charles lindbergh

When learning about historical figures, we often inadvertently make them more than human. Typically, we place these very flawed individuals on pedestals and completely overlook their humanity because they are known for their contributions to history, not their personal lives. This can lead to discovering things about people in our history books that give you pause or, like in the case of Charles Lindbergh, make you blush.

Lindbergh is best known for two things: the strange disappearance of his infant son and the fact that he was the first pilot to complete a transatlantic flight. The pilot flew "The Spirit of St. Louis" from Long Island, New York to Paris, France solo in 1927—a feat that had never been completed before and took 33 hours of nonstop flying. He was just 25 at the time. While he is credited with several advances in aviation, Lindbergh also has a pretty scandalous and often forgotten past.

  Charles Lindbergh and Governor Hartness Credit: Vermont History/Flickr

A lover of history who goes by the moniker, @Baewatch on social media created a series she calls "Historical Tea" where she digs into and reveals little known juicy details on historical figures. Recently, the history buff featured celebrated pilot Charles Lindbergh, revealing pearl-clutching information about his personal beliefs and marital issues.

Normally, spilling the deets on someone's personal life would be frowned upon no matter who the person is. But when it comes to history makers from nearly 100 years ago, it seems like fair game to gossip about their secret deeds and Lindbergh had several. Within the first minute of @Baewatch's video, she reveals that the pilot and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, were accused of being Nazi sympathizers. @Baewatch wastes no time in sharing her personal disappointment in this discovery.

  Charles and Anne Lindbergh posing with military member Credit: Public Resource Org/Flicker

"He was married to his wife Anne for like 45 years and put some respect on Anne's name because she also had a pilot's license. She was one of the first women to have a pilot's license. Anne also low key repaired their image because their reputation was damaged because they were low key 'Yahtzee' sympathizers. There's a lot of documentation for that and that is something I didn't know either and I don't like that about him," the woman says.

While that tidbit of information was slightly surprising, it was the revelation that Lindbergh had several extramarital affairs that was the most shocking. They were not just affairs, either, but an entire secret life with three women in Germany, complete with multiple children. There's no information on whether Lindbergh discovered a wormhole during his transatlantic flight that allowed him to have more hours in the day than other people, but that might help explain his nearly impossible feat of somehow maintaining four different households and fathering children with each woman.

  Charles Lindbergh talking to Thomas B. McGuire in front of planePhoto by: Teddy W. Hanks, U.S. Army Air Force/Wikimedia

The history enthusiast reveals, "For some reason our boy Charles, after 30 years of being married, decides he wants to collect side chicks like infinity stones and he got not one, not two, but three in Germany as his mistresses. Oh, but hold up. Hold up. Two of them were sisters. Yeah, you heard me. You heard me, two of them were sistas. Well not sistas but they were sisters. They're biologically related. Between 1958 and 1967, Charles Lindberg fathered seven children with his three mistresses."

According to @Baewatch and the Minnesota Historical Society, none of the children knew Lindbergh was their father. It's unclear if the mistresses knew about each other since they were all kept secret until his death in 1974. Prior to his death, Lindbergh wrote all three women and asked them to continue to keep their relationships a secret after he died, which they all did until Astrid, the daughter of Lindbergh and Brigitte Hesshaimer, demanded the truth about her father in the 90s.

But even after finding out her father was the famous pilot, the secret child did not speak of it until two years after her mother died in 2001. That was when Astrid and her brothers, Dyrk and David, also secretly fathered by Lindbergh, revealed the untold story in an effort to verify their family's connection to the famous pilot. In 2005 they published the book, The Double Life of Charles A. Lindbergh.

Including his first child, Charles Lindbergh Jr., who was famously kidnapped and murdered, the pilot fathered 13 children with four different women, including his wife. None of the other four children he fathered with his two other mistresses, Marietta Hesshaimer and a woman only known as Valeska, have come forward.

  Charles Lindbergh in front of Spirit of St. Louis planePhoto credit Clyde94/Wikimedia

Lindbergh's scandalous secret life doesn't take away from his legacy or the history he made, but perhaps Reeve Lindbergh, the youngest child he shared with his wife, best describes the complicated life of her father:

“I have the feeling that he was the only person involved with all these families who knew the full truth, and I keep thinking that by the time he died in 1974, my father had made his life so complicated that he had to keep each part separate from the other parts ... I don’t know why he lived this way, and I don’t think I ever will know, but what it means to me is that every intimate human connection my father had during his later years was fractured by secrecy," Reeve writes in her book Forward from Here: Leaving Middle Age and Other Unexpected Adventures according to the Minnesota Historical Society.