History Forum / General / British History / August 2007

Former Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK's father, was kept under firm wraps
during the Presidential Campaign of 1960, lest he say something untoward and
remind folks that he was an appeaser in the 1930's and took the attitude
that Britain could not win against Hitler.

Joe was also close to Senator Joe McCarthy, which certainly did not endear
him to many Democrats on the Left-Wing of their Party.

During the first year of  JFK's Administration, Joe Kennedy suffered a
severely disabling stroke, lost the power of speech, and that solved the
problem for good.

"On December 19, 1961, at the age of 73, he suffered a major stroke, which
he survived.  He was left paralysed on the right side, confining him to a
wheelchair for the rest of his life, and he lost all power of speech.
Despite being severely disabled from the stroke, Kennedy remained aware of
the tragedies that befell his family until his own death, which occurred on
November 18, 1969, two months after his eighty-first birthday."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy,_Sr.>

DSH

Lux et Veritas et Libertas

Deus Vult

Joe Kennedy's Anti-Semitism

"Kennedy was (for a while) a close friend with the leading Jewish lawyer
Felix Frankfurter, who helped Kennedy get his sons into the London School of
Economics, where they worked with Harold Laski, a leading Jewish
intellectual and prominent Socialist. While holding positive attitudes
towards individual Jews, Kennedy's views of the Jews as a people were
allegedly, by his own admission, overwhelmingly negative.

According to Harvey Klemmer, who served as one of Kennedy's embassy aides,
Kennedy habitually referred to Jews as "kikes or sheenies."  Kennedy
allegedly told Klemmer that "[some] individual Jews are all right, Harvey,
but as a race they stink. They spoil everything they touch."  When Klemmer
returned from a trip to Germany and reported the pattern of vandalism and
assault on Jews by Nazis, Kennedy responded "well, they brought it on
themselves."

On June 13, 1938, Kennedy met with Herbert von Dirksen, the German
ambassador in London, who claimed in Berlin that Kennedy had told him that
"it was not so much the fact that we want to get rid of the Jews that was so
harmful to us, but rather the loud clamor with which we accompanied this
purpose.  [Kennedy] himself fully understood our Jewish policy."

Kennedy's main concern with such violent acts against German Jews as
Kristallnacht was that they generated bad publicity in the West for the Nazi
regime, a concern he communicated in a letter to Charles Lindbergh.

Kennedy had a close friendship with Nancy Astor; the correspondence between
them is reportedly replete with anti-Semitic tropes.  As Edward Renehan
notes:

As fiercely anti-Communist as they were anti-Semitic, Kennedy and Astor
looked upon Adolf Hitler as a welcome solution to both of these "world
problems" (Nancy's phrase).... Kennedy replied that he expected the "Jew
media" in the United States to become a problem, that "Jewish pundits in New
York and Los Angeles" were already making noises contrived to "set a match
to the fuse of the world."

By August 1940, Kennedy worried that a third term for Roosevelt meant war;
as Leamer reports, "Joe believed that Roosevelt, Churchill, the Jews and
their allies would manipulate America into approaching Armageddon."

Nevertheless, Kennedy supported Roosevelt's third term in return for
Roosevelt's support of Joseph Kennedy Jr. for Governor of Massachusetts in
1942.  Even during the height of the conflict, however, Kennedy remained
"more wary of" prominent American Jews such as Felix Frankfurter than he was
of Hitler.

Kennedy told reporter Joe Dinneen:

"It is true that I have a low opinion of some Jews in public office and in
private life. That does not mean that I... believe they should be wiped off
the face of the earth... Jews who take an unfair advantage of the fact that
theirs is a persecuted race do not help much... Publicizing unjust attacks
upon the Jews may help to cure the injustice, but continually publicizing
the whole problem only serves to keep it alive in the public mind."

When Dinneen wrote _The Kennedy Family_, he was pressured to remove these
quotations from the book by John F. Kennedy himself.  Dineen complied.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy,_Sr.>

DSH

Lux et Veritas et Libertas

Deus Vult

Sholem Aleichem

Amusing...

Peter Stewart, serial prevaricator and boy adventurer in his own mind,
erstwhile friend of The Royals, has the full story on this alleged incident
involving Joe Kennedy, George VI and FDR, not I.

Joe Kennedy -- AND George VI have been dead for MANY years.  No one needs to
worry about protecting them.

If his source is The Queen Mother [second or third hand] HER reputation will
not suffer either.

Yes, Peter and I corresponded in the past -- frequently and certainly not
briefly, indeed quite extensively;

I have no personal proof that anything of the sort happened between George
VI, Joe Kennedy and FDR.  It's not my story.

Stewart shared all sorts of scandalous stories with me about British Royals,
Australians, New Zealanders, Generals, Prime Ministers [two of whom were his
ancestors] and other gossipy trivia.

Peter LOVES a Good Salacious Story and tells them well and with relish --
when he so chooses to do.

I don't give a damn what he says about my having "his permission" to post
anything he has told me.

Hines doesn't operate on that Very Slippery & Meretricious Moral Code.

I don't retail someone else's Pet Story [ no doubt embellished and sweetened
over the years] simply because they say I am welcome to do so.

As I've mentioned previously, Stewart himself has told me people, some of
them VERY close to him, would be severely hurt, injured and embarrassed if
SOME of his stories were retailed.

Yet he retails them to me -- and I have no doubt to others -- including Leo
van de Pas, who also enjoys this light-in-the loafers sort of meretricious
gossip.

So if Stewart has the story -- from a reliable source -- who had it from the
horse's mouth -- and he can tell MOI -- then he can certainly stop playing
limp-wristed peek-a-boo games with the Gentle Readers of SGM, et alia, and
tell them what he knows...

Omitting those non-essential details which would hurt, injure and embarrass
his closest relatives.

But:

He demurs and slinks away like the sniveling little coward he is -- when it
comes to ADMITTING he has been selectively retailing these meretricious
little limp-wristed GOSSIP PIECES for YEARS...

And, has now been caught by the short hairs and given a good slam upside the
head with a 2 by 4.

Deeeeelightful!

'Nuff Said.

DSH

Lux et Veritas et Libertas

Illegitimatis Non Carborundum