JFK

by Fredrik Logevall

  41. The American Weekly, May 30, 1948; McCarthy, Remarkable Kennedys, 81.

  42. Overy, 1939, 19.

  43. In Ian Kershaw’s words, “the U-turn of all time.” Hitler, 1936–1945, 206. See also Moorhouse, Devil’s Alliance.

  44. Evans, Third Reich in Power, 692–95; Roberts, Storm of War, 10; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 10–13; Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting, 670–75.

  45. See, e.g., Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting, chap. 11; Roberts, Stalin’s Wars, chap. 2. On Chamberlain’s dim view of working in concert with the Soviets, see also Bouverie, Appeasing Hitler, 335–38; Parker, Chamberlain, 347.

  46. Georges Bonnet, the French foreign minister and an arch-appeaser, blamed the Poles for the invasion: it was their “stupid and obstinate attitude” that caused it, he said. Quoted in Quétel, L’Impardonnable Défaite, 195.

  47. JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 33, p. 2, box 148, JPKP. After a visit with Chamberlain on August 25, Kennedy wrote in his diary: “He looks like a broken man. He said he could think of nothing further to say or do. He felt that all his work had come to naught. ‘I can’t fly [to meet with Hitler] again because that was good only once.’ ” JPK diary, August 25, 1939, box 100, JPKP.

  48. Reston, Deadline, 73.

  49. Overy, 1939, 69–110; Parker, Chamberlain, 336–42.

  50. Quoted in Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 1018.

  51. JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 34, pp. 1–2, box 148, JPKP.

  52. JPK diary, September 3, 1939, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 365–67. Rose Kennedy shared her husband’s reaction. Decades later she could still recall Chamberlain’s “heartbroken, heartbreaking speech.” RK, Times to Remember, 252.

  53. The speech in full is at the International Churchill Society, winstonchurchill.org/​resources/​speeches/​1939-in-the-wings/​war-speech/. Chamberlain had not relished bringing Churchill into the government: in July 1939, he told Joe Kennedy that Churchill “has turned into a fine two-handed drinker…his judgment has never proved to be good,” and that if he had been in the Cabinet “England would have been at war before this.” Now, however, the prime minister felt that Churchill was likely to cause less trouble inside the Cabinet than outside. Self, Neville Chamberlain, 386.

  54. Overy, 1939, 97.

  55. Beschloss, Roosevelt and Kennedy, 190.

  56. Kathleen Kennedy, “Lamps in a Blackout” (unpublished comment), September 1939, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 371–72; Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 194.

  57. Time, September 18, 1939; Whalen, Founding Father, 273; Sandford, Union Jack, 56–58; Macdonald OH, JFKL. See also the materials in box 19, JPKP.

  58. JFK memo, September 8, 1939, box 17, JPKP.

  59. JFK memo, September 8, 1939, box 17, JPKP; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 286.

  60. Brogan, Kennedy, 14.

  CHAPTER 9: A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT

  1. The poem first appeared in The New Republic on October 18, 1939. For context, see Mendelson, Later Auden. A book-length analysis is in Sansom, September 1, 1939.

  2. JFK to JPK, September 22, 1939, box 2, JPKP. On the Winthrop suite, see Katie Koch, “A Room Fit for a President,” Harvard Gazette, October 27, 2011, news.harvard.edu/​gazette/​story/​2011/​10/​a-room-fit-for-a-president/.

  3. Hershberg, James B. Conant, 116; Schlesinger, Veritas, 187; Conant, Man of the Hour, 161–63.

  4. THC, November 11, 1939.

  5. THC, October 16, 1939.

  6. THC, September 26, 1939; September 28, 1939; October 3, 1939; and October 13, 1939.

  7. THC, October 9, 1939.

  8. See, e.g., Dallek, Unfinished Life, 59.

  9. JFK to JPK, n.d. (1939), box 4B, JFK PP.

  10. JPK to JPK Jr. and JFK, October 13, 1939, box 2, JPKP; JPK to Arthur Krock, November 3, 1939, box 31, AKP.

  11. JPK to FDR, September 30, 1939, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 385–86.

  12. Minute Sheet, October 12, 1939, FO 371/22827, NAUK; Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 196.

  13. Foreign Office to Washington, telegram, October 3, 1939, FO 371/22827, NAUK. See also Koskoff, Joseph P. Kennedy, 217–18.

  14. King George diary entry, September 9, 1939, quoted in Swift, Gathering, 194.

  15. JPK to Cordell Hull and FDR, September 11, 1939, box 3, Safe Files, FDRL; Hull to JPK, September 11, 1939, Foreign Relations of the United States 1939 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1956), vol. I: 424; Farley, Jim Farley’s Story, 198–99.

