families chosen for the program and are asked to move to Danville, Kentucky, where Philip's father has been transferred by his company. Forced to choose between a financially secure life for his family, and his heritage, Philip's father must make a decision on which is more important to the well-being of his family.

With Lindbergh's soaring popularity, and the programs initiated by Bengelsdorf's Office of American Absorption, many Jews, the Roths included, pin their dreams on the shoulders of Franklin Roosevelt and Walter Winchell, the two remaining bastions of Democratic value, and reminders that the whole country hasn't gone mad with Lindy. But the little hope they offer is overshadowed by the intensifying Lindbergh agenda. As violence begins to erupt in cities with major Jewish populations, the Roths' hope for change dwindles until it is finally squashed when they receive a phone call from a classmate of Philip's who has moved with his mother as part of the Homestead program. The young child has not seen his mother in almost a day and calls the only people who he knows--the Roths--seven hundred miles away. As Philip witnesses his mother take the call, he finally notes the severity of what has been going on, "Till Seldon's frantic phone call from Kentucky, I'd never totted up the cost to my mother and father of the Lindbergh presidency-till that moment, I'd been unable to add that high."

What is so frightening about Roth's creation is the reality of it, and it is not a stretch of praise to place The Plot Against America in the same realm as it's dystopic predecessors like 1984. But unlike Orwell's world, Roth needs no Big Brother to create a climate of oppression and fear. Rather, his envisages the dangers of a president with an agenda, and a population willing to go along with it. It doesn't take an army of jackbooted thugs patrolling the streets or a system of armband identifiers like those used in Nazi Germany to oppress the Roths and the Jewish neighbors, just a population willing to go along with the status quo. Roth's novel is a powerful piece of fiction and one that will be read, with meaning, for ages.

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