‘What if Yanks had sat out the war?’

WHAT if the Yanks had sat out World War Two? What if they had elected isolationist Charles Lindbergh president?

The heroic aviator was determined to keep the States neutral.

“It’s not Lindbergh versus Roosevelt, it’s Lindbergh versus war,” he thunders in The Plot Against America.

Lindy’s election would have done for Britain what Wigan just did to Hull City.

But this series is more concerned with how it might have played at home.

It tells the story from the viewpoint of a working-class Jewish family in New Jersey, capturing the mounting unease brilliantly.

Hardworking insurance agent Herman Levin and his wife Bess drive past a German-American bar full of Nazi sympathisers.

He rants at the radio when he hears Lindbergh’s real-life speech about “powerful elements” pushing the Yanks towards war – Britain, Roosevelt’s hawkish administration, and American Jews. “This is how it starts,” he says before calling “lonely eagle” Lindbergh a “fascist bastard” and, more poetically, “lonely ostrich”.

But Herman doesn’t see how charismatic Lindy thrills his eldest son, who rushes to see him land his plane, The Spirit Of St Louis, at a campaign pit-stop.

His sister-in-law Evelyn is involved too, through her relationship with conservative rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf who backs Lindbergh.

The tale is seen as a warning about Trump, yet Philip Roth wrote it in 2003 when the US was busy “liberating” the Middle East. He was making the case for US intervention overseas.

In reality, Roosevelt was opposed by Willkie in the 1940 election – a Republican, but not an isolationist – and Thomas, an anti-war socialist who made little impact.

Lindbergh, although an antiSemite, went on to support the US war effort, flying 50 missions. But “Heil to the Chief” is a better story.

Oddly, the threats to liberty from super-woke rent-a-gobs and tyrants like Chinese leader Xi Jinping have yet to interest drama commissioners.

TV shows if the Germans had won: Coronation Strasse, London’s Burnt, They Think It’s Hanover, The Old Horst Wessel Test...