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The friends also marveled at the pristine typed drafts of chapters that seemed to show up magically at the Spee front door at all hours of the day. Fearing that he would miss his mid-March deadline for completing a full draft of the thesis, Jack hired secretarial help, in the form of typists and stenographers (he dictated parts of the draft), to expedite the work. This got him in trouble with the university administration, for it involved having women in men’s rooms, a violation of school policy that he had previously bypassed when the circumstances differed.60 He even took out an ad in the Boston Herald, then left for a wedding in Chicago and asked Torby Macdonald to make the arrangements in his absence. The ad specified that the candidate be “young,” and the response created tumult at Winthrop House. “On the day I’d set for interviewing applicants,” Macdonald observed, “I spent an uncomfortable half-hour in the office of one of the college administrators trying to explain the presence of 60 clamoring females outside our dormitory at 9:30 A.M.”
“You were always a ladies’ man, Torby,” Jack offered, “but this time I think you carried things a bit too far.”61
Hardly anyone before Jack had undertaken this kind of study, investigating the birth and development of appeasement in Great Britain. (A great many would follow him, however.) Asked by Jim Seymour to recommend to Jack some existing works to take into account, his putative teacher Harold Laski came up more or less empty. For most Britons, the events were too close, too painful to examine in the exacting way the young American set about doing—and largely by himself, notwithstanding the important help he received from Seymour, Hopper, and Wild, and from the army of stenographers and typists. Jack himself brought the strands of his story together, assembling into a coherent narrative the untold account of how British politicians, labor and religious leaders, students, and writers debated preparedness and international affairs during the 1930s. Subsequent claims that Jack could not have produced the finished entity, that he must have had professional help with the organization, writing, and analysis, do not hold up under scrutiny. This was his own work, right down to the poor spelling and errors of syntax. “I’ll never forget,” remembered Timothy “Ted” Reardon, Joe Junior’s roommate, “when I was out of college I got a call from Jack and he was doing his thesis….He called me and said, ‘Ted, you’re an English major, come on over, will ya, and look at my thesis.’ So I went over and looked and made some grammatical changes—but I’ll never forget saying, ‘How the hell do you expect me to go over all this stuff? When are ya handing it in, tomorrow?’ ”62
Jack made his deadline, just barely, submitting the work, “Appeasement at Munich: The Inevitable Result of the Slowness of Conversion of the British Democracy from a Disarmament to a Rearmament Policy,” with minutes to spare. It clocked in at 147 pages, plus six pages of annotated bibliography, and flowed from an overarching question: Why, at the time of Munich, was England “so poorly prepared for war”? To get the answer, Jack suggested, one must of course look to decisions by political leaders such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, but also beyond them, since after all the leaders operated in a democratic system and, as such, had to contend with the whims of the electorate and the machinations of powerful and competing interests in society, many of which favored collective security but were unwilling to pay for it. Indeed, the thesis argued, these systemic factors were determinative. Chamberlain was hemmed in politically in 1937–38, constrained by public and elite opinion, and his efforts to accommodate Hitler made strategic sense, inasmuch as he needed to delay any possible war in order to give his country a chance to rearm.
Now a shattering in the ideal that was the League and the dawning realization of Germany’s great productive capacity had made the country ready for rearmament. But it was still a democracy which was leisurely and confidently turning to rearmaments, not a frightened and desperate nation. It was not a nation with a single purpose with all its energies directed in a single direction; this was not to come until after Munich. No, it was still a democracy and the fear for their national self-preservation had not become strong enough for them to give up their personal interests, for the greater purpose. In other words, every group wanted rearmament but no group felt that there was any need for it to sacrifice its privileged position. This feeling in 1936 was to have a fatal influence in 1938.63
Remembering his debate with his British pals two years before, Jack gave close attention to Stanley Baldwin’s self-incriminating speech to Parliament in 1936. He quoted the most controversial part: “Suppose I had gone to the country [in 1933] and said that Germany was rearming and that we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain.” In analyzing this segment, Jack wrote:
I am neither trying to attack or to defend [Baldwin], but merely trying to get at what he really meant….What I think he was trying to show—and he used the election [of 1933] as the best barometer of a modern democratic state’s popular will—was the impossibility of having gotten support for any rearmament in the country due to the overwhelmingly pacifist sentiment of the country during these years. And I think from my study he was right. I think his choice of words was extremely unfortunate and opened him to enormous criticism [for playing politics with foreign policy], but I think it is very important that we try and get at his real meaning….I have gone into this at some lengths as it is a very crucial point in this thesis.64
Here Jack anticipated later struggles over how best to respond to totalitarian threats while upholding democratic governance and civil liberties. With clinical detachment he maintained that dictatorships by their nature have an easier time than democracies do in mobilizing resources—the latter, he argued, invariably must spend valuable time and energy attempting to reconcile competing priorities and competing interpretations of the national interest. Whereas citizens in totalitarian societies can be instructed on what to do, those in free societies must be won over, and that doesn’t always happen quickly.
