by David Nasaw
Kennedy, informed by Halifax of his new strategy, thought it worth pursuing and offered his support. According to Halifax’s summary of their meeting on September 10, Kennedy had declared that “American opinion was more excited against Germany now than he had ever known it. . . . If war should come, he anticipated that the immediate reaction would be a desire to keep out of it, but that, if we [Great Britain] were drawn into it and, for example, London was bombed, he thought there would be a strong revulsion of feeling and that the history of the last war would be repeated, leading a great deal more rapidly than in the last war, to American intervention.”26
The next morning, on September 11, the foreign secretary and the ambassador met again. Knowing full well that neither Roosevelt nor Hull intended to make any public commitment to backing the British should they call Hitler’s bluff, Kennedy set out to find a way to create the illusion of one. He “suggested,” according to Halifax’s notes, “that it might be useful were he to call on the Prime Minister this evening in order to encourage German speculation regarding the fact that our two countries were apparently keeping in such close touch. I welcomed the ambassador’s suggestion and told him that I had no doubt that the Prime Minister would be glad to see him, quite apart from the political value which his visit might have in the eyes of the outside world.” In his diplomatic dispatch, Kennedy reported to Hull that he was “seeing the Prime Minister at 7:30” but didn’t tell him that the meeting had been his idea and was intended to create the illusion that the British and Americans were pursuing or formulating some joint declaration or action.27
Kennedy took a second and much more dangerous step toward constructing the appearance of an Anglo-American alliance by leaking news of one to officials in the German embassy. On September 12, the German chargé d’affaires in London cabled Ribbentrop that he had learned “from a reliable source [that] President Roosevelt has made it known through the Ambassador that Great Britain could count on the support of the United States if she should become involved in a war.” The “reliable source” was Kennedy, who was cited in another dispatch to Berlin as having declared that while “he himself had two sons and would work” to keep America out of the war, he was “convinced that America would nevertheless intervene in the end.” With the English, French, and ultimately the Americans poised to come to Czechoslovakia’s rescue, Kennedy had told the German envoy that it now “depended on Hitler whether there was to be chaos, from which no country in the world could remain immune.” Should Hitler back away from a military invasion and takeover of the Sudetenland, Kennedy assured the German envoy, “there would be a big change in public opinion through the world . . . and above all in the United States.” Hitler would be hailed by the world as a “benefactor of mankind. . . . His ideas in the social and economic field which were responsible for such extraordinary achievements in Germany would be a determining influence on the economic development of the United States and economic cooperation between all nations.” Desperately seeking to avert the catastrophe he saw just over the horizon, Kennedy was alternately threatening and flattering the Germans in the mistaken expectations that Hitler did not want war and that he cared about European and American public opinion.28
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On the evening of September 12, Hitler delivered the long-awaited speech at Nuremberg, during which it was expected he would declare his intentions regarding Czechoslovakia. Transmission was erratic, crackling, but listeners across the English Channel and across the Atlantic had no difficulty making out the high-pitched, sometimes frantic screeching of the fuehrer, accompanied by hundreds of thousands of thunderous voices chanting, “Sieg Heil!” Hitler raged against the Czech government, insisted that its oppression of the Sudeten Germans cease at once, and, borrowing a phrase from the American political lexicon and Woodrow Wilson, demanded that they be given the right of self-determination. He did not, however, declare war on Czechoslovakia, as had been feared.29
Immediately after the speech, Kennedy made his rounds of British cabinet members to ascertain their reactions. He was unable to see either the prime minister or the foreign secretary, but at eleven P.M. he was invited to the office of the home secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, who told him that the Foreign Office believed “the speech meant absolutely nothing except that the trouble was still present. He said Chamberlain, Halifax, Simon [Sir John Simon, chancellor of the Exchequer], and he felt there was more hope in the situation.”30
Whatever hopes might have been raised by Hitler’s speech were dashed almost instantly by news that the Sudeten Germans, incited by Hitler’s provocations, had begun to riot, attack Czech soldiers and policemen in the streets, and plunder Jewish shops. When the Czech government declared martial law, Konrad Henlein, the leader of the Sudeten Germans, demanded that the government cease all police actions in the Sudetenland. British ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson reported from Berlin that the Germans were poised to invade and would be prevented from doing so only if the Czechoslovak government immediately granted full autonomy to the Sudeten Germans.
