The Plot Against America / Philip Roth ( 2005)

I read this book for the second after time after finishing Those Angry Days (Lynne Olsen).

Both cover that period in America from 1939 onwards when the nation was divided between isolationists and interventionists in regard to joining the war against Nazi Germany.

In Roth’s work Charles Lindbergh wins the Republican nomination and defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election.

Under Lindbergh’s presidency the USA becomes a state sympathetic to Nazism and he signs an understanding with Adolf Hitler in Iceland.

After that, the country veers towards overt  anti-semitism.

This is seen through the eyes of the child Philip Roth growing up in a Jewish community in Newark.

As a historical work its content is dubious.

Lindbergh was a shy man who saw himself as national hero as an aviator.

He played a significant role with Henry Ford in the Victory Programme, a figure castigated as anti-semitic in this novel.

However, second time round, I was impressed by the quality of the writing and social observation.

The characters are credible and well drawn. There are events but ironically no real plot.

Philip’s cousin Alvin flees USA for Canada and joins their army.

He loses a leg fighting the cause.  He returns to the family and ends up in crime.

Although I disagree with the historical foundations the way in which a society can descend into fascism is chilling: the holiday camps for kids (Oswald Mosley set these up on the South Coast as accounted in Cressida Connolly’s After The Party) the relocation of Jewish people to new parts of the States, the overt anti-semitism.

In the final chapters Roth loses the plot as it emerges that the Nazis kidnapped his child in 1931 to control him.

As the kidnapping happened in 1931, two years before Hitler came to power, this is most unlikely.

I would suggest to readers they start with Those Angry Days for a more factual account and The Plot Against America more for its social observation.