by David Nasaw
In June, Kennedy met personally with Viscount Bearsted, one of the leaders of the British Jewish community, who impressed on the ambassador, as he had earlier on Lord Halifax, his sense that the Jewish refugee problem, now exacerbated by the inclusion of 190,000 Austrian Jews in the Third Reich, “could no longer be handled by private individuals. It has become an international question.” Bearsted had hoped to get from Kennedy reassurance that progress toward a solution to the refugee problem might be made at Évian. Instead, he found Kennedy’s “ideas somewhat hazy.” The ambassador confided to Bearsted “his low opinion of Mr. Myron Taylor,” the former head of U.S. Steel, whom Roosevelt had asked to represent the United States at Évian. Taylor, Kennedy insisted, had “not only no knowledge of the problem, but was making no attempt to get it up.” Kennedy told Bearsted that he intended to “see the President on his return to America and endeavour to ensure that instructions, or fresh instructions, were sent to Mr. Taylor.”59
Although Kennedy believed that the British could and should do more for the Jews of Austria and Germany, it was not his first priority. He felt quite differently about a group of Catholic refugees trapped in Spain.
The Sunday after he arrived in London, while visiting the Sacred Heart Convent at Roehampton to enroll his girls, he had been approached by the reverend mother, who told him about her efforts to rescue thirty-six Sacred Heart nuns in Barcelona who had been placed in mortal danger (as was every other civilian in the city) by German and Italian bombardment. On returning to the embassy, and without seeking permission of the State Department, Kennedy contacted the American consul in Spain to ask for assistance in getting the nuns evacuated. On April 6, he requested, again without informing the State Department, that the British use their influence to secure the release of the nuns. “Halifax,” he reported in his diary, “asked if I was prepared to take the responsibility of saying that the American Government wanted those nuns to be permitted to leave, and I said I was. . . . I told him that I was willing to be hanged any time for trying to save those 28 innocent and devoted women (eight of them had already been killed in the bombings of Barcelona) and I assumed that responsibility for the expense it would entail to bring them to England.” Three days later, on hearing from Halifax that progress had been made, Kennedy informed Secretary of State Hull of the “incident,” which, he believed, now successfully concluded, would “bring joy to your heart.” The British government’s rescue of the Barcelona nuns was, he continued in a “Private and Confidential” cable to Hull, “a noble piece of work. . . . There are no official records on this anywhere, but I thought you would like to know it.” Seven hours later, realizing that he had spoken prematurely and that the British had not secured the nuns’ release, Kennedy asked Sumner Welles to step up American pressure. “It seems to me a strategic stroke for the State Department to get this class of person out of Spain.” By “this class of person,” Kennedy was referring to the fact that the nuns, though political refugees, were neither Austrian nor Jewish. Kennedy was suggesting that by demonstrating its commitment to securing the rescue of the nuns, the State Department would be rebutting accusations that the Roosevelt administration cared only about Jewish refugees.
It would take another three months of pressure and politicking until the nuns were finally afforded safe passage out of Spain.60
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In late April, Kennedy, in a confidential note to Jimmy Roosevelt, asked him to arrange a home leave so that he could attend Joe Jr.’s graduation from Harvard and confer, face-to-face, with the president and secretary of state. His request, though unusual for one who had been in office only since early March, was approved.61
Five days before he was scheduled to sail back to the United States, on June 10, 1938, Kennedy met with Ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was about to return to Berlin to serve as Hitler’s foreign minister. There was nothing out of the ordinary here. The only thing that was peculiar about Kennedy’s conversations with German diplomats in London in 1938 was that they would later be published. In 1946, American armed forces seized documents from the German Foreign Office archives and, with the British, edited and published excerpts from them. Included were transcripts of conversations held in London with Kennedy.
