The Plot Against America

After Philip gets home from the hospital, he realizes that something significant has changed nearly overnight: his father has quit his job at MetLife and gone to work at Uncle Monty’s market in order to dodge the edicts of Homestead 42. Herman takes the night shift, which means he sleeps during the day and leaves the house for work each night at five. Philip, Sandy, and Bess must all be careful not to disturb Herman, who now sleeps odd hours. Life becomes hard for all of them, and Herman starts drinking.

Philip is shocked by Herman’s transformation—but also by Sandy’s less obvious one. Sandy, who was so angry and contemptuous for so long, is more or less back to his old self. Philip wonders what has brought about the change in his brother and if it has anything to do with his own trip to the hospital—or if Sandy is simply masquerading as his old self. Bess, meanwhile, has quit her job at the department store. The “fairy-tale swiftness” with which the Roths’ lives have changed astounds Philip—as does the fact that on September 1st, Seldon and his mother are due to move to Danville Kentucky.

Philip’s trip to the hospital doesn’t make the waves in the neighborhood it normally would have—just a few hours after coming off the air on the Sunday night Philip ran away, Walter Winchell was fired for his outrageous fearmongering, accusations against the Lindbergh administration, and attempts to “inflame and frighten his fellow Jews”—the latter quotation is attributed to Lionel Bengelsdorf, who writes an op-ed against Winchell in the Times. Winchell writes his own response in the Mirror, excoriating those who call him alarmist while allowing fascism to creep into their daily lives. Three days later, Winchell announces his candidacy for president almost 30 months in advance—he is running in the next general election against Lindbergh.

Many people don’t take Winchell’s candidacy seriously, seeing his campaign as a way of gauging support for Roosevelt while stirring up and measuring anti-Lindbergh sentiment in the public. Winchell’s Jewishness—and his reputation as a philanderer—make his candidacy suspect to people on both sides of the aisle. But in Philip’s neighborhood, Winchell’s candidacy is taken very seriously among his parents’ Jewish friends and neighbors. Even young Philip believes that a Jewish person could never be president—and yet for just a few days, he watches his parents and their friends imagine themselves and their children to be “native-born citizens of Paradise.”

In June, Bengelsdorf and Aunt Evelyn are married—the Roths are not invited. Bess is miserable to miss the ceremony, but Herman tries to calm her down. Bess insists all she can think about is what her deceased mother would think—not just about Evelyn’s marriage, but about the terribleness that has subsumed the world and the even more terrible things still to come. The wedding is a grand event attended by many Newark and New York City notables. Many high-ranking clergymen from many different religions and denominations attend, as well as presidents of banks, insurance companies, telephone companies, newspaper editors, and more. Notably missing from the attendees is Rabbi Joachim Prinz of Congregation B’nai Abraham, yet another prominent rabbi who has long opposed Lindbergh.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh herself sends a telegram which is read aloud at the reception. The telegram graciously and floridly congratulates the couple on their marriage—and carefully states that the great work the two of them are doing for the OAA is helping Americans to live together in harmony.

McCorkle, the FBI agent who questioned the Roths long ago, shows up in their orbit once again. He begins hanging around the market and the diner where the workers eat at the end of their shift, asking about Herman’s suspicious behavior: harboring a “traitor” and quitting MetLife to avoid Homestead 42. One of Longy Zwillman’s henchmen, Niggy Apfelbaum, brings Monty the news about the FBI agent’s concerns. Monty begs Niggy to let Herman keep his job at the market. The next day, Longy himself shows up and gives Monty just 24 hours to fix things. That night, at the end of his shift, Monty himself goes to the diner to confront the FBI agent and pay him off. The agent accepts the bribe. Monty tells Herman that Herman must repay Monty the bribe money out of his own paycheck over the next six months. 

Over the summer, Bess keeps a closer eye than usual on Sandy and Philip, insisting they check in at home twice a day and refrain from going out after dark—or traveling beyond the school playing field a block away at all. Sandy begins hanging out with tons of girls his age while Philip and Seldon, attached at the hip much to Philip’s chagrin, look on in awe. Sandy often takes the girls off, one by one, to do mysterious things with them—Sandy’s summer is full of rebellion while Philip’s summer is only full of Seldon.

All of Herman’s work friends and their family have been spread out across the country, and there is no big MetLife picnic at the end of the summer as there usually is. On the sad day when the Roths bid goodbye to the last of the local MetLife families, Herman takes everybody out for ice cream. Bess cries silently as Philip and Sandy eat their sundaes. Suddenly, she exclaims that Lindbergh is teaching them a lesson about what it means to be a  Jewish American—their family, and others like them, have been thinking of themselves as Americans when really, all along, they’ve been otherwise. Herman angrily insists that Lindbergh, though he puts on a front of being all-American, is the one who’s truly un-American.

On the day Seldon and Mrs. Wishnow leave, Philip is shocked by his sadness and pain as they go. He cannot stop crying as he remembers a day when he was six years old and got stuck in the Wishnows’ bathroom. He recalls the long ordeal as Mrs. Wishnow tried to talk an increasingly panicked Philip calmly through investigating all the different ways to get out of the bathroom—through a window, by jiggling the lock—only for them all to eventually realize, as Seldon pushed against the door, that the bathroom had been unlocked the whole time. As the embarrassed Philip cried, Mrs. Wishnow comforted him by insisting that such things happen to everyone.

