JFK
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2. On the war developments in these months, see, e.g., Beevor, Second World War, 586–727; and Davies, No Simple Victory, 116–27.
3. Plokhy, Yalta; Costigliola, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances, 232–53; Preston, Eight Days.
4. Perlmutter, FDR and Stalin; Adam Ulam, “Forty Years After Yalta: Stalin Outwitted FDR and the West Still Pays,” New Republic, February 11, 1985.
5. See Dallek, Franklin Roosevelt, 541; Woolner, Last Hundred Days.
6. Burns, Crosswinds of Freedom, 212–17; Kimball, Juggler. FDR’s strategic brilliance is a theme of Hamilton’s three-volume study of his role as commander in chief. See also Gaddis, On Grand Strategy, 280–88.
7. Leuchtenburg, Shadow of FDR.
8. Berlin, Personal Impressions, 31.
9. Gerhard Weinberg, a leading historian of the war, rejects this criticism. He notes that the U.S. “accepted about twice as many Jewish refugees as the rest of the world put together: about 200,000 out of 300,000.” He then asks readers to consider “how many Jews would have survived had the war ended even a week or ten days earlier—and, conversely, how many more would have died had the war lasted an additional week or ten days.” That latter number, Weinberg concludes, would be larger than the total number of Jews saved by the various rescue efforts of 1944–45. Gerhard Weinberg, “The Allies and the Holocaust,” in The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It?, ed. Michael J. Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 15–26.
10. Quoted in Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 353–54.
11. Halberstam, Coldest Winter, 172; Greenberg, Republic of Spin, chaps. 20 and 39.
12. JPK to KK, May 1, 1945, quoted in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 615–18; Nasaw, Patriarch, 579; Whalen, Founding Father, 365. To Harry Truman, Kennedy was more pungent, at least according to Truman’s much later recollection. “Harry, what the hell are you doing campaigning for that crippled son of a bitch that killed my son Joe?” Kennedy reportedly asked him in Boston in the early fall of 1944, a few weeks after Joe Junior’s death. Miller, Plain Speaking, 199.
13. JPK to KK, May 1, 1945, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 615–18.
14. Roberts, Twentieth Century, 428.
15. Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 684; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 419–20.
16. JFK to KLB, February 20, 1945, quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 683.
17. An excellent history of the conference is Schlesinger, Act of Creation.
18. His father, after commending him on his articles, offered a suggestion: “I think you ought to consider from now on whether you want to write under the name of Jack Kennedy rather than John F. You are known as Jack everywhere, and I think it would be well to consider this.” JPK to JFK, JPKP, May 21, 1945, box 3, JPKP.
19. “Kennedy Tells Parley Trends.” Chicago Herald-American, April 28, 1945, box 23, JPKP; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 428. For his handwritten notes during the conference, including regarding veterans’ views, see the loose notebook pages in box SF64, JKOP.
20. On Bretton Woods and its implications, see Steil, Battle of Bretton; Rauchway, Money Makers; Helleiner, Forgotten Foundations. On the worsening Soviet-American tensions in the first half of 1945, see Dobbs, Six Months.
21. “Yank-Russo Test Seen at Frisco,” Chicago Herald-American, April 30, 1945, box 23, JPKP; “World Court Real Test for Envoys,” New York Journal-American, May 2, 1945, box 23, JPKP.
22. As A. J. P. Taylor would put it: “In short, the British and Americans sat back, though not of malice aforethought, while the Russians defeated Germany for them. Of the three great men at the top, Roosevelt was the only one who knew what he was doing: he made the United States the greatest power in the world at virtually no cost.” Taylor, English History, 577. I thank Jane Perlez for supplying me with this citation.
23. “Peace in Europe Spurs Parley,” New York Journal-American, May 9, 1945; “Big Three Friction Menaces Peace,” New York Journal-American, May 18, 1945. Both articles, as well as others Jack wrote that spring and summer, can be found in box 23, JPKP.
24. “Allied Parley Dismays Vets,” New York Journal-American, May 7, 1945.
