by Thomas Maier
Before he left Rome, Joe Kennedy gave Galeazzi a gift of fifty thousand lire for the Pope, who seemed to him “awe-inspiring, majestic, kindness personified and with the humility of God.” Even his second son was impressed. On arriving back in London, Jack recalled his “great time” in Rome to his friend Lem Billings, who’d been at the Kennedys’ Bronxville home in 1936 when Pacelli visited.“Pacelli is now riding high, so it’s good you bowed and groveled like you did when you met him,” Jack wrote his friend.“He gave Dad and I communion with Eunice at the same time at a private mass and all in all it was very impressive. . . .They want to give Dad the title of Duke which will be hereditary and go to all of his family which will make me Duke John of Bronxville and perhaps if you stuck around sufficiently I might knight you.”
EVENTUALLY, the breach between Joe Kennedy and the president who sent him to England could no longer be papered over in platitudes and gestures such as a trip to Rome. Roosevelt resented Kennedy’s freewheeling style and his penchant for expressing isolationist views far different from the administration’s position. Almost from the moment he arrived in London, Kennedy became associated with the “Cliveden set,” those British intellectuals and aristocrats sympathetic to Neville Chamberlain who believed the German threat could be dealt with through negotiation rather than war. Roosevelt, aware of Kennedy’s own ethnic heritage, became incensed by this alliance. “Who would have thought that the English could take into camp a red-headed Irishman?” Roosevelt fumed to Henry Morgenthau. “The young man needs his wrists slapped rather hard.”
Aside from their growing differences in policy and political outlook, Kennedy began to believe that the patrician Roosevelt was a bigot, someone who looked down his nose at him in a way that set off all Kennedy’s ethnic and religious defenses. Such sentiments are not discussed much by historians or the biographers of either man, but these concerns were in the mind of at least one of them. As Kennedy later wrote in his diary,“I got the impression that deep down in his heart Roosevelt had a decidedly anti- Catholic feeling. And what seems more significant is the fact that up to this time he has not appointed a prominent Catholic to any important post since a year ago last November.”Kennedy also believed “this [anti-Catholic] feeling [was] firmly imbedded in the Roosevelt family,” a claim he’d heard that Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth had made to a friendly newspaper columnist about her father, former President Theodore Roosevelt. The president’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, seemed ill at ease with Catholics and the church’s authoritarian prelates. She particularly disliked Spellman, who was brought to the White House’s attention by Kennedy. “Eleanor still believed the anti-Catholic nonsense she heard during her childhood,” later explained her cousin, political columnist Joseph Alsop.
Although FDR was viewed as a champion of the underdog, his perspective remained distinctly patrician. It was the same tone that Kennedy’s Brahmin professors at Harvard commanded. “Buried just beneath those noble aims was the inherited assumption that America, its ideals and its form of government, had been made by the good Anglo-Saxon and Dutch Protestant stock that had first reached its shores and to which Roosevelt belonged,” FDR biographer Ted Morgan concluded. “The others, the immigrants, the Catholics, the Jews, the latecomers to an already formed society,were not quite up to snuff.”As Roosevelt once exclaimed to Leo T. Crowley, an economist who was Catholic and became an administration official:“Leo, you know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and Jews are here on sufferance.” Crowley later confided to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau that he’d never been so shocked in his life.
Rose Kennedy tried to simmer down her husband’s temper, reminding him that “the President sent you, a Roman Catholic, as Ambassador to London, which probably no other President would have done.”This cauldron of resentment may have existed only in Kennedy’s mind, though other Catholics serving in the Roosevelt administration, notably James Farley, sometimes suggested similar sentiments. It is difficult today to determine the truth of this suspicion. Historically, it must be said that Roosevelt’s administration relied on several Catholics and Jews to serve in top positions, a significant political stepping-stone for minorities who were a crucial component of his New Deal coalition. But clearly, as his private papers indicate, Kennedy’s sensitivity to religious and ethnic slights from the president were never far from the surface.