  16. Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 191; Moe, Second Act, 77–78.

  17. Time, September 18, 1939; Whalen, Founding Father, 103.

  18. Time, September 25, 1939; Olson, Angry Days, 71–72; Berg, Lindbergh, 397.

  19. Time, September 25, 1939.

  20. NYT, October 14, 1939, quoted in Brands, Traitor to His Class, 532.

  21. Kurth, American Cassandra; Lepore, These Truths, 434, 468–70; Olson, Angry Days, 78–79.

  22. Olson, Angry Days, 89; Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 50.

  23. For the correspondence, see Kimball, Churchill and Roosevelt. See also Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 44–46.

  24. JPK diary, October 5, 1939, box 100, JPKP; Nasaw, Patriarch, 415. On the Roosevelt-Churchill relationship, see Meacham, Franklin and Winston.

  25. Koskoff, Joseph P. Kennedy, 249.

  26. JPK Jr. to JPK, September 27, 1939, box 2, JPKP; Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 200.

  27. Eddie Moore wrote to Jack after one visit, “Your sister Rosie is wonderful.” Moore to JFK, November 3, 1939, box 19, JPKP.

  28. Larson, Rosemary, 122–24.

  29. JPK to RK, October 11, 1939, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 393–94.

  30. Isabel Eugenie to RK, December 20, 1939, box 26, JPKP (emphasis in original); Rosemary Kennedy to JPK, n.d. (April 1940), printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 412.

  31. Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 294.

  32. Holcombe quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 295.

  33. KK to JPK, September 26, 1939, printed in RK, Times to Remember, 256; “attractive girl” is on 256–57; Houghton interview, CBP; Treglown, Straight Arrow, 56.

  34. JFK to KLB, December 7, 1939, box 1, KLBP.

  35. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 80–81.

  36. Paul Murphy to JFK, January 24, 1940, box 19, JPKP. See also Paul Murphy to JFK, April 26, 1938, box 19, JPKP; Paul Murphy to JFK, January 7, 1938, box 19, JPKP.

  37. JFK, “Fascism” (fragment), box 4, JFKPP.

  38. Government 4: Case 82, October 23, 1939, box 4, JFKPP.

  39. League of Nations course paper, box 4, JFKPP.

  40. See the recollection by Josephine Fulton, the wife of the Winthrop House janitor, in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 301.

  41. “I have decided to take as my subject,” he wrote his father, “the turn from appeasement to war—tracing the change that came about in England that culminated in the war in Sept.” JFK to JPK, n.d. (fall 1939), box 5, JPKP. A later letter to both parents acknowledged the size of the task: “Am just in the process of finding out how little I know.” JFK to RK and JPK, n.d. (fall 1939), box 5, JPKP.

  42. “Am really being kept busy now on my thesis,” he wrote to Lem Billings in early December. JFK to KLB, December 7, 1939, box 1, KLBP.

  43. Originally a staunch backer of appeasement, Lothian began to shift after the German takeover of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. “Up until then it was possible,” he wrote to a friend that month, “to believe that Germany was only concerned with recovery of what might be called the normal rights of a great power, but it now seems clear that Hitler is in effect a fanatical gangster who will stop at nothing to beat down all possibility of resistance anywhere to his will.” Butler, Lord Lo
thian, 227. Even after that point, however, indeed into 1940 and until his sudden death in Washington that June, he favored efforts to seek a negotiated settlement to the war.

  44. JFK to James Seymour, January 11, 1940, box 1, JSP.

  45. Seymour replied to Jack’s cable the same day: “I am rushing this off so you will know the matter is in hand and shall notify you as soon as the material goes off.” James Seymour to JFK, January 11, 1940, box 1, JSP. Murphy wrote to Jack on January 29, 1940: “I have today mailed parcel post a package containing pamphlets, magazines, and books which were forwarded to me by Jim Seymour. Will you kindly acknowledge receipt when they are delivered as Mr. Seymour is quite anxious about their safe arrival.” Murphy to JFK, January 29, 1940, box 19, JFKPP.

  46. Nasaw, Patriarch, 431; Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 83.

  47. Whalen, Founding Father, 284; Koskoff, Joseph P. Kennedy, 231. “The president said that, as might be expected, Joe Kennedy was utterly pessimistic,” Interior Secretary Harold Ickes wrote in his diary. “He believes that Germany and Russia will win the war and that the end of the world is just down the road. I suspect that Joe has been worrying about his great fortune for a long time and the London atmosphere hasn’t helped him any.” Harold Ickes diary, December 10, 1939, HIP, LC.

