JFK

by Fredrik Logevall

  36. Dallek, Unfinished Life, 79–80; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 227.

  37. Cawley would go on to marry Thomas Watson Jr., the president of IBM and later U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, with whom she had six children. Time would name Watson one of the one hundred most influential people of the twentieth century.

  38. KLB OH, JFKL.

  39. KLB OH, JFKL.

  40. Walker and Allan, “Jack Kennedy at Harvard.”

  41. O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 84.

  42. JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 8, p. 10, box 147, JPKP.

  43. Harold Ickes diary, July 3, 1938, HIP, LC; Whalen, Founding Father, 228–29.

  44. Quoted in Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 61.

  45. Chamberlain held to the maxim that “it is always best to count on nothing from the Americans except words.” Quoted in Reynolds, From Munich, 38.

  46. In an early dispatch to Roosevelt, Kennedy summed up his early performance: “I think I have made a fairly good start here with the people and seem to be getting along reasonably well with the Government so far.” JPK to FDR, March 11, 1938, box 10, PSF, FDRL. In his first letter as ambassador, which he wrote to Arthur Krock, Kennedy said the present world crisis would have to be solved via an economic settlement rather than a political one. JPK to Krock, 3/8/38, box 31, AKP.

  47. JPK to Arthur Krock, March 28, 1938, box 31, AKP.

  48. JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 5, pp. 4–5, box 147, JPKP; Reston, Deadline, 66. A biography is Fort, Nancy.

  49. JPK to Arthur Krock, March 21, 1938, box 31, AKP.

  50. JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 3, pp. 8–10, box 147, JPKP. See also Nasaw, Patriarch, 291–96. Of Kennedy’s original version, Secretary of State Hull wrote to say that he thought “the tone of the speech is a little more rigid, and hence subject to possible misinterpretation, than would appear advisable at this precise moment.” Hull to JPK, March 14, 1938, OF 3060, FDRL.

  51. A standard account of these popular views is Cohen, American Revisionists. See also Jonas, Isolationism in America. An excellent study of the longer history of isolationism, dating to the 1890s, is Nichols, Promise. See also Brooke L. Blower, “From Isolationism to Neutrality: A New Framework for Understanding American Political Culture, 1919–1941,” Diplomatic History 38, no. 2 (2014): 345–76.

  52. Langer and Gleason, Challenge to Isolation, 14, quoted in Olson, Angry Days, 28.

  53. Berlin, Personal Impressions, 24.

  54. Ernest Hemingway, “Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter,” Esquire, September 1935. Hemingway would later sing a different tune, strongly supporting U.S. entry into the war against the Axis powers.

  55. Walter Millis, Road to War: America, 1914–1917 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1935).

  56. Quoted in Evans, American Century, 286, 288.

  57. Beard, Open Door at Home, 274, quoted in Milne, Worldmaking, 150–51.

  58. Burns, Crosswinds of Freedom, 152; FDR quoted in Olson, Angry Days, 32. According to historian Warren Cohen, FDR’s first administration marked “the only period in American history when the country might be fairly labeled isolationist.” Cohen, Nation, 84.

  59. Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 505–8.

  60. Doenecke, From Isolation to War, 71; Nasaw, Patriarch, 294–95.

  61. The literature is large, but see Self, Neville Chamberlain; Paul Kennedy, “Appeasement,” in The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered, ed. George Martel (New York: Routledge, 1999); Parker, Chamberlain; Donald Cameron Watt, “The Historiography of Appeasement,” in Crisis and Controversy: Essays in Honour of A.J.P. Taylor, ed. Alan Sked and Chris Cook (London: Macmillan, 1976), 110–129; Andrew Barros et al., “Debating British Decisionmaking Toward Nazi Germany in the 1930s,” International Security 34, no. 1 (Summer 2009): 173–98. A recent book-length examination is Bouverie, Appeasing Hitler, and there is in-depth treatment as well in Steiner, Triumph of the Dark. A summary of the strategic and economic case for appeasement is in Ferguson, War of the World, 319–30. On the Chiefs of Staff warning, see Watt, How War Came, 27.

  62. NYT, June 23, 1938; Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 87. Page Huidekoper Wilson, secretary in the office, would later write that Kennedy “desperately wanted to have one more thing in common with John Adams: he wanted to be President of the United States.” Wilson, Carnage and Courage, 16. See also Arthur Krock OH, CBP. For Kennedy’s own interpretation of the issue, see JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 9, pp. 3–4, box 147, JPKP.

