by David Nasaw
The jubilation he had experienced in Rome forty-eight hours earlier had given way to despair. Hitler had demonstrated that he was not only untrustworthy, but on the march and unstoppable, his next step most likely Danzig, the “free city” on the Baltic, and the Polish Corridor, the strip of land running through that part of the German empire that had been ceded to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles.
On March 31, Prime Minister Chamberlain, as Kennedy had expected and feared, declared unequivocally in a speech to the House of Commons that “in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.” The French, he added, would respond in the same way.9
Kennedy, given advance notice of what Chamberlain was going to announce, called the president the night before the speech. He was told that Roosevelt, who was at Warm Springs, was sleeping. “About one-half hour later the President called me and was very friendly. Said he thought Chamberlain’s plan was a good one but thought it probably would mean war. Then he asked me whether I thought now was the time to call a world conference for peace. I said that I did not think so until we had a better idea of how the People of Germany and Italy, in spite of their leaders, took this pronouncement. . . . I told him I would watch public opinion reports from both these countries and keep in touch with him.”10
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Despite the gloom, the disappointments, and the recurrent nightmares of the war that was surely coming, there were moments of joy that spring as Kennedy watched his older children grow into adulthood. When asked why he had accepted the appointment to London, he had never hesitated to answer that he had done it for his children. He wanted his boys in particular to get the kind of hands-on experience that, combined with their Harvard educations, would set them up for careers in politics or government or international business. He had encouraged first Joe Jr., then Jack, to tour the European capitals and had done the advance work necessary to guarantee that they got to meet the “topside” people wherever they traveled. That spring of 1939, Joe Jr. was traveling through war-torn Spain and writing his father long letters about conditions there.
Invited for a weekend at Cliveden in late February, Kennedy read aloud his son’s latest letter first at teatime on Lady Astor’s bidding, and then again, after supper, to a larger gathering that included the prime minister. “Everyone sits around quietly,” Anne Morrow Lindbergh recalled in her diary. When Kennedy had finished reading, he took “off his glasses . . . and suddenly looks like a small boy, pleased and shy. He looks like an Irish terrier wagging his tail (a very nice Irish terrier).” Later that spring, Kennedy sent copies of his son’s letters “and a clipping from the London Evening Standard” about Joe Jr. to Paul Murphy in New York and asked him to forward the material to journalist John Bright Kennedy to deliver to the Saturday Evening Post and Hearst’s Cosmopolitan magazine. Any money earned from publication would, Kennedy instructed Murphy, be given to charity, “as I do not want [Joe Jr.] competing with newspaper men on the strength of being the Ambassador’s son. . . . My interest in the matter is to see young Joe get out on his own with what I consider a very worthwhile contribution in the form of these letters and some other articles [which] will give him international publicity.”11
Jack, too, was traveling through Europe that spring. On returning from the pope’s coronation in March, he had taken up residence in Paris as a sort of high-level embassy intern. From Paris, he moved on to German-occupied Prague, Poland, and the Soviet Union, then back west to Danzig and south to Romania, Turkey, and Palestine. Everywhere he went, he was, as his brother had been, preceded by introductions to the American embassy. George Kennan, who was serving in Prague in 1939, recalled receiving the “telegram from the embassy in London, the sense of which was that our ambassador there, Mr. Joseph Kennedy, had chosen this time to send one of his young sons on a fact-finding tour around Europe. . . . We were furious. . . . His son had no official status and was, in our eyes, obviously an upstart and an ignoramus. . . . That busy people should have their time taken up arranging his tour struck us as outrageous.”12
Jack Kennedy, Kennan notwithstanding, was no “ignoramus.” His letters to his father from Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East were wise and incisive and capitalized on the history he had read during his many lengthy periods of bed rest and convalescence. Jack had hoped to extend his tour through the summer and would have, had his father not cabled that the “girls would be disappointed” if he was not back in London for Eunice’s “coming out” and the debutante parties that would precede it.13
The partying was more intense than ever that spring and summer of 1939, perhaps because of relief that war had not come or because of the fear that it was in the offing. Whatever the reason, Joe Jr., Jack, and Kick Kennedy, with no lack of resources, charm, or good looks, made their mark in London society. At the July Fourth party that the Kennedys gave at their residence, Rose sat next to the king’s brother the Duke of Kent, who, she reported in her diary, “told me accidently he had seen Kennedys at every table at the 400 Club which is supposed to be rather gay and not a place for Kathleen. Joe reprimanded Kick for being there and a few moments later, the Duke apologized [to Kick] for telling on her.”14
That August, with the social season at an end, Jack prepared to travel again, this time to Germany with Torbert Macdonald, his friend from Harvard. Just before their departure, the boys were called in to see the ambassador. “I recall very well indeed the Ambassador saying,” Macdonald later remembered in an oral history, that “no matter what happened, [they were] not to cause any trouble and to bend over backwards to stay out of trouble. . . . He indicated that the Germans were very tough and paid no attention to laws and rules, and, if anything happened, just to back away.”15
Kennedy visited often with his eldest daughter, Rosemary, who attended the Convent of the Assumption school in Kensington Square, a training center for Montessori teachers. She had been told that if she did well there, she would graduate in June with a diploma and be prepared to teach young children.