In writing to Roosevelt about a meeting with Kennedy in London, Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, recalled the ambassador’s pride in being “the first Catholic to hold the London Embassy post.” During their friendly chat in early 1938,Wise called Kennedy’s attention to the large portrait on the wall of former Ambassador Joseph Hodges Choate, who had served during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration.
“I suppose you know, J.K., that Choate was nastily anti-Irish at times?” Wise noted.
Kennedy responded quickly. “I’ll ring for the porter and have the portrait removed at once,” he said.
Both men laughed at the painting, which showed a stern-looking Choate dressed in a red gown, and commented that, as Wise recalled, “Choate was frowning at us, Joe for being an Irish Ambassador, and at me on general principles as a Jew and Rabbi.” Joe must have shared the story about Choate’s anti-Irishness with his father-in-law. On the day after St. Patrick’s Day, Honey Fitz sent him this one-line cable: “Hope you will be able to do what Choate wants.”
GIVEN HIS PUBLIC STATURE and his private sensitivities to ethnic insults, Joseph Kennedy’s anti-Semitism seems at first confounding—an infectious prejudice that spread to some of his children. Kennedy’s views were reflective of the sentiment of many Irish Catholics of his generation. For decades, Irish immigrants found themselves competing for jobs and social opportunities with Jews, whose assimilation into American society was often faster and more successful. Unlike the Irish, who created their own cultural isolation, Jews generally embraced America’s public school system and were more willing to adapt to their new environment. Feeling left behind, the Irish sometimes lashed out. During the Depression era of the 1930s, Father Coughlin’s tirades gave voice to a misdirected anger at other ethnic groups, particularly Jews. Cardinal O’Connell in Boston perpetuated an underlying tone of anti-Semitism, complaining about the “doubt about God” caused by the revolutionary theories of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, intellectual giants with a Jewish background. “Anti- Semitism was common among American Catholics and if the cardinal never publicly voiced such sentiments, he was not immune to the anti- Jewish bias that thrived among his people,” observed James M. O’Toole, O’Connell’s biographer.
Although he strained not to be stereotypically Irish, Joe Kennedy carried some of the same biases as uneducated Irish immigrants in East Boston who suspiciously treated the newly arriving Eastern European Jews as a threat to their jobs and religious culture. He learned to couch his bias against Jews with the same phrases and condescension that America’s affluent WASP culture used—the same segment of society that Kennedy bitterly felt had acted unfairly towards him as an aspiring, ambitious grandson of immigrants. Hollywood was run by a “bunch of ignorant Jewish furriers,” Kennedy complained. He chastised Jews for supposedly controlling too much of the press and public opinion. The crisis in Germany evoked a strange indifference from Kennedy and a lack of understanding about the plight of Jews in Nazi-controlled lands. His own family’s history as victims of bigotry and religious persecution seemed oddly irrelevant in assessing the threat to Jews. In writing to his son, Joseph Jr., who echoed his father’s sentiments about Jews,Kennedy asked about Adolf Hitler:“If he wanted to reunite Germany, and picked the Jew as the focal point of his attack, and conditions in Germany are now so completely those of his own making, why then is it necessary to turn the front of his attack on the Catholics?”
After the vicious Krystallnacht attacks against Jews by Nazi mobs in Germany, Kennedy proposed a plan of action that called for the mass migration of thousands of Jews out of Germany to rel
ocation in unpopu lated areas of Africa and South and North America. Although he was criticized as an appeaser to Hitler and unresponsive to the plight of Jews, this plan in 1938 gained Kennedy favorable attention in the American press. “Kennedy is rated the most influential U.S.Ambassador to England in many years,” commented Life, one of the most popular magazines of its day.“If his plan for settling the German Jews, already widely known as the ‘Kennedy Plan,’ succeeds, it will add luster to a reputation that may well carry Joseph Patrick Kennedy into the White House.”