After his June 10, 1938, meeting with Kennedy, Ribbentrop reported to Berlin that the two had discussed “the subject of the agitation against us in the American press. The American Ambassador replied that he intended to do everything in his power to stem this press agitation. . . . His main objective was to keep America out of any conflict in Europe, and he would do everything in his power to accomplish this.”62
Three days later, Kennedy met with the new German ambassador, Herbert von Dirksen. As Dirksen reported in his dispatch to Berlin, Kennedy indicated that the purpose of his upcoming trip to the United States was “to give President Roosevelt detailed information about European conditions. . . . The President desired friendly relations with Germany. However there was no one who had come from Europe and had spoken a friendly word to him regarding present-day Germany and her Government. When I [Dirksen] remarked that I feared he was right in this, Kennedy added that he knew he was right. Most of them were afraid of the Jews and did not dare to say anything good about Germany; others did not know any better, because they were not informed about Germany. . . . The Ambassador then touched upon the Jewish question and stated that it was naturally of great importance to German-American relations. In this connection it was not so much the fact that we wanted to get rid of the Jews that was so harmful to us, but rather the loud clamor with which we accompanied this purpose. He himself understood our Jewish policy completely; he was from Boston and there, in one golf club, and in other clubs, no Jews had been admitted for the past fifty years. His father had not been elected mayor because he was a Catholic [what Kennedy neglected to say was that his Irish Catholic father-in-law had]; in the United States, therefore, such pronounced attitudes were quite common, but people avoided making so much outward fuss about it.” When Dirksen, taking up the same topic as Ribbentrop three days earlier, “mentioned the poisonous role of the American press in the relations between the two countries . . . [Kennedy] merely mentioned that the press on the east coast was unfortunately predominant in the formation of public opinion in America and that it was strongly influenced by Jews.”63
When these transcripts were made public, Kennedy and his defenders would insist that Dirksen, new to the post and anxious to please his superiors in the Foreign Office, had grossly distorted his remarks. It is clear from the transcripts that Kennedy was doing his best to ingratiate himself with the German diplomats, as he did with all those he anticipated doing business with in the future. Still, while telling them what they wanted to hear about American anti-Semitism and Jewish media dominance, he was not saying anything he did not believe to be true.
Sixteen
A RATHER DREADFUL HOMECOMING
Kennedy was preceded home by various rumors as to the reasons why he was returning after less than four months abroad. No one quite believed that the primary purpose was to see his son graduate from Harvard.
In a front-page story on May 17, the Boston Post declared that he was returning to accept an honorary doctorate from Harvard. Although he had hoped that would be the case, Kennedy had learned earlier that he had been passed over by the seven-member Harvard Corporation, which served as the university’s principal governing body. “The sooner that Boston crowd [six of the seven corporation members were “proper Bostonians”; the seventh, a New Yorker, had attended Harvard Law School] is turned out of the management of Harvard University, the better it will be,” he angrily wrote his friend and classmate Bob Fisher, “and it should be done before it is too late, so that Harvard won’t suffer the way the banking business has in Boston.”1
Kennedy would never forgive Harvard for its snub, never attend another reunion, and never donate another dollar to the university. He would make up for Harvar
d’s rejection by collecting honorary degrees from other universities, the first, on July 7, from Trinity College, Dublin. So many followed within the next year that when he was awarded one from Cambridge University in June 1939, the British Pathé newsreel voice-over joked that “if Mr. Kennedy goes on collecting university degrees at this rate, he’ll soon have one for each of” his children.2
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Washington insiders, including members of the cabinet and the president, wondered if the real reason for Kennedy’s early return was to assess his chances as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination should Roosevelt decide not to seek a third term. Almost from the moment he had left the country for London, rumors had begun to circulate that he was considering a run for the highest office in the land. He had, quite wisely, done nothing either to encourage or discourage such talk.