25. JFK to “Jim,” box SG64, JKOP.
26. “Kennedy Tells Parley Trends,” Chicago Herald-American, April 28, 1945; “Allied Parley Dismays Vets,” New York Journal-American, May 7, 1945; “Small Nations Hit Big 5 Veto Rule,” New York Journal-American, May 23, 1945.
27. Loose pages, in box SG64, JKOP.
28. Krock, Memoirs, 351.
29. Parmet, Jack, 133.
30. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 423–24.
31. On the liberation of Europe and its aftermath, see Hitchcock, Bitter Road to Freedom.
32. Churchill’s private secretary noted in his diary on July 4 that even Labour leader Clement Atlee predicted a Tory majority of 30. Sandford, Union Jack, 87. On the difficult conditions in Britain, see Kynaston, Austerity Britain, chaps. 1–4.
33. “Churchill May Lose Election,” New York Journal-American, June 24, 1945.
34. Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 176; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 382. Fraser told a later interviewer, “Jack was a great listener—and a great questioner. He wanted to know the root cause of things. He was much more serious than he gave on.” Hugh Fraser OH, JFKL.
35. Forbes lost to an Oxford-educated Tory bearing the name Sir Hugh Vere Huntly Duff Munro-Lucas-Tooth of Teanich, or, for short, Hugh Lucas-Tooth.
36. Alastair Forbes OH, JFKL; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 709.
37. Barbara Ward OH, JFKL.
38. Sandford, Union Jack, 94.
39. New York Journal-American, July 10, 1945; diary entry, July 3, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 23–24.
40. Diary entry, June 21, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 9–10.
41. Diary entry, July 27, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 37–38.
42. Diary entry, June 29, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 11–14; diary entry, June 30, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 15–17.
43. “We Are a Republic,” New York Journal-American, July 29, 1945, box 23, JPKP.
44. Diary entry, July 24, 1945, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 621.
45. An excellent biography is Hoopes and Brinkley, Driven Patriot.
46. Diary entry, n.d., printed in Prelude to Leadership, 49–50.
47. Diary entry, July 29, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 44.
48. Diary entry, July 29, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 46–47; diary entry, July 10, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 5–8.
49. Diary entry, July 28, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 41–42; diary entry, n.d., printed in Prelude to Leadership, 59; Diary entry, August 1, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 74.
50. Baime, Accidental President.
51. Diary entry, August 1, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 71–74; diary entry, June 30, 1945, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 15–17.
52. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 439; Seymour St. John, “Frankfurt, Germany, 1945,” n.d., CSA. According to St. John, he and Jack proceeded to have lunch together at the officers’ mess, whereupon they drove around the devastated city. “Jack was easy, alert, and interested, but he took no notes. I suspected that he was awaiting more sensational material from a more sensational source.”
53. Neiberg, Potsdam.
54. Sexton, Nation Forged, 166, 169; Leffler, Preponderance, 5; Vine, Base Nation, 17–44. On the emergence and nature of the hegemonic U.S. position in the 1940s, see also Daniel J. Sargent, “Pax Americana: Sketches for an Undiplomatic History,” Diplomatic History 42, no. 3 (2018): 357–76.
55. Sorensen, Kennedy, 15–16.
56. JFK to Harold L. Tinker, F
ebruary 9, 1945, quoted in Sandford, Union Jack, 84.
57. United War Fund speech, October 8, 1945, box 28, DFPP.
58. James Forrestal to JFK, September 8, 1945, box 73, JFK Pre-Pres. On the end of the Pacific war, see Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy; and Frank, Downfall.
CHAPTER 15: THE CANDIDATE
1. On what Joe Kennedy may or may not have done on Curley’s behalf, see, e.g., Nasaw, Patriarch, 593; Beatty, Rascal King, 456; Farrell, Tip O’Neill, 91. An alternative theory is that Curley decided on his own to give up his House seat and seek the mayoralty, and Joe Kennedy’s money merely greased the subsequent victory.
2. As it happened, Massachusetts had no law that said a congressional representative must live in his or her district. Curley lived in Jamaica Plain, on the other side of Boston.
