A new biography reveals that Charles Lindbergh, the aviator celebrated as an American hero, led a secret double life for decades, fathering seven children with three German women while married to his wife, acclaimed writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
The book, “Solo and Together: Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, an Enigmatic Life and Marriage,” by James R. Hansen, documents a 45-year marriage marked by public triumph and private turmoil, running from their 1929 wedding until Charles Lindbergh’s death in 1974.
Hansen, who also wrote “First Man,” a biography of Neil Armstrong, said he aimed to tell the Lindberghs’ story without judgment. “They had a remarkable marriage not because it was ideal but because it was so intensely human,” Hansen told The Post. “And the triumphs and failures in their lives are almost inseparable.”
Charles Lindbergh became a global celebrity in May 1927 after flying solo across the Atlantic at age 25. He met Anne Morrow, then 21, that December in Mexico City, where her father, Dwight Morrow, served as the American ambassador. The two married in 1929 in the drawing room of the Morrow family home in Englewood, N.J., with only family present.
Anne trained as a radio operator and navigator to co-pilot a 1931 expedition with her husband surveying air routes over Canada and Alaska to the Far East. She later won a National Book Award for “North to the Orient,” her account of the trip.
The Kidnapping
In March 1932, the couple’s toddler son, Charles Lindbergh Jr., was kidnapped from the nursery of their Hopewell, N.J., home. The child’s body was found dead in nearby woods two months later. Bruno Hauptmann was later convicted of the murder and executed.
Hansen told The Post that Charles Lindbergh responded to the tragedy by trying to control the investigation and suppressing his emotions. “Anne needed to grieve, she needed to talk, and Charles responded by building emotional walls,” Hansen said.
The family left the United States afterward, living first in England and then on a remote island off Brittany.
Germany and America First
The U.S. government sent Lindbergh to assess German air power before World War II. He praised what he called “the organized vitality” of the country and argued that no other European nation could or should challenge Germany’s military buildup.
Anne privately mocked a swastika-studded medal Lindbergh received from Luftwaffe commandant Hermann Goering, calling it “the albatross.” But when her husband joined the America First Committee and gave speeches accusing Jews of pushing the U.S. toward war with Germany, Anne defended him publicly, telling her mother, “Charles stands for integrity.” In 1940 she published “The Wave of the Future,” arguing fascism wasn’t worth fighting — a book she later disavowed.
A Marriage Tested
By 1950, Anne, then 44 and the mother of five, began considering divorce. Charles spent the war advising the Air Force in the South Pacific and flying combat missions, including one in which he shot down a Japanese plane. After the war he kept traveling for work, leaving Anne alone for months raising the children in Darien, Conn.
Charles’s parenting was rigid — he issued each child a to-do list to complete before his return — and he strongly disapproved when Anne began seeing a psychiatrist, cutting off communication with her for six months.
Anne later told her daughter Reeve she had planned to leave Charles once her youngest child turned 10. Instead she grew close to her internist, Dr. Dana Atchley, who likely became her lover for a time. During this period she wrote “Gift From the Sea,” a meditation on solitude and relationships that became an immediate bestseller in 1955 and has since sold three million copies.
The Secret Families
Charles Lindbergh had an intimate relationship with his German secretary, Valeska von Arnim, who bore him a son in 1958. Around the same time, he began affairs with two of von Arnim’s friends, sisters Brigitte and Marietta Hesshaimer. In total, he fathered seven children with the three women, making regular secret visits to see them.
Hansen said Anne likely sensed something was wrong but avoided confirming it. “Anne knew something was up, but she didn’t know what it was, and she really didn’t want to know what it was,” he told The Post.
When Lindbergh was dying of cancer in 1974, he insisted on spending his final days at the couple’s A-frame home on Maui despite doctors’ warnings he might not survive the trip. Anne supported the decision. “Going along with how he was and how he wanted everything done, was so typically Anne,” Hansen writes.
Lindbergh arranged for a grave in Kipahulu with space for Anne beside him. She ultimately declined it. After her death in 2001, Anne was cremated and her ashes scattered across places she loved, including Maui.