In mid-April 1938, Senator Byrnes jocularly raised the subject at the end of one of the newsy “Washington insider” letters he exchanged with Kennedy: “Speaking of gossip, when do you expect to announce your candidacy for the presidential nomination? Whatever doubts we may have had about your intentions in the past have been removed by this political stunt of turning down requests for an opportunity to bow for the King. I don’t know what effect it will have in the B’nai B’rith, but it will be enthusiastically applauded by the Ancient Order of Hibernians.”3
“I suppose you know that you are being mentioned very frequently as a candidate to succeed Mr. Roosevelt,” William Randolph Hearst wrote a month later. “In fact, you are the most mentioned candidate, and the one most likely to unite the factions in which the Democracy is apparently divided. . . . Work seems to run off your shoulders like water off a duck’s back. So you are generally looked on, I feel, as the one to straighten out the many kinks in the New Deal system, and to restore the government to soundness and sanity. If you think it is nice for your family’s sake to be Ambassador, think how much nicer it would be for them for you to be President. So you would better be thinking seriously about that.”4
The press had also begun talking about a possible candidacy. “There are only five Dionne Quints,” Life magazine had joked in its April 11 photo essay on the family, “and the Kennedy Kids are nine. If Father Joseph Patrick Kennedy ever gets to be President, he will owe almost as much to that fact as to his abilities which earned him $9,000,000.” A month later, in the May 21, 1938, issue of Liberty magazine, a national publication with a circulation of over one million, Ernest Lindley asked, “Will Kennedy Run for President?” and answered in the affirmative. Though the odds were heavily against him “at this stage,” Lindley declared, “a few connoisseurs of Presidential material are willing to make long-shot bets that the next Democratic nominee for President will be Joseph Patrick Kennedy.” The Boston Sunday Advertiser phrased the question a bit differently on June 5: CAN KENNEDY BE PRESIDENT? DESTINY BECKONS BOSTON MAN: WILL HE REACH THE WHITE HOUSE? “College graduating classes throughout the country,” including at “Tufts, with its Protestant background,” were, the paper reported, “voting him their overwhelming choice for President in 1940” in straw polls.
Joseph P. Kennedy knew that his candidacy was a long shot and that it would make sense only if Roosevelt decided not to run for a third term. He was not going to let that deter him from putting the best possible gloss on his credentials. Though he had been in London for only a few months, he positioned himself now as an expert on European affairs. “I think it would be a very helpful thing if agitation could be started to have me address the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committee in Executive Session,” he wrote Arthur Krock on May 24. “If you think this is worthwhile, you might start it in the works.” Krock responded that he thought Kennedy’s idea a “splendid” one “and I shall put it in the works. By the time you arrive, I think you will find everything ready unless the members have all got out of town by then.”5
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On landing at New York Harbor, Kennedy was given the type of greeting usually reserved for movie stars or presidential candidates. To the surprise and consternation of British heavyweight champion Tommy Farr, who thought he was the most famous man on board the Queen Mary, it was the ambassador who was thronged by reporters and photographers. The first question asked was whether he was going to be a candidate for president in 1940. He answered “emphatically that he would not consider being boomed for President in 1940. He added that any such move would be a breach of faith with the President.”6
From New York Harbor, he was taken to the Waldorf-Astoria, where he visited with members of the Maritime Commission. The following morning, he was driven to Hyde Park to see the president. They met in Roosevelt’s private office.
Roosevelt was, as Harold Ickes would write in his diary after having lunch with the president a few days later, furious at Kennedy for his presidential ambitions and for being so taken with his newfound expertise that he lectured the president on foreign policy. Kennedy, Roosevelt told Ickes, had “remonstrated with him for criticizing Fascism in his speeches. He wants him to attack Nazism but not Fascism. The President asked him why and he said very frankly that he thought that we would have to come to some form of Fascism here. The President thinks that Joe Kennedy, if he were in power, would give us a Fascist form of government. He would organize a small powerful committee under himself as chairman and this committee would run the country without much reference to Congress.”