3. Charles Bartlett OH, JFKL.
4. Diary entry, January 27, 1946, printed in Prelude to Leadership, 79–83. Emphasis in the original.
5. A folder with requests for copies of the speech, titled “England, Germany, Ireland,” and delivered on September 11, 1945, is in box 11A, JFKPP.
6. McNamara, Eunice, 83. Longtime aide Mark Dalton said of Kennedy as an orator during this first campaign, “The interesting thing about it was I discovered that he was extremely bright, and that in the back and forth of debate and repartee, like in the press conferences, he was excellent, but as an orator he did not have it.” Mark Dalton interview, WGBH May 13, 1991.
7. Dallek, Unfinished Life, 124; O’Neill, Man of the House, 85.
8. O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” 56.
9. Quoted in Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 499.
10. Tony Galluccio OH, JFKL; Samuel Bornstein OH, JFKL. Powers: “After I worked with him for a week, I knew the secret if you were trying to explain his success was in two sentences: To meet him was to like him. And to know him was to want to help. These people, they looked at this man and they liked him right off.” David Powers extended OH, box 9, DFPP.
11. Quoted in Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 708; Powers extended OH, box 9, DFPP.
12. Tony Galluccio OH, JFKL.
13. Thomas Broderick OH, JFKL. Billy Sutton, who often guided Jack around the district and spent more time with him than anyone else, noticed the same thing: “Well the campaign actually began early in the morning. He—for a fellow who was supposed to be injured during the war, he really wore me out.” Billy Sutton OH, JFKL.
14. Manchester, One Brief Shining Moment, 36–37.
15. Peter Cloherty OH, JFKL.
16. George Taylor OH, JFKL.
17. Burns, John Kennedy, 66.
18. Joe DeGuglielmo OH, JFKL. John Droney, an attorney who assisted with the campaign, remembered, “I think the first time he ever made a speech in Cambridge was at the Kiwanis Club—it was only about a week after I met him. I noticed that all the waitresses waited to get his autograph, and I had never seen that before. He spoke on his war experiences. He spoke for about forty minutes; you could hear a pin drop. They waited after they were through work to see him and talk with him. And I think that that was the tipoff.” John Droney OH, JFKL.
19. Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 712; O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” 54–55. In an interview, Powers discussed how women reacted when he and Jack knocked on triple-decker doors in Charlestown: “ ‘Oh he looks like such a fine boy—c’mon in, c’mon in.’ And some of them wanted to fatten him up right away. They thought he looked too thin for a candidate. And our trouble was that they loved him so much that we were spending a little too much time in each house. They’d say, ‘Oh now, why don’t you have a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, or a glass of milk,’ [and] in some places it’d be the Sullivans on the first floor and the Murphys on the second floor and the Dohertys on the top floor. And the next house would be almost the same and after a while he’d say, ‘I feel like I was here before,’ because they all treated him the same way and they all looked alike.” Powers extended OH, box 9, DFPP.
20. Pitts, Jack and Lem, 98; Press release on John F. Kennedy’s war record, June 1, 1946, box 28, DFPP; O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” 50; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 540.
21. The two Russos apparently had faced off before, in a campaign in which there was also a third Joseph Russo. The City Council Russo had taken to telling voters, “Vote for the one in the middle.” O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” 62. And there were numerous instances in Boston politics of namesakes capitalizing on a famous name. In the 1950s, John F. Kennedy, a shop foreman in the Gillette razor factory in South Boston, twice won election as state treasurer simply by putting his name on the ballot, with no party support or campaigning. O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” 62.
22. Mark Dalton OH, JFKL; Whalen, Founding Father, 399. The actual financial records from the campaign do not seem to survive.
23. Dalton OH, JFKL.
24. In the words of reporter and family friend Samuel Bornstein, “His father was in on every campaign and he planned a lot of things, but as far as I could determine, when you come right down to something specific, Jack Kennedy made the final decision.” Samuel Bornstein OH, JFKL.
25. See O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” chap. 2.
26. Dalton OH; McNamara, Eunice, 84.
27. Whalen, Founding Father, 401; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 719.
28. Burns, John Kennedy, 68.
29. Boston Herald, June 19, 1946.
30. Quoted in Leamer, Kennedy Men, 237.
31. Boston Traveler, June 23, 1946; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 770–71.
32. KK to JFK, July 13, 1946, box 4A, JFKPP.
33. Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 289.