  63. Harold Ickes diary, July 3, 1938, HIP, LC. See also Henry Morgenthau Jr. diaries, August 30, 1938, vol. 140, HMP, LC.

  64. Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1938; Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 170–71; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 116–17. Though he was unwilling to recall Kennedy, FDR told Morgenthau some weeks later, “If Kennedy wants to resign when he comes back, I will accept it on the spot.” Henry Morgenthau Jr. diaries, August 30, 1938, vol. 140, HMP, LC.

  65. JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 9, p. 7, box 147, JPKP.

  CHAPTER 7: THE AMBASSADOR’S SON

  1. Nasaw, Patriarch, 286.

  2. O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 90; Life, April 11, 1938; Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 35–36.

  3. Times (London), May 28, 1938, quoted in Renehan, Kennedys at War, 54–55; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 540; Bailey, Black Diamonds, 338–40.

  4. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 67–68; RK, Times to Remember, 157.

  5. Whalen, Founding Father, 212.

  6. Larson, Rosemary, 105–10; Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 49–50.

  7. RK diary notes, box 1, RKP; RK, Times to Remember, 217.

  8. Quoted in Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 160.

  9. Leamer, Kennedy Men, 118.

  10. William Douglas-Home OH, JFKL; Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 50.

  11. Quoted in Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 66–67. On Mitford, see also Thompson, The Six; and Mosley, Mitfords.

  12. The topic of discussion was Churchill’s son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, a military officer and an MP himself. Sandys had asked a question in Parliament that revealed sensitive national security information, and was ordered to appear before a military court. A Committee of Privileges was asked to rule on whether this was a breach of parliamentary privilege (they ruled that it was). A debate ensued in Parliament about several procedural aspects of this episode, with Churchill defending his son-in-law’s actions.

  13. Churchill, Arms and the Covenant; Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 54–56.

  14. Nasaw, Patriarch, 326; Riva, Dietrich, 469.

  15. Hennessy OH, JFKL; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 92.

  16. Overy, Twilight Years, 345–46; Perrett, Jack, 70.

  17. JPK to Cordell Hull, August 31, 1938, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 270–72; Henry Morgenthau Jr. diaries, September 1, 1938, vol. 138, HMP, LC; Blum, Morgenthau Diaries, 518.

  18. Quoted in James, Europe Reborn, 147.

  19. Jackson, Fall of France, 116–17. See also Martin Thomas, “France and the Czechoslovak Crisis,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 10, no. 2–3 (July 1, 1999): 122–59.

  20. Joe Kennedy’s own account of these weeks is in JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chaps. 13 and 14, box 147, JPKP. Quote to the Cabinet is in Roberts, Storm of War, 8.

  21. Berg, Lindbergh, 355–62, 367–68; Hessen, Berlin Alert, 92–105; Hermann, Lindbergh, 199. For Lindbergh’s high regard for Kennedy, see Lindbergh, Wartime Journals, 159.

  22. JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 15, pp. 3–5, JFKL; Mosley, Lindbergh, 229–30. A important older study on the aviator’s views and actions in this period is Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh.

  23. Lindbergh, Wartime Journals, 11, 72.

  24. Ferguson, War of th
e World, 364; Berg, Lindbergh, 375. At no point would the Germans succeed in mass-producing an aircraft akin to the B-17 Flying Fortress, which the United States had in operation prior to the war.

  25. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in the introduction to the fifth volume of her letters and diaries, denied that her husband’s advocacy had contributed significantly to the Munich deal. Lindbergh, War Within and Without, xvi.

  26. JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 15, p. 11, box 147, JPKP; Hull, Memoirs, 590.

  27. Reynolds, Summits, 84–87; Kershaw, To Hell and Back, 330–31. A detailed history is Faber, Munich, 1938.

  28. Kershaw, Hitler: Nemesis, 123–25; Whalen, Founding Father, 243.

  29. Meyers, As We Remember Him, 23; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 243. Many years later, now-Senator John F. Kennedy would write, “Personally I shall always remember my assignment in Professor Holcombe’s class in government to examine a single Congressman for a year. The thought that some zealous and critical sophomore is now dissecting my own record in a similar class often causes me some concern.” Harvard Alumni Bulletin, May 19, 1956, box 19, JPKP.

