The Plot Against America: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

The night after Winchell’s assassination, Alvin appears at the Roths’ driving a fancy new car and with a fiancé named Minna Schapp in tow. Minna—who is eight years Alvin’s senior—is the daughter of a Jewish former pinballer and gangster who has reformed himself into a successful gaming-machine entrepreneu and now wants to help establish Alvin as a respectable restaurateur rather than a two-bit hoodlum. Alvin tells the Roths that when Minna’s father gave him the money to buy Minna’s engagement ring, he told him: “Minna takes care of your leg, you take care of Minna, and I take care of you.”

Over dinner, Alvin tells the Roths all about his new life, employing an extensive and, to Philip, highly impressive lexicon of slang. Everyone else remains mostly silent. Minna is shy, while the Roths are distracted by the news of ongoing synagogue bombings and lootings of Jewish businesses throughout the Midwest. Alvin doesn’t mention one word about Winchell’s assassination or anything that has happened in its aftermath.

Though Alvin called earlier to ask Bess for permission to come to dinner and thank her and Herman for all they’d done for him over the years and “make peace,” it is, Philip notes, hardly an ideal time for such a visit, given the tensions exploding all over the country. It is the night of Winchell’s funeral, and the entire neighborhood is on pins and needles, anticipating violent outbreaks in New York and New Jersey in spite of the increased police presence in the Newark streets.

Though the night starts out amicably, things soon dissolve into havoc—the ordinarily gentle and nonconfrontational Herman exhibits “explosive strength” as he and Alvin clash horribly, beating each other bloody in the very middle of the dining room. Philip cannot help but think about the unprecedented fight in the context of the violence and mayhem that has seized the country in the last few days. Though the home should be a place to feel secure against the chaos happening in the outside world, the Roth household quickly dissolves into violence. Mr. Cucuzza, hearing the noise and fearing the worst, breaks into the living room wielding his pistol. Minna throws up, Philip urinates in his pants, and Herman tries his best to explain what is going on. 

Alvin’s prosthesis is cracked in two and his stump is badly mutilated by the time the fight is over. Herman has three shattered teeth, two broken ribs, and a gash on his cheek in need of stitches. The glass-topped coffee table is shattered, shards of it embedded in both Herman and Alvin’s palms. The whole fight, Philip says, was the result of Herman confronting Alvin about his indifference to the suffering of American Jews just because of his hopeful financial prospects. Alvin, in retaliation, began screaming about how he’d lost his leg and ruined his life “for the Jews.” As he pulled up his pant leg to remind Herman of his prosthesis, Alvin spit in Herman’s face—and then the fight broke out.

Late that night, after Mr. Cucuzza brings Herman back home from the emergency room, shots, screams, and sirens break out on a nearby street—the Cucuzzas hurry the Roths from their apartment to shelter them, fearing the pogroms have begun. The firing goes on for an hour, but the Roths don’t return home until dawn. In the morning, they learn that the firing was between the city police and the Jewish police—three Jews have been killed, but more on the basis of their being neighborhood thugs than on the basis of their Jewishness. Bullet Apfelbaum is among the dead—according to the Newark police, Bullet and his patrolmen are rumored to have fired the first shots after a verbal dispute.

In the morning, Herman calls Shepsie Tirschwell long-distance to tell his friend how rapidly things in Newark have deteriorated. He admits that he has been wrong all along—he wants to talk to Shepsie about emigration to Canada. As Philip and Sandy head from home for school, the exhausted Philip weeps the whole way—he feels that soon, his hometown will have no significance beyond being the place where he was born. However, over the week that follows, the Roths and their neighbors are shocked when suddenly the nightmare ends—Lindbergh disappears, and Jews are once again safe. The narration breaks starkly as Philip, using materials drawn from the archives of Newark’s Newsreel Theater, explains from a detached perspective the extraordinary events of October 6th through October 16th of 1942.