34. William E. Leuchtenburg, “New Faces of 1946,” Smithsonian Magazine, November 2006. A penetrating account of America in the year 1946 is Weisbrode, Year of Indecision.
35. Leuchtenburg, “New Faces”; Lichtenstein, State of the Union, chap. 3.
36. Patterson, Grand Expectations, 14.
37. Campaign speech, n.d., box 96, JFKPP.
38. According to Ted Kennedy (relying on sister Patricia’s diary), Churchill stayed with the Kennedys in the Palm Beach house during his Florida visit. Kennedy, True Compass, 27–28. On the “long telegram,” see Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 18–22; and Craig and Logevall, America’s Cold War, 69–73.
39. Harry S. Truman to Bess Truman, September 20, 1946, Family, Business, and Personal Affairs Papers, Family Correspondence File, Harry S. Truman Library.
40. Radio Speech on Russia, box 94, JFK Pre-Pres.
41. Independence Day Oration, July 4, 1946, box 94, JFK Pre-Pres.
42. Young Democrats of Pennsylvania speech, August 21, 1946, box 94, JFK Pre-Pres; Choate speech, September 27, 1946, box 94, JFK Pre-Pres; Seymour St. John, “September 28, 1946,” CSA.
43. Tierney, Self Portrait, 141–42; Vogel, Gene Tierney, 101–10.
44. Tierney, Self Portrait, 143.
45. Tierney, Self Portrait, 152.
46. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 550; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 778.
47. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 549; Tierney, Self Portrait, 147.
48. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 550–51.
49. Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 779–80.
50. Swope to JFK, November 6, 1946, box 5, JFKPP.
CHAPTER 16: THE GENTLEMAN FROM BOSTON
1. Arthur Krock OH, JFKL; Burns, John Kennedy, 71.
2. Morrow, Best Years, 182; Billy Sutton interview, WGBH, May 1991; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 587; McNamara, Eunice, 100.
3. Quoted in Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 588–89.
4. Sandford, Union Jack, 89; Martin, Hero for Our Time, 49. The continuing romance with Tierney was reported on the gossip page of
the New York Daily News, August 18, 1947. Ironically, the Tierney film then in American theaters was The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, about an impossible love affair.
5. Florence Pritchett to JFK, June 5, 1946, box 4B, JFKPP.
6. C. McLaughlin interview, CBP.
7. Martin, Hero for Our Time, 49–50.
8. Quoted in Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 594.
9. Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and Kennedys, 722; Stossel, Sarge, 96.
10. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 593, 597; McNamara, Eunice, 100.
11. McNamara, Eunice, 102; Stossel, Sarge, 99. Joe Kennedy’s real estate holdings included several large office buildings on Park Avenue in New York City as well as the gigantic Merchandise Mart in Chicago, which he bought in 1945 from the Marshall Field interests for an estimated $20 million and was second in size only to the Pentagon among the world’s largest buildings.
12. Quoted in Stossel, Sarge, 100.
13. McNamara, Eunice, 102; Eunice Kennedy Shriver interview, CBP.
14. Krock OH, JFKL; JFK interview by James MacGregor Burns, March 22, 1959, quoted in Dallek, Unfinished Life, 136.
15. Sutton interview, CBP; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 582–83.
16. Quoted in Shaw, JFK in the Senate, 19.
17. John F. Kennedy, John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Compilation of Statements and Speeches Made During His Service in the United States Senate and House of Representatives (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1964), 10–11.
18. Burns, John Kennedy, 79; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 218.
19. Commenting on the episode, aide Mark Dalton said, “Jack was fearless. He would listen to you, and if he decided you were right, he would go with you. Everybody wanted him to sign the Curley petition.” Dalton interview with Laurence Leamer, quoted in Leamer, Kennedy Men, 247.
20. Meyers, As We Remember Him, 50.
21. Quoted in Matthews, Jack Kennedy, 94. See also Frank, Ike and Dick, 200.