Kennedy had always been much more conservative, much more pro-business, than the president’s other advisers, but during his months in England he had become so obsessed with the lack of progress toward economic recovery, the deleterious effects that prolonged depression in America was having on European prosperity and stability, and the threat of war that he appeared ready now, or so he had hinted, to sacrifice democratic principles and practices. Kennedy did not welcome the coming of a Fascist-like economic order—he much preferred the freewheeling capitalist system through which he had made his fortune—but he believed that the unregulated, uncontrolled, private investment regime that had fueled economic expansion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries might not be a viable option in a global economy dominated by national actors who had centralized control of capital investment and foreign trade. It was time now for the United States government to extend its control over the economy, as the Italians had, and provide a few wise businessmen such as Joseph P. Kennedy with more authority.
There was nothing new in Kennedy’s ambitions to play a larger role in economic matters. Everybody knew he had always wanted to be secretary of the treasury. What angered Roosevelt was that Kennedy now thought he should be president as well. “The President,” Ickes wrote in his July 3 diary entry, “knows that he is a candidate but does not think that a Catholic could be elected.”
Ickes tried to impress on Roosevelt the danger Kennedy posed as a potential candidate. “It is reported that Kennedy has come to an understanding with Arthur Krock of the New York Times. It is expected that there will soon be a vacancy in the editorship. . . . Krock is doing all that he can to boost Kennedy and Kennedy is ready to support Krock financially if necessary for this New York Times job. I have been told that Krock is going to take some time off to devote himself to spreading the Kennedy-for-President gospel. There is probably no doubt that Kennedy is spending a great deal of money to further his Presidential ambitions. He has plenty of it and he is willing to spend it freely. Neither is there any doubt that he is making a good deal of headway in conservative quarters.”7
Ickes’s reports on the Kennedy-Krock alliance were true, though much exaggerated. Krock had indeed hoped that with the retirement of Dr. John Huston Finley, who was quite ill, he would be named the new editor in chief of the New York Times. We don’t know if Kennedy interceded on his behalf. What we do know is that after Krock had been passed over for the post in November 1938, Kennedy complained about it to Arthur Sulzberger, who was visiting London. “I remember saying to
him that I was terribly disappointed that Arthur did not receive the post,” he wrote Krock in October 1941. “Sulzberger seemed quite moved by my statement and hastened to explain that of course I understood that there was no reflection at all on your ability because he regarded you as a most able newspaper man, but he was of the opinion that he would be criticized if he appointed a Jew as Editor, since the ownership was in the hands of Jews. Of course to this I could make no answer except to again express my regret that any reason could be found not to give you the job.” Kennedy did not protest or try to argue with Sulzberger, no doubt because he agreed with him that it would open Sulzberger to criticism if he, a Jew, appointed another Jew as editor.8
The president did not confront Kennedy directly on his ties to Krock. Nor did he say anything to him about his unseemly enthusiasm to be considered a candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1940. Instead, he cut short their meeting at Hyde Park, summoned Eleanor and asked her to “feed him lunch at her cottage and then see him to the train.”9
On June 23, the day after Kennedy’s visit with the president, Arthur Krock wrote to tell him that “there were reports of Presidential coolness toward you at Hyde Park Tuesday.” Krock had inquired as to the source of these “reports” and been informed by one of his contacts in Washington that Steve Early, Roosevelt’s press secretary, “had told one or two correspondents . . . that Roosevelt was annoyed with Kennedy partly because of the Presidential boomlet and partly on the ground that Kennedy had given what he (Roosevelt) considered outside (foreign affairs) information to correspondents before Roosevelt himself got it.” The reference was to Kennedy’s political letters, in which, sounding very much like a future candidate for office, he weekly forwarded his observations on foreign, domestic, and economic developments to the most influential men in Washington, including Arthur Krock, Walter Lippmann, Boake Carter, Roy Howard, Frank Kent, Drew Pearson and Robert Allen, Russell Davenport of Fortune, William Randolph Hearst and his chief lieutenant, Tom White, former New Dealer Hugh Johnson, Bernard Baruch, and senators James Byrnes, Key Pittman, and Burton Wheeler.10