by David Nasaw
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Eleven days after the declaration of war, Kennedy began sending his family home. Kick, Eunice, and Bobby sailed with their mother on the Washington on September 14. On September 18, Joe Jr. left on the Mauretania; Jack, who had been granted permission from Harvard to arrive a few days late, flew to New York on the Pan Am Clipper on September 19; on September 20, the final contingent of Kennedys, Patricia, Teddy, and Jean, sailed on the Manhattan with Miss Hennessey, who, Jean reported to her father, “was very sad to be leaving Roy [her English boyfriend] and was morning [sic] all the way over.”4
Only Rosemary stayed behind in England with her father. She was doing so well—and seemed so content—at the Montessori-method convent school, it would have been foolish to uproot her. Instead, she was evacuated with the other students and nuns and Miss Gibbs, her companion, to Boxmoor, a village in Hertfordshire, where the convent school was reestablished on the grounds of the local Catholic church. Boxmoor was conveniently close to Wall Hall, the Morgan estate where Kennedy now spent his weekends.
On Saturday morning, two days after Rose had sailed home, Kennedy visited Mother Isabel, the mother superior at the convent, “and had a nice talk about Rose[mary].” That same night, he called Rosemary to tell her that “she was going to be the one to keep me company, and as this house [Wall Hall] was very handy to her new school I would invite some of her girl friends and herself down to spend every other weekend with me and I would have a picture show at the house. That tickled her no end. So we will see how that works out. I think I will have the Moores stay over . . . until I see how serious this bombing turns out and then if it gets real bad they can take her home. And in the meantime the Moores can take Rose[mary] out every once in a while and between us all she will be really happy and enjoy herself.” He was going to have a telephone installed at the school so he could talk regularly to his daughter. He had also, he wanted Rose to know, arranged for “an extra girl” to spell Miss Gibbs. “So,” he reassured his wife, “that’s that. Don’t give it a moment’s thought at least for the present. . . . Now darling, as to me. With all of the family safe in America I have no worries. I will miss you terribly but that can’t be helped. . . . This position at the minute is probably the most interesting and exciting in the world, and in addition I may be of some help in helping to end this catastrophic chaos.”5
The war was but two weeks old and Kennedy was already attempting to put himself in a position where he could be of “some help” in ending it. Secretary of State Hull detoured around Kennedy, fully aware that in wartime, as in peacetime, Kennedy would try to set his own agenda. When he had information or questions for the British, Hull conveyed them through Lord Lothian, the newly installed British ambassador in Washington.
Within days of the declaration of war, Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau had proposed that the U.S. government, in partial payment for British war debts, take possession of the Normandie and Queen Mary, which were in American ports. Charged with negotiating the transfer, the State Department opened talks with Lord Lothian in Washington. Kennedy found out about the proposal two days later when British Treasury officials, assuming he was involved, asked for clarification. Embarrassed and furious, Kennedy accused Morgenthau of excluding him from the talks. Morgenthau, who had never suggested that Kennedy be shut out, asked Welles to please make that clear. “I’m willing to take the blame,” the treasury secretary told Welles over the telephone, “when the blame is mine, but I don’t think it is this time.”6
Morgenthau called Kennedy in London to explain that it had been the State Department’s decision, not his, to negotiate through Lothian in Washington. Kennedy made it clear he didn’t hold Morgenthau responsible. “It’s dead as far as I’m concerned, Henry, and I’m glad you called me up. And you know how I feel about it. . . . I know very well that I can save you a lot of bumps as far as this place goes . . . if I know what’s going on, but this one struck me so between the eyes that I didn’t know whether I was afoot or horseback.”7
Still unaware or unwilling to recognize that his policy recommendations were dismissed the moment they arrived, not only by Hull but by Roosevelt, Kennedy wrote the president a long letter the week after war was declared, marked it “Personal and Confidential,” and offered “a few of my impressions as to what is taking place here.” The British government, he warned the president, was going to do everything it possibly could to influence American public opinion, “figuring that sooner or later they can obtain real help from America.” For the moment, they were preparing for war—and the economic emergency it would entail.