With war on the horizon, Kennedy called Rose, who was in Cannes, and suggested she return home the next morning. Rose tried to take the first plane out but was unable to get a seat. She waited until that evening and boarded a sleeper for Paris. “I think I should be in London,” she wrote in her diary, “as Joe has Teddy [who was suffering from tonsillitis] on his mind and also, these crises in world politics.”31
“Oh, to be back in America,” Kennedy wrote his friend Arthur Goldsmith the next day, “hanging around with loafers like yourself. I am still trying to think of the fellow who suggested my name as Ambassador to Great Britain. Shooting would be too good for him. I want to tell you, boy, when you hit 50, you slow up. If these people would just stop fighting and let me get a rest, I promise I would never do an honest day’s work again. Just be a bum like you.”32
On September 14, the American ambassador was summoned to 10 Downing, where Chamberlain, exiting from his eleven A.M. cabinet meeting, informed him that he had the evening before telegrammed the fuehrer and asked for a meeting, to which Hitler had agreed. The next morning, the sixty-nine-year-old prime minister, who had never before been on an airplane, flew to Munich, where he was met at the airport by an open car sent by Hitler, driven to the train station, and transported in the fuehrer’s special train to Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps. The fuehrer and the prime minister met for three hours that day with only a translator in the room with them. Chamberlain returned to London on Friday, September 16, to meet with his “inner cabinet” of chief advisers, then with the full cabinet.
Kennedy, like the rest of the world, did everything in his power to find out what had occurred in Berchtesgaden and whether the prime minister’s mission had met with success. He called several times at 10 Downing and the Foreign Office at Whitehall, buttonholing under-secretaries and private secretaries, hoping to get news on the negotiations. His every step was chronicled by the daily press and in newsreels in America. “You and Hitler are running neck and neck to see who has his picture more often in the New York papers,” Arthur Goldsmith wrote from New York on September 16, “and if you think either of you is pretty, you’re crazy! It is ‘Kennedy goes to Downing Street,’ ‘Kennedy sees Halifax,’ ‘Kennedy has his shoes shined,’ ‘Kennedy thinks . . .’—that would be news. The implications in the New York newspapers are that Chamberlain does not dare go to the lavatory without consulting you.”33
That evening, Kennedy was briefed by Chamberlain. Hitler, Kennedy cabled the State Department, had demanded full “self-determination” for the Sudeten Germans, by which he meant separation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and its annexation by Germany. “Chamberlain asked him then if that meant that he would attempt to get the results he wanted by using force and Hitler said, ‘Absolutely, and I will chance a world war if necessary.’” The only concession he offered Chamberlain was that he would agree to refrain from giving “any military or
ders” until he had heard from the prime minister as to whether the British government would accept the principle of self-determination for the Sudeten Germans. Chamberlain, Kennedy added, had come away from meeting with Hitler “with an intense dislike for him. He said he is cruel, overbearing, has a hard look and would be completely ruthless in any of his aims and methods.”34
Chamberlain, recognizing that Hitler was not going to be deterred from the Sudetenland by threat of war, was prepared to give him what he wanted. What he did not know was whether the Czech government would agree to peacefully hand over the Sudetenland to the Germans. Roosevelt, an ocean away, was “of the opinion,” as he told Morgenthau, “that the Czechs will fight.” He wanted to get word to the French that instead of sending soldiers across the border into Germany in support of the Czechs, thereby setting in motion a process that could only lead to another world war, French forces should “stay behind the Maginot line” and, with the other “countries surrounding Germany,” make the war “a defensive one and then both on land and sea . . . shut off Germany’s supplies.” The president was, Morgenthau believed, “ready to go pretty far in demonstrating United States sympathy in such a move.” Morgenthau asked Roosevelt how he intended to get his message delivered to the French and the British.