In late February, Rosemary wrote to thank her father “very much for taking me to the concert. It was very nice of you. I have been very busy making an Album for Dr. Montessori when she comes in March. It takes an awful lot of work. And your time. I have been taking elocution lessons up to the 14th of March. Then I will be too busy. So Mother Estelle wants me to stop then. Do they know what exactly what I am going to take? But it is wonderful to get a diploma. Then I will be a school teacher. I got a diploma for being a child of Mary.” She wanted her father to be proud of her—and he was, especially as she was losing some weight, which she knew was important to him and to her mother. “This diet of Elizabeth Arden is very good. I have gone down between 5 and 7 pounds already living on salads, egg at night, meat once a day, fish if I want, spinach, soup. Wait to you see me. I will be thin when Jack sees me.” The letter was written in the block letters of a six- or seven-year-old, sprawled all over the page, slanting awkwardly, with no margins, no paragraphs, few complete sentences, and lots of misspellings.16
The fact that Kennedy was now living in the same city and in the same residence with several of his children and with his wife (when she was not traveling) did not prevent him from entertaining his women friends, among whom he now counted Clare Boothe Luce. She and her husband, Henry, whom both the Kennedys considered family friends, had visited in the spring of 1938. Clare had returned, somewhat mysteriously, in the fall. The only sign of the latter trip was the inclusion of her name in the Normandie list of arriving New York passengers on October 10, 1938. That same day, she had cabled a four-word message to Kennedy in London: “Golly that was nice.”17
She planned to visit again by herself in June, for the London opening of her hit play The Women. “You’re a
ngel,” she cabled Kennedy from New York in April. “Make life so exciting for me. Sailing June first for Paris, then London until June thirtieth. Will you be there. Cable. Yes, do.” She signed the cable with “love to Rose.” Four days before she sailed, she cabled again, this time without mention of Rose: “Sailing Normandie Tuesday. Save me lunch and/or dinner. Chat. Alone. Love, Clare.”18
Like the Kennedys, the Luces, within a few years of their wedding, had begun to spend more time apart than together. “Their sexual relationship,” wrote Henry Luce’s biographer Alan Brinkley, “troubled from the beginning, had come to a virtual end in 1939.” This made Clare an ideal lover for Kennedy. Because she was a family friend, the two could appear together in public. Because she was virtually separated from her husband, they could also spend time alone as a couple. And perhaps because beginning in late 1942 Henry Luce would embark on his own affairs, he bore Kennedy no ill will for having had one with Clare.19
We have no idea whether Rose knew of her husband’s affair with Clare. Still, either through coincidence or design, she and Clare traded places that spring. On May 24, Rose sailed west to New York on the Normandie. On its return journey, the Normandie brought Clare east to Southampton and Le Havre. Her biographer Sylvia Jukes Morris, noted that “Kennedy’s name appears more frequently than any other” in Clare’s diary during her stay in London. “As well as entertaining her à deux, ‘Joe’ squired her to the Ascot races and an evening performance of The Women.”20
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In April, Kennedy was given a new assignment, though not necessarily one he thought worthy of his talents. Should war break out, it would lead to shortages of the essential raw materials that American manufacturers imported from the British Empire. Hull asked Kennedy to “discuss with the British Government the possibility of arranging at once for an exchange of cotton and wheat for strategic materials, particularly rubber and tin.” Kennedy took on the assignment and eventually secured terms even better than those Hull had envisioned possible.21
He was pleased with the assignment but wanted to be trusted with something more.
On April 5, he sent off a “Personal and Confidential” letter to Welles, bypassing State Department channels, offering his services as liaison to the pope. Like a chastened, unwanted employee, he reached out to a trusted colleague in the hope that he would vouch for him with the boss. He was languishing on the sidelines at a time in history when his energy and intelligence were becoming more and more valuable—or so he believed. “I had a couple of talks with the Holy Father—one at rather great length, both as to conditions in the United States and conditions in Europe,” he informed Welles. “Besides having great prestige in countries like Great Britain and the United States, his influence in Italy is probably stronger than that of any Pope for the last 100 years.” The pope was never going to intervene to “stop Mussolini from fighting a war,” but his influence, Kennedy believed, “could be utilized for the cause of peace in ways under the surface rather than in a big gesture.” Kennedy promised to “keep my contacts close to the Vatican. All with the view of watching the moves very carefully and with the hope that there might possibly be a spot for the President to do the big job—peace for the world.”22
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On April 1, Franco declared victory in the Spanish Civil War. On April 7, the Italians invaded and occupied Albania. On April 14, President Roosevelt wrote open letters to Hitler and Mussolini, asking for assurance that their armed forces would not attack or invade the territory or possessions of thirty-three European and Middle Eastern nations, which he identified by name. The president pledged, in return, to seek similar assurances from these nations and to call an international conference on limiting armaments and increasing world trade.23
Mussolini and Hitler dismissed the president and his message with contempt.