  30. Charlie Houghton interview, CBP.

  31. Quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 241–42.

  32. JFK to KLB, October 20, 1938, quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 246.

  33. Damore, Cape Cod Years, 50.

  34. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 68–69, 75; Horton OH, CBP.

  35. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 166; Reynolds, From Munich, 39–40.

  36. Quoted in Best, Churchill, 157.

  37. Caquet, Bell of Treason, 149–50; Ferguson, War of the World, 363–64.

  38. Kershaw, To Hell and Back, 333; Wark, Ultimate Enemy, 66–67. A nuanced assessment of the “war in 1938” counterfactual is in Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 652–56. Another one is in Calvocoressi and Wint, Total War, 92–96.

  39. JPK to Hull, February 17, 1939, in Foreign Relations of the United States 1939 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1956), vol. 1, 16–17; Watt, How War Came, 79, 83; May, Strange Victory, 192.

  40. JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 18, pp. 1–4, box 147, JFKP. Arthur Krock offered soothing words: “I know what a wonderful job you have been doing, and I am highly indignant over the barrage of misrepresentations to which you have been subjected.” Krock to JPK, October 6, 1938, AKP.

  41. Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 178–79; WP, October 22, 1938. Joe Junior, quick as always to jump to his father’s defense, called Lippmann’s claim “the natural Jewish reaction….Either you have to be prepared to destroy the fascist nations…or you might as well try to get along with them. I know this is hard for the Jewish community in the U.S. to stomach, but they should see by now that the course which they have followed the last five years has brought them nothing but additional hardship.” JPK Jr. draft memo, November 14, 1938, printed in HTF, 301–2.

  42. Brands, Traitor to His Class, 496–500.

  43. Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 178–79; Whalen, Founding Father, 248; JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 18, pp. 4–6, box 147, JPKP.

  44. Evans, Third Reich in Power, 580–97; Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, 131–53.

  45. JPK to Charles Lindbergh, November 12, 1938, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 300–301.

  46. Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 233–34; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 114–15; Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 108–9. Karabel, The Chosen. Joseph Kennedy’s foremost biographer, David Nasaw, came to the same conclusion regarding Kennedy’s attitudes. “David Nasaw and ‘The Patriarch,’ Part 2,” City Talk, CUNY TV, December 10, 2012, available at www.youtube.com/​watch?v=Sb6PGqxw1GQ.

  47. Whalen, Founding Father, 252; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 115; Koskoff, Joseph P. Kennedy, 281–82.

  48. NYT, November 27, 1938; Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 97; Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 232–33. On the U.S. government’s response to Kristallnacht, see also Wyman, Paper Walls, chap. 4. On the development of Nazi refugee policy, see Schleunes, Twisted Road.

  49. RK diary notes, September 15, 1938, box 1, RKP.

  50. JPK Jr. to Thomas Schriber, November 5, 1938, in Schriber interview, CBS interviews, JFKL; Searls, Lost Prince, 110.

  51. JPK Jr. Note, November 21, 1938, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 303–4; JPK Jr. Note, December 10, 1938, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 305–6.

  52. JFK to parents, n.d. (1938), box 56, JPKP; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 249.

  53. JFK to JPK, n.d. (1938), box 21, JFKPP.

  54. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 98.

  55. Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 249.

  56. Wheeler-Bennett, Special Relationships, 34–35; Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 110; Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 72–74.

  CHAPTER 8: THE OBSERVER

  1. Cordell Hull to JPK, March 7, 1939, box 172, JPKP; JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 22, pp. 8–9, and chap. 23, pp. 1–3, box 147, JPKP; JPK to JPK Jr., March 9, 1939, box 2, JPKP; Nasaw, Patriarch, 374–75. On Pacelli’s visit to Bronxville, see Smith, Nine of Us, 48–49.

  2. JPK diary, March 12, 1939, box 100, JPKP; Kennedy, True Compass, 56.

  3. Maier, Kennedys, 124; JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 23, pp. 5–6, box 147, JPKP.

  4. JFK to KLB, March 23, 1939, quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 257.

  5. Quoted in Faber, Munich, 1938, 428.

  6. Quoted in Overy, 1939, 15. Three days before Hitler’s occupation of Prague, Chamberlain had written, “I know that I can save this country and I do not believe that anyone else can.” Quoted in May, Strange Victory, 192.