“‘What about Kennedy’ the president asked.
“I said, ‘You know, Mr. President, you can’t trust Kennedy’ and he said, ‘That is right.’”
Roosevelt sent for British ambassador Ronald Lindsay and laid out his proposal for a blockade of Germany. Kennedy was never told of the president’s plan. He was already, barely six months after his arrival, outside the diplomatic loop, though he didn’t yet know it.35
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Chamberlain did not want to go to war with Germany over the Sudetenland. Kennedy was determined to do whatever he could to support him on this. Brave talk about British military will notwithstanding, Kennedy had no doubt (nor, it appeared, did Chamberlain) that the British were woefully unprepared to take on the Germans. Should the British even attempt to send troops into battle, Hitler could be expected to retaliate with air raids. London would be the first casualty. Kennedy was convinced that if he could get this point across to British politicians and the public, they would fall into line behind Chamberlain and appeasement.36
On September 19, Kennedy cabled Charles Lindbergh in Paris and asked him and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, “to come to London as soon as possible.” On Wednesday, September 21, the Lindberghs and Kennedys had lunch together at Prince’s Gate. “After lunch,” Anne Morrow Lindbergh recorded in her diary, “C. [Charles] and Ambassador Kennedy talk, Mrs. Kennedy and I listen. It is profoundly depressing.”37
According to Charles Lindbergh’s diary entry, Kennedy, referring to information he had secured from the British Foreign Office, reported that while Chamberlain realized “the disastrous effects of war with Germany at this time and is making every effort to avoid one, English opinion is pushing him toward war.” Lindbergh was horrified. “The English,” he wrote in his diary, “are in no shape for war. They do not realize what they are confronted with. They have always before had a fleet between themselves and their enemy, and they can’t realize the change aviation has made. I am afraid this is the beginning of the end of England as a great power.”38
Kennedy asked Lindbergh to prepare a report that he could circulate among British officials, outlining what would occur should Great Britain go to war. Lindbergh did as he was asked, wrote the report, and presented in it the most frightening scenario imaginable: “For the first time in history a nation has the power either to save or to ruin the great cities of Europe. Germany has such a preponderance of war planes that she can bomb any city in Europe with comparatively little resistance. England and France are far too weak in the air to protect themselves.”39
Kennedy sent the report to Hull, without telling him that he had invited Lindbergh to London and asked him to write it. He suggested that Hull forward the report to “the president and to the War and Navy departments.” He also had his secretary place a call to the office of the British chief of staff for the air force “to say that Colonel Charles Lindbergh was in London for a day or two . . . and would be willing to meet someone from the Air Staff and discuss the situation with him.” In the next day or so, Lindbergh made the rounds of the Air Ministry, repeating his dire warnings. John Slessor, the deputy director of plans, invited Lindbergh to dine with him and the secretary to the air chief marshal. “His attitude,” Slessor recorded at the time, “struck us as being entirely sympathetic to the British,” though he exhibited “an enormous admiration for the Germans and likes them personally.” Lindbergh made it as clear as he could “that our only sound policy is to avoid war now at almost any cost.”40
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The immediate threat of war receded on September 21 when the Czech government agreed to “make territorial concessions in return for an international guarantee against unprovoked aggression.”