Thus the central problem: “In this calm acceptance of the theory that the democratic way is the best way, it seems to me, lies the danger. Why, exactly, is the democratic system the better? It may be answered that it is better because it allows for the full development of man as an individual. But it seems to be that this only indicates that democracy is a ‘pleasanter’ form of government—not that it is the best form of government for meeting the present world problem.” If Americans wished for their democratic system to succeed, it would be imperative, Jack wrote, for them to “look at situations much more realistically” than they did currently. “We can’t afford to misjudge situations as we misjudged Munich. We must use every effort to form accurate judgements—and even then our task is going to be a difficult one.”65
To critics then and later, the analysis seemed at its core to be a defense of Joe Kennedy’s pro-Chamberlain and pro-appeasement position. It was partly that, but Jack also had kind words to say for Chamberlain’s foremost critic, Winston Churchill, praising him for invoking Britain’s national purpose and resolve. In this way the thesis showed Jack’s growing separation from his father’s viewpoint. And the study had a broader ambition as well, addressing as it did a matter that commentators had been raising at least since Alexis de Tocqueville, a century before: Can popular rule readily lend itself to the making of effective foreign policy? And can democracy, geared for a time of peace, respond effectively in a time of war? Jack’s answers: Yes and yes, but the task would not be easy. It required intelligent and committed leadership at the highest levels, able to articulate effectively to the public why fighting was necessary, and it required a capacity and willingness to plan for the long term. In the near run, totalitarianism had notable advantages.
To read the thesis today is to be struck above all by the impressive source base, by the acuity and authenticit
y of the analysis, and by the commitment to making historical judgments only on the basis of carefully examined evidence. One wishes for a more thorough proofreading, and there are occasional pedantic flourishes. The interpretation at times verges on the deterministic; elsewhere it’s underdeveloped, giving the narrative a hodgepodge feel. The prose is passable at best. Perhaps out of deference to his father’s and brother’s isolationism, he is mostly opaque on the debate swirling around him, at Harvard and throughout the country, between interventionists and isolationists. But there’s a confidence and vitality in the writing that is all the more notable coming from someone so young. Not least, the study shows the now familiar Jack Kennedy detachment—so much a feature of his letters and other writings during his overseas travels during the previous two and a half years—and commitment to an unsentimental realism in international affairs. Foreign threats cannot be dealt with by ignoring them or wishing them away, he writes; they must be confronted by clearheaded and informed calculation. In the same way, personalizing policy decisions is unproductive, as it diminishes the decision-maker’s capacity to render dispassionate judgment. In later life, Jack Kennedy would not always adhere to these precepts of world affairs, but they would become touchstones for his responses to most foreign policy crises. In historian Nigel Hamilton’s apt assessment of the thesis, “Nothing else Jack would write in his life would so speak the man.”66
As an attempt at first-cut history, written without access to archival sources, the thesis still stands up quite well. Many later historians would echo the revisionist argument that appeasement made strategic sense in the domestic and international context of the time—that is, impersonal forces and structural constraints limited the options open to policymakers—and would echo Jack Kennedy’s finding that a broad cross section of British society in the mid-1930s was deeply averse to doing anything that might threaten war. Memories of Passchendaele and the Somme were just too strong, and there was broad agreement as well that the Versailles Treaty had been unfair to Germany. (So numerous were the scholarly adherents to this view that they came to constitute a “revisionist school”; John F. Kennedy, though he is seldom acknowledged in the historiography, can legitimately be called a founding member.67) In his preface, Jack wisely noted that “many of the documents and reports are still secret; until they are released it is impossible to give the complete story.” Even so, he had amassed a large body of material, published and unpublished, and made discerning and judicious use of it—and under great time pressure. Not every undergraduate thesis can truly be called an original contribution to knowledge, but Jack’s fit the bill. His conclusion that Britain’s existential crisis was primarily the result of societal forces—in particular, a fickle and war-averse public that made scapegoats of individual leaders—is, if somewhat overstated, a thoughtful and cogent one, even at eighty years’ remove.
