Along with police, well-connected and well-intentioned people arrived at the Lindbergh estate. Military colonels offered their aid, although only one had law enforcement expertise—Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police. The other colonels were
Henry Skillman Breckinridge, a Wall Street lawyer; and William J. Donovan, a hero of the First World War who would later head the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Lindbergh and these men speculated that the kidnapping was perpetrated by organized
crime figures. They thought that the letter was written by someone who spoke German as his native language. At this time, Charles Lindbergh used his influence to control the direction of the investigation.
The deepest banking crisis of the Great Depression was touched off by the pending failure of two Detroit banks in early 1933. For several weeks, by law, every bank in the entire state of Michigan was closed for business. It was from these beginnings that a national banking
crisis engulfed the final days of the Hoover Administration. What transpired to bring on such a calamitous event? How did individuals cope in that interval without a banking system?