Chamberlain flew to Germany the next day to hammer out what he hoped would be the final details of a peace agreement. At a meeting at the Hotel Dreesen in Godesberg, overlooking the Rhine, Chamberlain presented Hitler with his proposal for an international commission to draw new Czech boundaries and organize the orderly exchange of populations. He was shocked when the fuehrer insisted on the immediate cession of the entire Sudetenland and the withdrawal of the Czech army. If the Czechs did not agree to these demands by October 1, he would take the Sudetenland by force. Chamberlain protested, then agreed to present Hitler’s demands to the Czech government. The next morning, he flew back to London to report to his cabinet.41
Kennedy, who had been left in the dark again (with the rest of the diplomatic corps, the press, and the cabinet) while Hitler and Chamberlain conducted their negotiations, haunted 10 Downing and Whitehall in search of news. Under-Secretary Cadogan did his best to “hold . . . Joe Kennedy at arm’s length,” he wrote in his diary. The American ambassador, furious at being shut out, made “little secret of what he thinks of us.” Finally, at one P.M. on Saturday, September 24, Kennedy was briefed on Hitler’s “preposterous” demands. “Hitler not only wants what everybody was willing to give him but it looks as if he wants a great deal more,” he cabled Hull at the State Department.42
Chamberlain, exhausted and disheartened, presented his “inner cabinet” with the “memorandum” the fuehrer had given him and recommended that Hitler’s demands be met. That evening, Secretary of State Hull called Kennedy at the embassy. The cabinet was still meeting and he had no definitive word to offer Hull on what its decision would be. “I may see Halifax within the next hour. I am still up and will stay close to the telephone until late. . . . Everyone is frightfully nervous. We have been working until three or four o’clock in the morning. . . . I believe it is the Prime Minister’s policy to have peace at any price. The other group [the Churchill faction in the House of Commons] says that they are not going to stand it any longer and they are going to fight anyhow.”43
The Chamberlain cabinet met again the next morning to try to reach a decision on how to respond to Hitler—and how to hold on to a majority in the House of Commons. “There may be some crack-up this afternoon,” Kennedy cabled Washington. “Mr. Chamberlain and Halifax are not seeing me because they have no policy outlined yet that they can get the Cabinet to agree to, and I have been frankly advised that they want to have their house in order before saying what they propose doing. . . . The question is peace or war.”44
On Sunday evening, September 25, the order was sent out by the British government to mobilize the ARP (Air Raid Precautions). “War,” Kennedy wrote in his unpublished Diplomatic Memoir, “seemed to have come appreciably nearer. All over London people were being fitted for gas-masks. In the churches, in the theatres, at the sports matches, announcements were made of the depots to which they should go. A motor van slowly cruised through Grosvenor Square with a loud
speaker attachment urging people not to delay in getting their masks. It carried posters pleading for more recruits for the air protections services.” Kennedy cabled the State Department twice on September 26, asking for an additional one thousand gas masks and for the authority to spend several thousand dollars without getting preliminary estimates to purchase “materials for safeguarding against infiltration of gas, for first aid and similar supplies.” When he was told he could have the gas masks, but he could not get additional materials without first submitting an estimate, he “purchased the necessary materials with my own funds, to be reimbursed at a later date.”45
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On September 26, President Roosevelt issued a direct appeal to all parties involved—Czech, British, French, and German: “So long as negotiations continue, differences may be reconciled. Once they are broken off reason is banished and force asserts itself. And force produces no solution for the future good of humanity.” Kennedy was neither consulted nor warned in advance of the telegram, which was sent out at 1:13 A.M. Washington time.46
The prime minister, in a last-ditch effort to preserve the peace, dispatched Sir Horace Wilson to Berlin to appeal to Hitler “for negotiation as against violence.” He also arranged a radio address for the following day, September 27, to personally plead with Hitler for time to complete a peaceful transfer of the Sudetenland.
Kennedy suggested to Hull that Chamberlain’s radio address be broadcast directly to the American public. Sumner Welles called London to tell Kennedy that the president did not want Chamberlain’s speech “broadcast to the United States. . . . Any reference in that address to the similarity of ideals, to the similarity of love of peace of the two peoples would be all to the good but a direct message to the American public might be misconstrued.”