Kennedy, who had been invited to give a major address in Edinburgh the week after Roosevelt’s telegram was released, planned to focus attention on the president’s initiative and its significance. He was told instead to excise all reference to foreign affairs, which he did. “On my way to Edinburgh,” he cabled Roosevelt and Hull the night before, “with speech all international affairs omitted, talking about flowers, birds and trees. The only thing I am afraid of is that instead of giving me the freedom of the city [a special municipal honor] they will make me queen of the May.”24
On returning from Edinburgh, Kennedy placed a call to Washington to thank Secretary of State Hull for defending him against former Wisconsin governor Philip La Follette, who had called for his removal. After they had exchanged remarks about La Follette’s bad behavior, Hull asked Kennedy in a rather perfunctory way, “How are things looking to you?” Kennedy responded with a lecture on the present economic situation. Hitler had run out of gold and foreign currency and would soon find it impossible to purchase the raw materials he needed to keep the German economy afloat. The only way to remedy this was to resume his path of territorial aggrandizement. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to appease him. “The price that you better get ready to pay him,” he warned the secretary of state, “is something beyond anybody’s imagination. . . . It isn’t merely a question of giving him colonies and it isn’t a question of sending over the leaders of British industry to effect trade. . . . What has to be done for him is beyond anyone’s conception yet. He has no money and he can’t change all those people who are engaged in war-time activities into peace-time activities without having a terrific problem.”25
Kennedy was in effect laying the groundwork for a new appeasement strategy, one that would buy Hitler off by providing him with the means to convert his war economy to a peace economy. He was proceeding entirely on his own on this. His former allies in appeasement, Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, had long since come to the conclusion that appeasement could not work because Hitler could not be trusted to fulfill any agreement he signed. Kennedy disagreed. He could not imagine that Hitler was so out of touch with reality that he would turn down a deal that would rescue his nation from its economic problems.
Kennedy’s plan was to offer Hitler a comprehensive economic package that would enable Germany to trade on favorable terms for the raw materials it required, thereby removing the need for future aggression. Though there was abundant evidence now that Hitler was not a rational actor, that he was motivated by concerns other than the purely economic, that he had decided that the best way to solve Germany’s trade problems was by territorial aggrandizement, Kennedy continued to regard him as if he were a rival business leader with whom it was possible to negotiate one’s differences. He continued to hold tight to the idea that Hitler’s absorption of first Austria, then the Sudetenland, and now what remained of Czechoslovakia had been prompted by economic problems and that Hitler would cease and desist from future aggression if and when the German economy was sound, foreign currency and gold reserves sufficient, and trade robust.
Kennedy was not alone in believing it might still be possible to make a deal with the fuehrer. On April 25, James Mooney, the president of General Motors Overseas and a businessman so well respected that Roosevelt would later employ him as an unofficial envoy to Germany, paid Kennedy a “courtesy call.” He had met in Berlin on General Motors business with Dr. Emil Puhl, a Reichsbank director, and Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat, Hermann Goering’s chief economic adviser. Mooney told Kennedy that he had inquired of Puhl and Wohlthat if, in return for “some sort of gold loan,” the Reich would reverse the discriminatory practices that had led Great Britain and the United States to cease trading with it. “To my shock and surprise,” Mooney reported to Kennedy, “they both answered immediately, ‘Hell, yes, we’d give it all up if we thought there was the slightest chance of our negotiating a gold loan and come back into normal trading arrangements.’” On hearing this, Kennedy “suggested that he might be able to go over to Paris, ostensibly for a week-end visit,” and meet secretly with the Germans to “discuss the subjec
t.”26
Here was Kennedy’s chance to get back into the diplomatic game, doing what he did best, negotiating businessman to businessman with an English-speaking German banker. Territorial appeasement had failed, but economic appeasement might yield results. American and British politicians and government officials might be unwilling even to contemplate entering such negotiations, but Kennedy was willing to give it a try. Still, he recognized from the onset that there would be serious risks involved in his initiating talks with German officials. The backlash—against him, the State Department, and the president—would be devastating should his private meeting become public knowledge.
Alert by now to the dangers of getting caught again violating State Department regulations, Kennedy cabled a “Strictly Confidential” dispatch to Sumner Welles: “I had a call this morning from Berlin from Mooney who is in charge of General Motors Export business and head of the German plant. He invited me to dine with him in Paris Saturday night. Another party at the dinner will be a personal friend of Hitler and high in influence in the Reichsbank. . . . This man is in the inner circle, from what Mooney said. . . . Is there any particular information regarding financial and political matters which you would like me to try to obtain?”27
Welles’s reply was immediate and to the point: “I have talked over your message with the Secretary and we both feel very strongly that at this particular time it would be almost impossible to prevent your trip to Paris and the names of the persons you will see in Paris from being given a great deal of publicity. If an erroneous impression in the press here were given [regarding] your conference with this individual from Germany it would inevitably create speculation and unfortunate comment. . . . I hope very much for the reasons above expressed that you will not undertake this trip at this moment.”28