On Tuesday, October 6th, 30,000 mourners pass through Penn Station to pay their respects to Walter Winchell. A minute of silence is observed throughout the city and the NYPD monitors the streets as the funeral procession makes its way to Temple Emanu-El. Dignitaries fill the seats of the temple as Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who was himself born to a Jewish mother, delivers a eulogy in which he notes that though Winchell was a flawed man, his detractors in the Republican vanguard blithely ignore the fascist sympathies of their own figurehead. Out in the streets, those listening on loudspeakers begin chanting “Where is Lind-bergh?” over and over. FDR takes the pulpit and shocks the mourners gathered—and the nation watching—as he throws his support behind La Guardia as a “national unity” candidate opposing Lindbergh’s second term.

On Wednesday, October 7th, Lindbergh takes off from Long Island in the Spirit of St. Louis and heads for Louisville. When he lands, a mechanic immediately begins inspecting the plane and equipping it for the return flight. Nearly a third of Louisville’s 320,000 residents turn out at the airfield to listen to the president’s address—which makes no mention of Walter Winchell, his assassination, or his funeral. Instead, Lindbergh simply says he wants to remind the country that America is “at peace” and that he is returning soon to Washington to make sure it stays that way. Lindbergh returns to his plane, takes off, and rises into the air—but his plane disappears between Louisville and Washington, “never to be seen again.”

On Thursday, October 8th, ground searches of Lindbergh’s ostensible flight path yield no evidence of any wreckage. The Army, the Coast Guard, the Navy, and the National Guard join the search—but that evening, it seems more obvious than ever that Lindbergh’s plane has simply vanished. Burton K. Wheeler, Lindbergh’s controversial Vice President, assumes the duties of acting president. Headlines across America read: “WHERE IS LINDBERGH?”

On Friday, October 9th, Americans across the country awake to find that martial law has been imposed under Acting President Wheeler—rumor has it that Lindbergh has been kidnapped and is being held hostage somewhere in North America by “parties unknown.” Wheeler assures Congress that he is working toward the president’s release. The nation seals its borders and shuts down airports and seaports. Newspapers across the country print the headline “AGAIN!” accompanied by a picture of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s two-year-old son, Charles Jr., who went missing in 1932.

On Saturday, October 10th, German state radio announces that Lindbergh’s disappearance has been perpetrated by a conspiracy of “Jewish interests,” orchestrated by FDR in collusion Jewish members of the government—including the half-Jewish La Guardia—in order to launch a Jewish war against the rest of the world. The Germans suggest this unseen cabal also murdered Winchell, planted a rogue mechanic at the Kentucky airfield who worked to silence Lindbergh’s radio, and are now holding him in captivity in Canada. Acting President Wheeler, ignoring common sense, examines this German intel carefully with the help of several White House aides. When Bengelsdorf is seen arriving at the White House in the early evening, however, it becomes widely understood that Anne Morrow Lindbergh does not believe “Jewish interests” have anything to do with the president’s disappearance.

On Sunday, October 11th, after a national day of prayer, Acting President Wheeler addresses the nation via radio to assure his fellow Americans that he has not abandoned the search for Lindbergh, and that Canada has joined the search as well. Rabbi Bengelsdorf addresses reporters outside the White House that same evening and tells them that Anne Morrow Lindbergh is unconvinced that a kidnapping is behind her husband’s disappearance. The media begins to report that the First Lady has become the captive of “Rabbi Rasputin,” comparing Bengelsdorf to the Siberian monk who insinuated himself into the imperial palace in Russia, taking control of the royal family in the days before the Russian Revolution.

On Monday, October 12th, the London media reports that British intelligence has obtained coded German communications which prove that Lindbergh is alive and well in Berlin. According to the intel, Lindbergh has, in accordance with a prearranged agreement with Göring, ditched the St. Louis in the Atlantic, hopped aboard a German U-boat, and flown to German to meet with Hitler. La Guardia issues a statement condemning Lindbergh’s treason. Though martial law is still in place, anti-Semitic riots break out across the nation at sundown. By the next morning, 122 Americans have died. 

On Tuesday, October 13th, Wheeler addresses the nation and blames the riots on the British government and its American supporters. He decries and discredits the intel on Lindbergh and reports that order has been restored to America after one terrible night. Bengelsdorf delivers his own address, reading a statement from the First Lady in which she discourages her fellow Americans to ignore unproven claims about her husband’s disappearance. The First Lady declines to speak directly with any reporters. Government officials call for the arrest of “Rabbi Rasputin.” 