Privately, Kennedy helped arrange the transport of some individual German Jews fleeing Hitler’s terror, but the huge effort he had proposed never got off the ground. The estimated cost of $150 million to $600 million seemed astronomical, and neither the British nor the American governments backed the plan. American Jews didn’t like the plan because it conflicted with the ideal of a proposed homeland in Palestine. Roosevelt and his top aides in Washington avoided showing support for their ambassador in London, whom they viewed as a foreign policy maverick with his own political agenda. In America, columnist Walter Lippmann and other press critics questioned Kennedy’s motives and actions, prompting a response tinged with anti-Semitism from both Kennedy and his children. Writing a rebuttal to Lippmann, thirteen-year-old Bobby Kennedy dismissed the columnist’s views as “the natural Jewish reaction,” and Joe Jr. had a similar heated response. In a note to his wife Rose, Kennedy wrote: “Walter Lippmann is around saying he hasn’t liked the U.S.Ambassador for the last 6 months. Of course the fact he is a Jew has something to do with that.”And to a top aide of press baron William Randolph Hearst, Kennedy later wrote that “75% of the attacks made on me by mail were by Jews, and, yet, I don’t suppose anybody has worked as hard for them as I have or more to their advantage.”
Whether Joe Kennedy worked hard enough to save Jews from Hitler’s genocide is debatable; certainly the overall response from the American government, the Catholic Church and the world community at large was tepid. The extent of Hitler’s racist policies, his imprisonment of thousands of Jews and his campaign of extermination would become brutally clear as World War II progressed. But even a sympathetic assessment of Kennedy can’t explain the upsurge in anti-Semitic views expressed by the ambassador during this period, a coarse response to public criticism that took a particularly ugly tone in private. Disparaging comments about “jews” and other anti-Semitic references are found in the ambassador’s private notes and numerous letters between Kennedy and his family and circle of intimates. “The belief that he was under attack in influential Jewish circles for his reported anti-Semitism, indifference to the refugee issue and support of appeasement seems to have prompted him, curiously, to record his views on Judaism and on some of his Jewish colleagues far more explicitly and pejoratively than he had ever done before,” observed his granddaughter,Amanda Smith, a half century later. “Almost entirely absent from his papers before his ambassadorship, such comments would afterward become commonplace among his writings.”
Joe Kennedy’s FBI file makes clear his willingness to expose and recruit Jewish acquaintances in the government’s campaign to uncover Communists in the film industry.“Mr. Kennedy is a devout Catholic and is very well versed on Communism and what it might possibly mean to the United States,” reported Edward A. Soucy, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Boston, in a confidential memo to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover in December 1943. “He has said he has many Jewish friends in the moving picture industry who would furnish him, upon request, with any information in their possession pertaining to Communist infiltration in the moving picture industry.” As he told the FBI, Kennedy “fears that the Communists and their fellow travellers have succeeded in obtaining for themselves many key positions” in Hollywood. Hoover and his bureau knew they had a friend in Kennedy.
IF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT chose not to seek an unprecedented third term in 1940, then Joseph P. Kennedy wanted to make history of his own—as the first Catholic elected to the White House. By May 1938, only a few months after arriving in London,Kennedy’s long-term political ambitions were being touted by the press.“Will Kennedy Run for President?” asked Liberty magazine, and noted that “he is a Roman Catholic,” one of his “weak points.”The New York Times ran a similar political story, speculating about a Kennedy candidacy if Roosevelt served only for two terms, traditional for every American president since George Washington. TheWashington Post predicted that Kennedy held “an excellent chance to be the first Catholic President,” and other publications suggested that Kennedy was sent to London for international grooming as Roosevelt’s heir apparent. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Increasingly, Roosevelt eyed Kennedy with suspicion, both as a potential political rival and as a harping critic who privately eviscerated the president and his policies to just about anyone in London who would listen. When Kennedy came to Washington for a visit that June, James Roosevelt met him aboard the Queen Mary as it pulled into New York harbor and warned him about the president’s anger. “If I had my eye on another job, it would be a complete breach of faith with President Roosevelt,” Kennedy assured the press at the dock. At Hyde Park, the president and his ambassador discussed the worsening situation in Europe, but both men silently realized that a Kennedy candidacy faced the longest odds. As Kennedy later wrote in his diplomatic memoir:“No one can lightly turn away a serious suggestion from his friends that he is worthy of succeeding to the presidency of the United States. There were many reasons that militated against my candidacy for that office, including my Catholic faith, but these might (perhaps) be overcome. But I knew that the time was not propitious.” Kennedy scratched out the last line about “propitious” timing and instead wrote in “did not desire the Democratic nomination.” Soon after the Hyde Park meeting, the White House leaked to the Chicago Tribune that Roosevelt believed Kennedy to be disloyal and cited “positive evidence that Kennedy hopes to use the Court of St. James as a stepping stone to the White House in 1940.”When Kennedy learned of the story, he offered in a fury to resign. “It was true Irish anger that swept over me,” he said. Kennedy returned to London, but he knew his days were numbered. After the ambassador had left Washington to return to his post, Roosevelt lunched with a top aide and pooh-poohed “the idea that Joe Kennedy could be elected President.”