“The place where the real works are going on is in the economic and financial departments. There the best brains in England have been concentrated. . . . England is as much a totalitarian country tonight from an economic and trade point of view as any other country in Europe—all that is needed is time to perfect the organization. All trade will be directly or indirectly controlled by the Government.” It was imperative, given this developing reality, that the Americans make changes accordingly so as not to be bested in the rounds of trade negotiations over raw materials, finished products, and currency regulations. “This all adds up into one suggestion: That we should be on our guard to protect our own interests. In the economic and financial field the best possible brains should be concentrated on the problems which the European war is bound to raise.”8
A day later, Kennedy sent off a “Triple Priority” telegram labeled “Strictly Confidential and Most Personal for the Secretary and the President.” He had visited for an hour with the king and queen and then spent forty minutes with Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare. The king had told him that he was convinced Poland would be defeated within three or four weeks, after which Hitler would forward a proposal “to France and England to put a stop to this war and to arrive at some understanding.” When that happened, the Chamberlain government would, Kennedy “inferred” from what Hoare had told him, be faced with either entering into negotiations and being voted out of office for doing so; or refusing to enter into negotiations and preparing for endless, probably unwinnable war on the continent and bombardment from the air at home. Each path led to disaster. “They know that if the war continues or if a Government is maintained on a war basis, it signifies entire social, financial and economic breakdown and that after the war is over nothing will be saved. If the war were stopped, on the other hand, it would provide Herr Hitler with so much more prestige that it is a question of how far he would be carried by it.” There was only one way out. Roosevelt, Kennedy suggested, should step in where the British could not and forge a deal with Hitler. “It appears to me that this situation may resolve itself to a point where the President may play the role of savior of the world. As such the English Government definitely cannot accept any understanding with the present German Chancellor but there may be a situation when President Roosevelt himself may evolve world peace plans. . . . Having been a practical person all my life, I am of the opinion that it is quite conceivable that President Roosevelt can manoeuver himself into a position where he can save the world.”9
Kennedy’s recommendation was recklessly bizarre. Roosevelt could not make peace in Europe because he had nothing of substance to offer Hitler, other than perhaps Poland, which was already within his grasp. To even get Hitler to the bargaining table, Roosevelt would have had to recognize his seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia, which he could not possibly do without making a mockery of American pronouncements and principles. The attempt to appease Hitler would surely fail, and failure this time would be catastrophic. It would weaken Roosevelt internationally, cripple him politically a year before a presidential election, embolden Hitler to continue his aggression, offer Italy and Japan tacit assurance that the “democracies” would eventually recognize their conquests, and represent one of the grandest double crosses in world history. Had the ambassador taken an hour or two to think through his proposal before sending it off, he might
have realized this. But he had not. His cable was dispatched at two o’clock, only hours after he had met with Hoare. Given the time it took to dictate, type, review, and “Triple Priority” encode a message this long, it was clear that Kennedy had not had the opportunity to reflect on what he was recommending.
Kennedy got his answer two hours after he sent his cable. It was brutally terse. Hull informed him, on a strictly confidential basis, that the president would never, “so long as present European conditions continue,” initiate any peace move. “The people of the United States would not support any move for peace initiated by this Government that would consolidate or make possible a survival of a regime of force and of aggression.”10
Roosevelt and Hull were astounded by Kennedy’s suggestions that the president initiate negotiations with Hitler while Great Britain and France were at war with him. The president, according to James Farley, thought that Kennedy’s cable was “the silliest message to me I have ever received. It urged me to do this, that, and the other thing in a frantic sort of way.”11
It may not have been coincidental that the day he received Kennedy’s dispatch, the president initiated direct contact with Winston Churchill, now first lord of the Admiralty and Chamberlain’s expected successor at 10 Downing. “It is because you and I occupied similar positions in the World War that I want you to know how glad I am that you are back again in the Admiralty,” Roosevelt explained in his first letter to Churchill, sent by diplomatic pouch to the embassy but sealed so that no one would open or read it at Grosvenor Square. “Your problems are, I realize, complicated by new factors, but the essential is not very different. What I want you and the Prime Minister to know is that I shall at all times welcome it, if you will keep me in touch personally with anything you want me to know about. You can always send sealed letters through your pouch or my pouch.”12
There was something daring and wholly irregular in the American president bypassing his ambassador and opening a secret channel of communication with a British cabinet member at a moment when the nation was bound by strict neutrality laws and its people overwhelmingly opposed to engagement in another European war. Churchill covered himself by clearing every message he sent with Prime Minister Chamberlain. Roosevelt had no superior to provide him cover.
