The Plot Against America unfolds in a world much like our own. Set in Newark, New Jersey, on the eve of World War II, Philip Roth’s 2004 novel finds its protagonist, a fictionalized version of the 7-year-old author himself, leading a banal existence punctuated by nightly radio news broadcasts, dinners with his all-American Jewish family and neighborhood excursions undertaken to fill the halcyon hours of summer vacation. Then, the writer-narrator recounts, “[T]he Republicans nominated Lindbergh and everything changed.”
What follows is an alternate history penned in the same vein as Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, a 1962 novel recently adapted for television by Amazon Studios. Like High Castle, The Plot Against America—the subject of a new HBO limited series of the same name—poses the age-old question of “What if?” But while the former depicts a world in which the Axis powers won the war, the latter places its departure from the historical record prior to the conflict’s peak, envisioning a virulently isolationist United States that nevertheless ends up entangled in international affairs.
Seamlessly blending truth and imagination, The Plot Against America pits aviator Charles A. Lindbergh against incumbent Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. Voters’ choice, argues the Spirit of St. Louis pilot and fervent “America Firster” in a trailer for the series, is not between Lindbergh and Roosevelt, but “between Lindbergh and war.”
Roth’s account of a celebrity-turned-politician winning the presidency on a platform of fearmongering and “othering” proved more prophetic than he could have predicted.
“It’s a story of an American dystopia,” explains “The Plot Against America” showrunner David Simon to Variety’s Will Thorne. “It seems startlingly prescient in that it anticipates a politician who seizes upon a very simple message and is able to activate the worst fears and impulses of a significant number of Americans. He gets them to relinquish not only power, but some of the most essential bulwarks of self-governance.”
While the Roth family, renamed the Levins in the HBO show, and many of the characters mentioned in The Plot Against America are based on real people, much of the narrative is entirely contrived. From the true extent of Lindbergh’s anti-Semitic views to the rise of the “America First” movement, here’s what you need to know to separate fact from fiction ahead of the six-part series’ March 16 premiere.
Philip (left, portrayed by Azhy Robertson) and his older brother, Sandy (right, portrayed by Caleb Malis) (HBO)
As Roth wrote in a 2004 essay for the New York Times, “To alter the historical reality by making Lindbergh America’s 33rd president while keeping everything else as close to factual truth as I could—that was the job as I saw it.”
The main conceit of The Plot Against America is a fictional Lindbergh presidency. Set between June 1940 and October 1942, the novel opens with the aviator’s unexpected bid as the Republican Party’s nominee and proceeds to envision how the war would have unfolded if the United States had not only stayed out of the fight, but colluded with the Axis powers and instituted Nazi-inspired restrictions on Jewish Americans’ freedom.
Roth’s book features prominent public figures—including Roosevelt, gossip columnist Walter Winchell, non-interventionist Democratic senator Burton K. Wheeler, New York City Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, industrialist and avowed anti-Semite Henry Ford, and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop—in roles ranging from key players to cameo appearances. In line with the author’s goal of adhering to reality whenever possible, sentiments shared by these individuals are actual quotes or plausible fabrications built on the existing historical record.
Author Philip Roth in the Newark, New Jersey, neighborhood where he grew up (Photo by Bob Peterson / The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images)
Lindbergh, for example, really did accuse Jews of being “war agitators.” He also cautioned against “the infiltration of inferior blood” and “dilution by foreign races.” He did not, however, declare, as he does in the book, that with the German invasion of the U.S.S.R., “Adolf Hitler has established himself as the world’s greatest safeguard against the spread of communism and its evils.”
Of the work’s central characters, most are dramatized versions of real people. Young Philip (played by Azhy Robertson in the HBO series) and his immediate family members borrow their names from Roth’s actual relatives: Herman (Morgan Spector), family patriarch and insurance salesman; his mother, Elizabeth, or “Bess” for short (Zoe Kazan); and older brother, Sandy (Caleb Malis). But while Philip’s cousin Alvin (Anthony Boyle) and aunt Evelyn (Winona Ryder) play major roles in both the book and the show, neither has a direct real-life counterpart. Lionel Bengelsdorf (John Turturro), a conservative rabbi who attracts the Jewish community’s ire for his steadfast support of Lindbergh (Ben Cole), is also fictional.
The novel’s alternate timeline is fairly straightforward, particularly toward the end of the novel, when Roth shifts from a first-person narrative to a day-by-day, newsreel-style account. Lindbergh soundly defeats Roosevelt in the November 1940 presidential election and, just weeks after his inauguration, meets Adolf Hitler to sign a so-called “Iceland Understanding” guaranteeing peaceful relations between the U.S. and Germany. A similar “Hawaii Understanding” paves the way for Japan’s unimpeded expansion across Asia.
The Jews of America find themselves subjected to increasing anti-Semitism and thinly veiled restrictions on their livelihood. The Office of American Absorption, established to encourage “America’s religious and national minorities to become further incorporated into the larger society,” indoctrinates Jewish teenagers by sending them to the country’s rural heartland for summer “apprenticeships”; an initiative dubbed Homestead 42 similarly relocates urban Jewish families, framing forced relocation as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Some, like Philip’s parents, are convinced the government is attempting to “lull [Jewish Americans] to sleep with the ridiculous dream that everything in America is hunky-dory.” Others, like his aunt Evelyn and older brother, decry these fears as the result of a “persecution complex.” Needless to say, the Roth parents prove correct in their assessment of the situation, and before the end of the book, readers are treated to a dystopian vision of a country plagued by pogroms, fascist totalitarianism and the unmitigated reversal of the very rights Herman Roth previously cited as exemplars of America.