Walter Winchell begins his campaign in earnest on the Tuesday after Labor Day, hoping to tilt the congressional elections toward the left. He excoriates those who accused him of using his radio broadcast to scream “Fire!” in a crowded theater—he insists that he was simply calling “Fascism!” and will do so to his last breath, so great is his love for America. He campaigns throughout Manhattan and, over the course of the week, in all five boroughs of the city before heading to Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. In Boston, a pro-Lindbergh mob brandishing burning crosses infiltrates Winchell’s small soapbox rally—Winchell has at last brought “Lindbergh grotesquery” to the surface. The Boston police do nothing to restrain the rioters, even as guns go off and Winchell is driven to a nearby hospital with minor burns. 

After Boston, anti-Semitic rioters and agitators attend Winchell’s every Massachusetts rally—even as a conservative Massachusetts governor offers Winchell protection from the National Guard. The worst of the violence occurs when Winchell’s campaign moves on to Michigan—in Detroit, which is home to many prominent anti-Semites such as the “Radio Priest” Father Charles E. Coughlin and Henry Ford, rioters attack and loot Jewish businesses, beat Jews in the street, and even firebomb several predominantly Jewish schools. By nightfall, many of Detroit’s 30,000 Jews have fled to Ontario—America’s first large-scale pogrom, comparable to Germany’s Kristallnacht, is complete. 

The week after the assault on Detroit’s Jewish communities, similar violence breaks out in Jewish neighborhoods across the Midwest. All of these pogroms are excused and justified by the public and the media alike as a reaction to Winchell’s demagoguery and fearmongering. Arguments about what is happening across the country—and whether any of it is indeed Winchell’s fault—soon arrive in Philip’s own neighborhood, and children and adults alike debate whether Winchell, in exposing anti-Semitism, is doing the country good or harm.

Rabbi Joachim Prinz establishes the Newark Committee of Concerned Jewish Citizens, which meets with the mayor, the police and fire departments, and even the state legislature. Rabbi Bengelsdorf refuses to join the committee or participate in any of their meetings at the local, state, or federal level. Bengelsdorf and his supporters decry that innocent Jews everywhere are now casualties of the renegade Winchell’s desire for power and attention.

Longy Zwillman and his associates Bullet and Niggy Apfelbaum begin recruiting young Jewish teens to a volunteer corps of Provisional Jewish Police. The hoodlums and budding gangsters of the neighborhood are now stationed on every street corner—they who once represented everything Philip’s parents detested are now the protectors of the neighborhood.

On Monday, October 5th of 1942, Philip is home alone listening to the World Series on the radio when the program is interrupted by a news bulletin: Winchell has been shot and killed at an open-air rally in Louisville, Kentucky. As the game broadcast returns, Philip hears the sounds of shouts in the streets—he is not sure whether people are screaming about Winchell or the game. Soon, however, as the Jewish police begin going door-to-door spreading the news, the neighborhood descends into fear. By nightfall, every family is barricaded within their homes. Radios drone and phones ring as the families of Philip’s neighborhood call one another to discuss each new development in the story of Winchell’s assassination.

Bess, panicked, has Philip bring out his large folding map of North America. He opens it up, and Bess begins searching for the tiny town of Danville. Bess calls a local operator in the county and makes a long-distance call—still an amazing feat at that time—to the Wishnows. It is Seldon who answers the phone—he states that his mother is not home from work yet and that he is eating Fig Newtons while he waits for her. Seldon is amazed by the long-distance technology. He can barely focus on the conversation or the important questions Bess is asking him about his wellbeing or his mother’s whereabouts. Bess hands the phone to Philip and instructs him to find out what Seldon knows about what happened in Louisville. When Philip asks Seldon what he knows, Seldon is oblivious. He begins talking about chess.

Philip asks Seldon if he knows that Walter Winchell is dead. Seldon asks if Walter Winchell is Philip’s uncle. At that point, Bess takes the phone back. She orders Seldon to focus and write down what she tells him—the call is costing a lot of money. She tells Seldon to write down that Mrs. Roth called from Newark to make sure everything is okay. Seldon asks if he should be worried about something. Bess tells him that everything is fine. She tries to hang up, but Seldon continues talking, complaining about how much he misses Philip and how few friends he has in school. Bess tells him that things are hard for everyone before hanging up and beginning to sob.

Just days before Winchell’s death, Philip writes, the homes of empty “homesteaders of 1942” were filled with Italian families under the edicts of the Good Neighbor Project—an OAA program designed to flood Jewish neighborhoods with non-Jewish residents and “enrich the Americanness” of all involved. The program is, of course, truly aimed at weakening Jewish constituencies in major American cities. The family that moves into the Wishnows’ old apartment is the Cucuzzas, a large Italian family headed by a stoic but kind night watchman named Tommy, whom the Roths call Mr. Cucuzza. The Cucuzzas have a young son, Joey, who is just a bit older than Philip and is hard of hearing.

The night of Winchell’s assassination, Mr. Cucuzza and Joey knock on the door of the Roths’ apartment and bring in some gifts—a cake and a pistol. Herman tries to give the pistol back, explaining that he doesn’t want to believe that as an upstanding American who loves his country, he will have to use it. Mr. Cucuzza states that he loves America, too—Hitler and Mussolini make him sick.

Herman continues talking about his love of America—particularly of Election Day. He remembers every candidate he has ever voted for—and rues the day that America elected an openly fascist president. He tells Cucuzza he’s grateful for the pistol—but that in 1942, a neighbor should not have to bring him a gun to help him protect his family from a mob of anti-Semites.

Herman’s speech is interrupted by a new radio bulletin which reports that the body of Walter Winchell will be carried overnight to New York City. By order of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, it will lie in state in the great hall at Penn Station throughout the morning until the funeral that afternoon at Temple Emanu-El. Among the speakers at Winchell’s funeral, the bulletin reports, will be La Guardia and FDR himself. Herman cheers and throws his arms around Philip and Sandy. He declares that tonight is “the beginning of the end of fascism in America.”