  48. Leamer, Kennedy Men, 147. On November 29, 1939, John Colville, assistant private secretary to the prime minister, recorded in his diary overhearing Kennedy at a dinner “talking about our inability to win the war. [At the same time], to the P.M. and the F.O. he poses as the greatest champion of our cause in the U.S.” Colville, Fringes of Power, 35.

  49. Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 33; Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 227.

  50. Harold Ickes diary, March 10, 1940, HIP, LC; Whalen, Founding Father, 286.

  51. Clare Boothe Luce to JPK, May 26, 1939, box 93, CBLP; Morris, Rage for Fame, 340–41, 364; Nasaw, Patriarch, 379–80.

  52. JPK to Arthur Krock, April 22, 1940, box 31, AKP.

  53. Quoted in Davies, No Simple Victory, 82.

  54. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 215.

  55. Langer and Gleason, Challenge to Isolation, 272.

  56. Brands, Traitor to His Class, 537; Fullilove, Rendezvous, 31.

  57. Hull, Memoirs, 740; Welles, Sumner Welles, 240–57.

  58. Quoted in O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 105–6.

  59. Quoted in Dallek, Unfinished Life, 61.

  60. Parmet, Jack, 69.

  61. Gerald Walker and Donald A. Allan, “Jack Kennedy at Harvard,” Coronet Magazine, May 1961, 92. After the incident, there appeared an unsigned note in Jack’s college file: “We should make it clear to him that from now on any women in his room for any purpose have to be duly signed for and arranged for.” Newsweek, August 9, 1971.

  62. Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 315.

  63. John F. Kennedy, “Appeasement at Munich,” unpublished honors thesis, Harvard University, 1940, p. 91. The thesis is in box 2, JFKPP.

  64. JFK, “Appeasement,” 97–98.

  65. JFK, “Appeasement,” 147.

  66. Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 317.

  67. The revisionist school is ably described in the introductory essay in Self, Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, 1–48.

  68. JPK Jr. to JPK, March 17, 1940, box 2, JPKP.

  69. Yeomans report, box 2, JFKPP; Friedrich report, box 2, JFKPP; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 322.

  70. JPK to JFK, August 2, 1940, box 2, JPKP.

  71. Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 80–81. The piece was a brief assessment of the bombing of Valencia. It appeared in the October 1939 issue.

  72. Arthur Krock to Gertrude Algase, April 17, 1940, box 31, AKP; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 322–23.

  73. JPK unpublished memoir, chap. 43, p. 2, box 148, JPKP.

  74. Beevor, Second World War, 79.

  75. Quoted in Roberts, Churchill, 526–27.

  76. A. J. P. Taylor, The Second World War: An Illustrated History (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975), quoted in Davies, No Simple Victory, 83.

  77. A provocative and engaging account is May, Strange Victory. See also Jackson, Fall of France. According to Joe Kennedy, Churchill told him on May 15 that the chances of the Allies winning were slight, and that he would not send more troops to aid the French, given the strong likelihood that Britain would soon be attacked. JPK to FDR and Hull, May 15, 1940, box 3, Safe Files, FDRL.

  78. Ferguson, War of the World, 390–91; Keegan, Second World War, 80–81.

  79. JPK to RK, May 20, 1940, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 432–33; JPK to Hull, May 24, 1940, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1940 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1958), III: 31–32. See also Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 440.

  80. Kershaw, Fateful Choices, 11–52; Lukacs, Five Days.

  81. JPK to Hull, June 12, 1940, box 3, Safe Files, FDRL; JPK unpublished memoir, chap. 46, p. 6, box 149, JPKP. Churchill’s assistant private secretary, John Colville, recorded in his diary on June 15, “Kennedy telephoned and Winston, becoming serious for a minute, poured into his ears a flood of eloquence about the part that America could and should play in saving civilisation. Referring to promises of industrial and financial support, he said such an offer ‘would be a laughing-stock on the stage of history,’ and he begged that ‘we should not let our friend’s (President R.) efforts peter out in grimaces and futility.’ ” Colville, Fringes of Power, 129.

  82. JPK to JFK, May 20, 1940, box 2, JPKP; Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 105.

  83. Krock OH, JFKL; JFK, Why England Slept, 137. Emphasis in the original. See also Burns, John Kennedy, 43.

  84. THC, June 9, 1940.

  85. RK to JPK, June 24, 1940, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 446–47; Murphy to JFK, June 21, 1940, box 19, JPKP; JFK to JPK, n.d. (May 1940), box 4b, JFKPP. Yale Law School’s letter of admission, dated May 14, 1940, is in box 20, JPKP.