The contemporary assessments were mixed. “Jack rushed madly around the last week with his thesis and finally with the aid of five stenographers the last day got it in under the wire,” Joe Junior wrote to his father. “I read it before he had finished it up and it seemed to represent a lot of work but did not prove anything. However he said he shaped it up the last few days and he seemed to have some good ideas so it ought to be very good.”68 The government department faculty committee evaluating the finished product faulted the spelling and grammar but complimented its author on his penetrating assessment of a complex and historically important issue. Professor Henry A. Yeomans recommended magna cum laude, while Professor Carl Friedrich, more critical of what he saw as the work’s excessive length, inconclusive judgments, and careless writing, reduced the grade to cum laude plus. Arthur Krock read the thesis at the start of April and reported to Ambassador Kennedy that Jack had done “an excellent job, though I regret he has many doubts of the efficiency of democracy.” In revised form, Krock added, the thesis could make for an interesting book. He even had a new title to suggest: Why England Slept, a brash play on While England Slept, the American title of Churchill’s Arms and the Covenant, which Jack had read and discussed with his friends in the summer of 1938.69
VI
The ambassador was delighted to get this news. He had long wanted his sons to become published authors. It would add luster to their résumés and enhance their reputations, as he himself had found with his slim, ghostwritten campaign volume for FDR’s reelection in 1936. “You would be surprised how a book that really makes the grade with high-class people stands you in good stead for years to come,” he wrote to Jack.70 Over the previous months Kennedy had worked tirelessly to push Joe Junior’s writings on publishers, both in the United States and in Britain, suggesting that they bring out a book-length collection of Joe’s travel letters. He even tapped his speechwriter Harvey Klemmer to help polish the material. Still, the editors politely declined. Though Joe Junior’s serious demeanor gave the impression of gravitas, his ideas as expressed on the page were at times banal and sophomoric (“Does it ever occur to people that there are happy people in Italy and Germany?”), his prose earnest and wooden. Even magazine and newspaper editors rebuffed the father’s entreaties on his oldest son’s behalf (though Young Joe did get one short piece placed in The Atlantic Monthly71). Now, with Krock’s enthusiasm for Jack’s manuscript, the second son might get his name on a dust jacket first.
Krock’s faith in the study’s publication potential was genuine, but he also had an ulterior motive: he had long seen Joe Kennedy as a man of destiny, someone to whom he ought to hitch his wagon, someone who might succeed Franklin Roosevelt—a man Krock detested—as president of the United States. Well aware of the ambassador’s ambitions for his sons, Krock wanted to please him by helping out. He also saw great potential commercial success in a memoir by Joe Kennedy focused on his ambassadorship—when he sent Jack’s thesis to Gertrude Algase’s literary agency in New York, he told Algase he had in mind a twofer: a book by the father as well as one by the son.72
The ambassador intended to give his son a thorough critique of the thesis well in advance of the revision, but real life intervened. On April 9 the Phony War came to an abrupt and violent end as the Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway, mostly in order to secure the route by which high-grade Swedish iron ore reached Germany. In the days prior, the Royal Navy had begun mining Norwegian waters in order to force freighters bound for Germany into the open sea, where they could be subject to the British blockade. But the Allies were unprepared for the bold German preemptive stroke. Nine Wehrmacht divisions, backed by the Luftwaffe, knocked out the Danes in a single day and seized control of all the southern ports and airfields in Norway. There followed two weeks of skirmishing in central Norway between German and Allied forces, with the Germans prevailing and forcing a British and French withdrawal. By late spring the whole of Norway was under German control.
Churchill had been chiefly responsible for the planning and execution of the Norwegian operation, and Joe Kennedy expected him to suffer the consequences. “Mr. Churchill’s sun has been caused to set very rapidly by the situation in Norway which some people are already characterizing as the second Gallipoli,” Kennedy cabled to FDR and Cordell Hull in late April.73 Such was the irony, however, that the Scandinavian disaster elevated Churchill’s position at the expense of Neville Chamberlain. Many in Parliament blamed the prime minister for the outcome, and on May 7 thirty-three Conservatives voted against Chamberlain’s government following a debate on the operation. One of them, Leo Amery, offered a stinging rebuke of Chamberlain that he ended by quoting Cromwell’s dismissal of the Long Parliament, in 1653: “Depart, I say, and let us be done with you. In the name of God, go!” Shaken to the core, a downcast Chamberlain departed the chamber, shouts of “Go! Go! Go!” ringing in his ear.74
King George and many Tory grandees wanted Lord Halifax to take the helm. In their eyes he was the natural choice, whereas Churchill was an unscrupulous and volatile maverick with a checkered political past. But Halifax
, who had a deeply imbued sense of public service, believed Churchill would make a stronger war leader and refused the appointment. Chamberlain, hoping to the end to survive in power, recognized the game was up when the Labour Party refused to back him—on May 10, he advised the king to send for the sixty-five-year-old Churchill. The king, after one more failed attempt to get Halifax to take the post, agreed.
“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind,” Churchill declared that day, in his first speech to the House of Commons as prime minister. “We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”75
What a time to take power! Early on the day of Churchill’s appointment, May 10, Germany launched a massive offensive in the west, with attacks on the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The British and French generals responded by moving their forces toward the Dyle River, in Belgium, expecting to receive the weight of the German thrust there. Instead, on the thirteenth, the first German units in Army Group A, under Gerd von Rundstedt, broke through the tightly forested and ill-defended Ardennes near Sedan, on the Meuse River, past the western terminus of the vaunted Maginot Line. A two-day battle ensued, whereupon the victorious Germans dashed into the open countryside and curved west. As historian A. J. P. Taylor would write, “When they ran out of petrol, they filled up at the local pump without paying. They occasionally stopped to milk a French cow.” On May 20, the 2nd Panzer Division, under Heinz Guderian, covered sixty miles and reached the Channel coast near Abbeville. The lines of communication between the Allied front lines in Belgium and the rear areas had been completely cut.76