Three weeks after the correspondence had been initiated, Kennedy found out about it from Churchill. Embarrassed and infuriated, he referred in that evening’s diary entry to the president’s clandestine correspondence with Churchill as yet “another instance of Roosevelt’s conniving mind which never indicates he knows how to handle any organization. It’s a rotten way to treat his Ambassador and I think shows him up to the other people. I am disgusted.” What made the matter worse to Kennedy’s mind was that Roosevelt’s overtures to Churchill indicated that he trusted him. Kennedy most certainly did not. “I can’t help feeling he’s not on the level. He is just an actor and a politician. He always impressed me that he’d blow up the American Embassy and say it was the Germans if it would get the U.S. in. Maybe I do him an injustice but I just don’t trust him.”13
On October 6, the evening after Churchill confided in him that he was receiving secret communications from the president, Kennedy was awakened after midnight by the first lord of the Admiralty, who apparently not only never slept but didn’t want anyone else to. Churchill had had a call from the president and wanted Kennedy to cable his reply from the American embassy. Kennedy had the cable coded and sent that same evening. “Again I am amazed at Roosevelt’s complete lack of understanding of organization. He calls Churchill up and never contacts me. A rotten way to win men’s loyalty . . . I’ll have my say some day!”14
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On Sunday morning, September 17, two weeks after the declaration of war, Lord Beaverbrook called Kennedy with the news that “the Russians had crossed the borders into Poland. He was frightfully disturbed. He said, ‘This puts a terrible new aspect on the war.’” Beaverbrook wanted Kennedy to “get your President to see what plans can be worked out to save this catastrophe.” The news was indeed terrible and terrifying. If the Soviet invasion of Poland was the first move in a Soviet-German military alliance to divide up Europe (with Italy as junior partner), there was no conceivable way to save the democracies.15
Chamberlain, whom Kennedy visited the next day, downplayed the significance of “the Russian situation.” The prime minister did not believe that the move into Poland signaled the beginning of “a straight military alliance with Germany.” In that evening’s dispatch to the State Department, Kennedy recounted and then dismissed Chamberlain’s relative equanimity. “I think he is probably doing some wishful thinking.”16
The American ambassador showered Washington regularly now with Cassandra-like predictions of the end of civilization, capitalism, and representative government in Europe. On September 30 alone, he wrote three separate letters to the president, each arguing that there was no way to save the British from defeat—and it might not be worth even trying to do so. The British claimed for themselves the highest moral ground, but the government had gone to war not to save Poland or Western civilization, but to protect and preserve its colonial “possessions and place in the sun, just as she has in the past.” This was not a war to protect “democracy—the only form of government I want to live under.” It was another war to preserve the British Empire.17
He was disgusted by the drumbeating for war, by the moral certainty of the British and their American supporters that war had to be waged. “Of course, I am not carried away by this war for idealism,” he wrote Missy LeHand on October 3. “I can’t see any use in everybody in Europe going busted and having communism run riot. My own belief is that the economics of Germany would have taken care of Hitler long before this if he didn’t have a chance to wave that flag every once in a while. But, of course, one isn’t supposed to say this out loud. The British are going into this war hating it, but with determination to fight it out. I still don’t know what they are fighting for that is possible of accomplishment.”18
As long as Chamberlain and Halifax had pursued a peace agreement with Hitler, the ambassador had been their uncompromising supporter—so uncompromising, in fact, that he had been accused of going over to the other side. Now that the Chamberlain government had declared war and the prime minister and foreign secretary ruled out the possibility of further negotiations, Kennedy distanced himself from them both. As he told Lord Halifax, who reported their conversation to Lord Lothian in Washington, it was “his opinion [that] the consequences of indefinite continuance of the war were so serious that every effort should be made by diplomatic resources to find the way of peace.” Halifax answered that while “everyone would agree that peace was desirable if it could be achieved [insofar as] the present German Government were quite untrustworthy nothing was to be gained by deluding ourselves into supposing that any paper peace terms proposed by them could . . . offer the way of peace. The Ambassador did not seem to disagree with this, but recurred to the tragic results that prolongation of the war must involve.”19
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The British Foreign Office now began to monitor the ambassador’s activities as if he were an enemy agent. A secret “Kennedyiana” file was opened, and under the heading “U.S. Ambassador’s Views as to the Outcome of the War,” Foreign Office officials filed their reports, all secondhand, of the “defeatist” remarks the ambassador had supposedly made to foreign journalists, colleagues in the diplomatic corps, and whoever happened to be at the dinner table with him. They were so concerned by the ambassador’s endless badmouthing of British war efforts that they debated whether to notify Lord Lothian in Washington and, if “necessary . . . ask him to speak to Mr. Roosevelt.” Another option was for the Foreign Office to voice the government’s concerns to career diplomat Herschel Johnson so that he might “take the hint” and report his chief’s indiscretions to Washington. A third was to confront the ambassador directly and ask him to desist
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In late September, the Foreign Office sent Lord Lothian “a specimen of the reports” gathered in the “Kennedyiana” file. “While it is very regrettable that Kennedy should be adopting this attitude, we do not propose, for the time being at any rate, to pursue the matter further. We had thought it well, however, to let you know about his indiscreet utterances in case it should later become necessary for us to ask you to drop a hint in the proper quarters.” The consensus was that any attempt at “‘splitting’ Mr. Kennedy at the state department or elsewhere” might only backfire. “A complaint might, of course, make him shut up, but in that case we shall neither know what he is thinking nor what he is telling the U.S. Government.” As one officer suggested, Kennedy’s “defeatism” might also, in a perverse sort of way, “have its good side in jogging the Americans out of their eighty-two percent [according to a recent Gallup poll] wishful thinking that the French and we are going to win!” The more frightened the American public and politicians were that the British were going to lose, the more likely Congress might be to amend the Neutrality Acts to permit direct assistance of the British war effort.
Various explanations were offered for the ambassador’s defeatism: that as an Irish American, he was “naturally predisposed to twist the lion’s tale”; that he had been convinced, wrongly, of German air superiority, first by Lindbergh and then by his son Joe Jr., recently returned from a visit to the continent; that as a politically ambitious American, he had “to make sure that he is not tarred with the pro-British brush.” The shrewdest observation was made by an officer (whose handwritten signature is indecipherable) who noted that because Kennedy was “primarily interested in the financial side of things, he cannot, poor man, see the imponderables which, in a war like this, will be decisive.”20