  86. Gertrude Algase to Alfred Harcourt, June 20, 1940, box 73, JFK Pre-Pres; Joel Satz to JFK, July 9, 1940, box 19, JPKP; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 327.

  87. Gertrude Algase to Arthur Krock, July 12, 1940, box 31, AKP.

  CHAPTER 10: INTERLUDES

  1. Marvin R. Zahniser, “Rethinking the Significance of Disaster: The United States and the Fall of France,” International History Review 14 (May 1992): 252–76; Olson, Angry Days, 130.

  2. Life, June 3, 1940.

  3. Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 519–20; Kaiser, No End, 57–58.

  4. Ketchum, Borrowed Years, 358.

  5. Wheeler-Bennett, Special Relationships, 97; Olson, Angry Days, 128; Time, June 17, 1940.

  6. Casey, Cautious Crusade; Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon; Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 520–22. On “America First,” see also Churchwell, Behold, America.

  7. Searls, Lost Prince, 172–73; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 152.

  8. JPK to JPK Jr., July 23, 1940, box 2, JPKP; JPK Jr. to JPK, May 4, 1940, box 2, JPKP; Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 214; Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 105.

  9. Renehan, Kennedys at War, 158; KLB OH, JFKL.

  10. JPK Jr. to JPK, August 23, 1940, box 2, JPKP; Renehan, Kennedys at War, 161.

  11. Herzstein, Henry R. Luce, 155.

  12. On the expansion in this period of what constituted “national security,” see Andrew Preston, “Monsters Everywhere: A Genealogy of National Security,” Diplomatic History, 38, no. 3 (2014): 477–500.

  13. Henry R. Luce, “The American Century,” Life, February 17, 1941. For assessments of the article and the concept, see Bacevich, Short American Century. For a different assessment of the concept, see Zunz, Why the American Century? On the 1940 nomination fight, see Lewis, Improbable Wendell Willkie, chap. 6; and Brinkley, The Publisher, 253–60.

  14. Henry L
uce OH, JFKL.

  15. Henry Luce, foreword to Why England Slept, xix.

  16. JFK to Luce, July 9, 1940, box 19, JPKP.

  17. “Best Sellers of the Week,” NYT, September 9, 1940; “Reader’s Choice,” WP, September 1, 1940. Until the early 1940s the New York Times bestseller list was a composite of top-selling books in a variety of big cities, Boston being one of them.

  18. JFK, Why England Slept, xxiv.

  19. FDR to JFK, August 27, 1940, box 74, JFK Pre-Pres; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 336–37.

  20. Quoted in Freedman, Roosevelt and Frankfurter, 590. Laski’s letter, dated August 21, 1940, is in GB 50 U DLA/21, Papers of Harold Laski (and Frida Laski), Hull University Archives, UK. See also Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 333.

  21. B. H. Liddell Hart to JFK, October 24, 1940, box 73, JFK Pre-Pres.

  22. New York Sun, August 2, 1940; New Republic, September 16, 1940.

  23. Brogan, Kennedy, 16.

  24. Brogan, Kennedy, 19. See also Dallek, Unfinished Life, 65.

  25. Schlesinger, foreword to Why England Slept (New York: Ishi Press, 2016), xiv. Schlesinger also writes, “The broad factual recounting of British attitudes in young Kennedy’s book brilliantly captures the passivity of the British state” (xiii). See also Hellman, Kennedy Obsession, 22–27.

  26. Bruce Hopper to JFK, September 5, 1940, box 73, JFK Pre-Pres.

  27. Charles Spalding OH, JFKL; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 98–100. In late December 1940, Jack told his publisher he would not write another book at that time. JFK to Frank Henry, December 28, 1940, box 19, JPKP.

  28. Arlene B. Hadley (registrar) to JFK, May 14, 1940, box 20, JPKP.

  29. KLB OH, JFKL.

  30. Dr. Vernon S. Dick to Dr. William P. Herbst, March 20, 1953, Travell files, JFKL; JFK to London Embassy, telegram, July 10, 1940, box 21, JPKP; Dr. Sara Jordan to JPK, July 12, 1940, box 21, JPKP.

  31. JFK to JPK, telegram, July 10, 1940, box 21, JPKP; JFK to dean of admissions, Yale Law School, July 31, 1940, box 20, JPKP.