Nevertheless, Roosevelt didn’t sever ties but instead kept Kennedy dangling at a distance in case he was needed politically. Talk in Washington suggested that Roosevelt’s potential rival for the 1940 nomination, Vice President John Nance Garner, might join forces with another former ally-turned- rival, Postmaster General James Farley, to form a separate ticket. Farley, a Catholic from New York, could be expected to pull away many Irish, Italian and other immigrant votes—a major segment of Roosevelt’s winning Democratic Party coalition. Under these circumstances, the president might be forced to call upon his wayward ambassador. “In that event, the President might have to turn to Joe Kennedy as a candidate for Vice- President,” recalled Interior Secretary Harold Ickes in his published diary. “That would match a Roman Catholic against a Roman Catholic. While Farley would be able to command certain undoubted political advantages, Kennedy would be able to command the great conservative business support and his campaign would be well financed since he himself is a very rich man.”
Instead, Kennedy urged his friend, Senator James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, to consider running for president in 1940.“The only thing that could bring me into active political life again would be to hear that you were going to be a candidate for President,” Kennedy wrote. “If you go, I declare myself right here and now unquestionably and unqualifiedly for you and I don’t give a damn who is against you.” Byrnes didn’t run but he was considered briefly by Roosevelt for vice president. Like Kennedy, Roosevelt personally enjoyed Byrnes’s company, but the president’s aides discouraged any thought of Byrnes because of opposition among labor, his racial views and his religion. Byrnes was born a Catholic but left th
e church. As a top aide to Roosevelt put it during the vice presidency deliberations, Byrnes has “a double-disadvantage politically; for not only would anti-Catholic bigots oppose him, but Catholics themselves might resent his change of religion.”
Little more than a decade after Al Smith’s 1928 debacle, politicians such as Kennedy, Byrnes and even Jim Farley recognized that any hint of Catholicism still posed an obstacle to national office in America, regardless of their credentials. The religious recriminations faced by Smith seemed to dissuade an entire generation of Catholic politicians from trying for the nation’s top office. But Kennedy felt himself prepared to assume the presidency. As Collier’s magazine observed in 1939, “There is slight doubt that Joe, despite the political handicaps of his religion, cherishes the hope that he may be President.” Kennedy was enough of a realist to recognize his long-shot chances. In his own estimate, natural constituent groups for a conservative-minded Democrat like himself—such as the business community— seemed foreclosed. His ambitions were also effectively blocked by Farley, who actively pursued the 1940 presidential nomination. In Boston, Irish Catholics still devoted themselves clannishly to candidates from their own ethic and religious group, and many backed Farley rather than the incumbent president. One of those supporters was Kennedy’s eldest son, Joe Jr., elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention by those who flocked to Farley. Joe Kennedy Jr., a handsome gregarious young man with a seemingly bright political future ahead of him, resisted lobbying efforts by Roosevelt’s forces to switch his vote. The president’s team even called the ambassador in London and asked him to pressure his son, but he refused.“DO WHAT YOU THINK BEST,” he cabled his son. Joe Jr. voted for Farley, even though Roosevelt won the nomination on the first ballot.