i am in sympathy with the people on both sides

In a prepared testimony to the US Congress delivered on this day in 1941, celebrity and noted anti-Semite Charles A Lindbergh leveraged his fame from a 1927 transatlantic crossing to present the case to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that there was no possibility for an American air invasion to have any meaningful impact on the war in Europe and it would be better for the world to let the war draw to its natural conclusion as a pyrrhic victory.  Laying the blame for fighting as much with Britain as Nazi Germany, the aviator argued, speaking to popular sentiment, that negotiated peace and a non-aggression pact was the best path for America to pursue. The media frenzy from a decade before of the kidnap and subsequent death of the Lindbergh’s infant son and driven him and his wife to Europe to escape the press and became fascinated with German engineering prowess and as an personality of international stature was courted and lavished with accolades by fighting ace and Nazi Air Minister Hermann Göring. By the time the Lindberghs returned in 1939, many recognised his openly pro-Nazi sympathies. The appearance before Congress occurred five months before Germany invaded the Soviet Union and came on the heels of Churchill’s grim assessment that sixty-thousand individuals, nearly half civilians, in the first year and a half of hostilities.