On Wednesday, October 14th, a Chicago Tribune article reports that President Lindbergh has been reunited with his missing son, Charles Jr., in Berlin. According to the article, Charles Jr. is now 12 years old and has been imprisoned in a Jewish ghetto in Krakow, where his blood has been drawn and used in the preparation of Passover matzohs for years. Meanwhile, House Republicans call for war against Canada. Law enforcement agencies across the country blame the “so-called anti-Semitic riots” of October 12th on local branches of a larger, more far-reaching Jewish conspiracy. La Guardia condemns the “hysteria, ignorance, malice, stupidity, hatred, and fear” that has seized the nation. La Guardia suggests that Hitler is leading a campaign of misinformation aimed at American Jews.

On Thursday, October 15th, Rabbi Bengelsdorf is taken into FBI custody under suspicion of being “among the ringleaders of the Jewish conspiratorial plot against America.” The First Lady is taken to the hospital. Several other Jewish or leftist government members, labor leaders, economists, and journalists are arrested. Anti-FBI protests and demonstrations break out in America’s major cities even as the Republicans praise the FBI’s swift action in “thwarting the conspirators’ plot.” All radio stations and newspapers in New York are shut down, as are all bridges and tunnels into the cities. Rumors of a surprise Canadian attack swirl over the airwaves. Reports from London warn of an imminent German invasion of Mexico.

On Friday, October 16th, Anne Morrow Lindbergh addresses the nation—she says that she was kidnapped, placed in a mental ward, and straitjacketed and held prisoner, but that she’s now free. She begs for the disarmament of the National Guard, for the FBI to release those arrested, and for Congress to remove Wheeler from office and appoint the secretary of state to the presidency. Wheeler, she says, was in charge of her abduction. Two and a half weeks later, after the First Lady dismantles Wheeler’s government, FDR is be elected to a third presidential term. The next month, after Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, America officially enters World War Ii. FDR pardons Burton Wheeler. President Lindbergh is never found or heard from again.

The most unbelievable (but not least convincing) story Philip hears about the truth of Lindbergh’s disappearance comes from Aunt Evelyn in the days following Bengelsdorf’s arrest—the story, she says, is straight from the First Lady. According to Bengelsdorf, the Nazis were behind the 1932 kidnapping of Charles Jr. They smuggled him out of America, planted a fake corpse, and told the Lindberghs of the child’s healthy, safe arrival in Berlin. He would be kept alive, the Nazis told the couple, as long as they complied with orders from Berlin. Lindbergh’s entire presidency, then, was engineered by Hitler himself—Lindbergh was a tool in a larger plot against America, complying with whatever the Nazis ordered him to do in exchange for rare and brief meetings every few years with his son.

Every speech, every political stratagem, and even every outfit Lindbergh wore was handpicked by the Nazis in service of their “grand imperial design.” The Nazis began applying pressure on Lindbergh to institute measures against American Jews—only then, according to Bengelsdorf, did Lindbergh resist, instituting “token programs” like Just Folks and Homestead 42 to appease the Nazis. Von Ribbentrop’s state dinner was part of a meeting meant to formulate more anti-Jewish measures—and again, Lindbergh’s child was used as blackmail as the Nazis pressured him to take steps that would bring America closer to its own “final solution.”

The Nazis quickly dubbed Lindbergh a coward and a “dinner-party anti-Semite.” Frustrated with his failure to comply with their vision, the Nazis disappeared Lindbergh and appointed Wheeler, who was more sympathetic to their cause, to the presidency. The Nazis, following Lindbergh’s capture, attempted to force the First Lady to do their bidding, warning her that if she did anything other than vacate the White House in silence, her son Charles Jr. would be sent to fight on the front lines in Stalingrad.

Hours after Bengelsdorf’s arrest, Evelyn arrives at the house and conveys the above story to Bess and Philip. Just after the war, Bengelsdorf publishes it as a tell-all—My Life Under Lindbergh. Philip wonders if Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s radio speech—and her call for the end of Wheeler’s presidency—meant that her son Charles Jr. came to harm (or whether the child the Nazis presented to the Lindberghs as Charles Jr. was even their own son). These questions and more, the older Philip writes, are still controversial.