  7. Churchill, Gathering Storm, 309; Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, 174.

  8. Bullitt to Hull, Foreign Relations of the United States 1938 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1955), vol. I, 711–12; Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 643–44.

  9. Watt, How War Came, 185–86; Kershaw, To Hell and Back, 337.

  10. JPK diary, March 30, 1939, box 100, JPKP; Watt, How War Came, 167–68.

  11. She had sent him a telegram as he boarded the SS Queen Mary, bound for England: “Great golden tears too plentiful for very famous last words. Can only stay away from the hay. Goodbye darling. I love you.” Frances Ann Cannon to JFK, February 25, 1939, box 4, JPKP.

  12. JFK to KLB, March 23, 1939, quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 257.

  13. Brownell and Billings, So Close to Greatness, 189–222; Mayers, FDR’s Ambassadors, 132.

  14. Etkind, Roads Not Taken, 188–89; Brownell and Billings, So Close to Greatness, 221–33.

  15. JFK to KLB, April 28, 1939, quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 260; Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 79.

  16. JFK to KLB, April 6, 1939, quoted in Pitts, Jack and Lem, 73; Lindbergh, Wartime Journals, 174.

  17. Kershaw, Hitler: Nemesis, 189; JFK to KLB, April 28, 1939, quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 262.

  18. Overy, Twilight Years, chap. 8.

  19. Cecil, Young Melbourne; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 135. A penetrating comparison is in Morrow, Best Year, 96–102.

  20. Cecil, Young Melbourne, 8, 67, 260; Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 83; Nunnerly, Kennedy and Britain, 17–18.

  21. Cecil, Young Melbourne, 61, quoted in Morrow, Best Year, 99.

  22. Cecil, Young Melbourne, 76. Perhaps, too, some part of Kennedy identified with another figure in the book, the romantic poet Lord Byron, who carried on a torrid affair with Melbourne’s wife, Lady Caroline. Charles “Chuck” Spalding, who met Jack the following year and would become one of his closest friends, recalled numerous conversations in the early going about Byron and his poetry. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 175–76.

  23. RK interview, CBS, quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 297–98.

  24. JFK to Carmel Offie,
May 11, 1939, box 19, JFKPP; JPK to JFK, telegram, May 24, 1939, box 2, JPKP. After the tour, Jack wrote thank-you notes to the various vice consuls at the U.S. embassies in the cities he visited. See box 19, JFKPP.

  25. JFK to KLB, n.d (May 1939), quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 262–63.

  26. In the Kennedy administration, Bohlen would become U.S. ambassador to France. For his role in midcentury U.S. diplomacy, see Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men.

  27. Some of the dates are hard to pin down. We know he arrived in Alexandria, Egypt, at 2:00 P.M. on June 4, traveling from Athens on a Romanian vessel, and departed soon thereafter for Cairo. From there he flew to Palestine. He arrived in Sofia on June 12, flew to Bucharest the following day, and arrived in Belgrade on June 16.

  28. Burns, John Kennedy, 37–38; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 94.

  29. JFK to JPK, n.d. (1939), box 4A, JFKPP; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 95.

  30. Tom Segev, “JFK in the Land of Milk and Honey,” Haaretz, October 19, 2012; NYT, June 3, 1939; Parmet, Jack, 64; Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, 97.

  31. Kershaw, To Hell and Back, 338.

  32. Milne, Worldmaking, 194–95; Reston, Deadline, 69–70; Steel, Walter Lippmann, 376; Nicolson, Harold Nicolson Diaries, 212–13.

  33. On Joe Kennedy’s failure to understand the change in British thinking, see Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 83.

  34. Ormsby-Gore interview, CBS, JFKL, quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 268; Nunnerly, Kennedy and Britain, 41.

  35. Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 269.

  36. Macdonald OH, JFKL; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 95.

  37. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 72; Meyers, As We Remember Him, 28.

  38. RK, Times to Remember, 251.

  39. Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950, 91–92. On Kennan’s life and career, see Gaddis, George F. Kennan.

  40. JPK Jr. to JPK, n.d. (August 1939), box 17, JPKP. The analysis of German propaganda efforts was largely accurate. See Evans, Third Reich in Power, 695–96.