I saw it a while ago I'm glad someone is discussing it here, I've been curious what people here think about it. I really enjoyed it myself. It's incredibly well made and I like that it keeps the focus on a small family with only occasional glimpses into what's actually going on in the Lindbergh presidency. Bengelsdorf is a really great portrayal of how individuals within minority groups can convince themselves that they can do good work within an administration that hates them. The show does a great job of showing how wrong Bengelsdorf is and that he gains nothing by working with Lindbergh.

The show definitely feels like it was made mostly from a liberal perspective, but not overwhelmingly so. Herman says in one scene that he voted for Eugene Debs and that he only barely tolerates his one of friend's political views because they voted for FDR which is pretty great so the show seems somewhat receptive to leftist ideas. Hermann definitely comes across as a somewhat misguided socialist who puts a lot of faith into U.S. institutions and really believed that FDR was genuinely good for socialists in America. I can't tell if the writers also genuinely believe this or if they're just writing him that way. I'm probably just judging it a bit to hard in that area though, a lot of actual socialists during that time period probably thought the same way although there were exceptions In general though I think they do a good job of showing what a fascist America would look like during that time period. It wouldn't be quite as mask off as the Nazis but would still have awful policies like the "Just Folks" program. Lindbergh himself never openly says that he hates Jews but his rhetoric is very clearly anti-Semitic and he surrounds himself with known anti-Semites like Henry Ford.

To answer a few of your questions, America had a large number of antiwar and specifically pro isolationism movements at the time. Even after the invasion of Poland it was still seen as an European affair and the Great Depression and memories of WW1 made many people take an anti war stance. Pearl harbor doesn't happen in this timeline likely because of Lindbergh active trading with the axis powers making Japan's oil shortage less acute which means that there's never an inciting incident brining the U.S. into the war. Before Pearl Harbor it was clear that Roosevelt wanted to go to war, but felt that he would not have support from the public/congress. So I think it's not that there is a lot of pro-Nazi sentiment in the U.S. (Although there was a fair amount, including Lindbergh himself) but that the isolationist movement is what really helps America stay out of the war in this timeline. This page is pretty helpful if you don't know about the America First movement and Lindbergh's involvement with it. Its basically what the show/book is based on, what if this movement was influential enough to elect someone president?

The votes are definitely being rigged for whoever the Lindbergh successor is. They definitely wanted to make the point that just because people are voting doesn't mean that the election will be fair and that good people will prevail. It's a great message and one that's almost impossible not to connect to current events. I do wish they had pushed this idea a little bit harder but I do think you can interpret Hermann as being too complacent just because he voted but I'm not sure if that's intentional. Its also worth noting that they changed the ending from the book. In the book FDR wins the emergency election and then Pearl Harbor happens shortly after, basically setting things back to normal. The ending they went with in the show is definitely a lot better and shows that they wanted a different message than the "everything just goes back to normal" message that the book gives.

I would recommend the companion podcast for the show. They go into a lot of depth about the various Jewish traditions and themes that they work into the show which is really interesting to learn about. The creator of the show is a bit of a lib sometimes but he has an okay message about how people need to be vigilant to protect democracy in the show and in real life. I would agree with him if we lived in an actual democracy and not our shitty American democracy lmao.

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