Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [13]
Returning to Cambridge for his sophomore year, Jack soon faced an array of familiar, disturbing physical setbacks. As always, he fought against them in his own way. To remain on the swim team—as freshmen, they’d gained glory by being undefeated—was one of his goals. Thus, when he found himself in Stillman Infirmary, he relied on Torby, who brought him steaks and ice cream to tempt his appetite and build up his strength. His friend even snuck Jack out to the indoor swimming pool to get the practice time he needed. Swimming for Harvard was serious business, after all, and team members were expected to sandwich in four hours a day between classes.
Then, just before the year drew to a close, Franklin Roosevelt, now in the first year of his second White House term, threw a joker into the U.S. international diplomacy game: he named Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., ambassador to Great Britain. It’s impossible to figure out exactly what mix of motives inspired this maladroit appointment. Certainly domestic politics played a major role, for Irish-American voters made up a huge faction of the Democratic constituency. Also, given his background and connections, Joe Kennedy’s presence in London might help resolve the tricky situation between Ireland and Britain. However, if Roosevelt imagined that his new envoy would act as his surrogate in trying to stiffen the spine of the British when it came to facing down Nazi aggression, he was, sadly, wrong.
The choice of Kennedy, who’d been an early, generous FDR supporter, for this ultimate plum offered the wily Roosevelt the satisfaction of making him into a retainer—a well-rewarded one, but a retainer nevertheless. Both men were well aware the job had to be entrusted to someone able to foot the extravagant costs its social traditions demanded. Ever the bold striver, Joe wanted badly to go there and was ready to spend whatever it took. Until the consequences of sending him to London would prove too large, FDR, too, was ready to weather them.
With his credentials ready to present at the Court of St. James, Joe arrived in London in early 1938, just eleven days before Hitler demanded acceptance of Anschluss—in effect, annexation—from the government of his native Austria. Such a relationship between the two countries had been forbidden by the allies at the end of World War I, but the Führer ignored it. Bent on expanding the borders of the great German-speaking state he envisioned, he signaled ever louder his disdain for those who considered themselves Germany’s masters.
The Treaty of Versailles for him was no longer worth the paper it had been written on, and so the next territory he looked to grab was the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, taken from Germany by the allies in 1919.
He had only a simple goal, Hitler told the world—acting the perfect wolf in sheep’s clothing—and that was to see all Germans united into one country. Hearing this, Germany’s old European and British antagonists managed, hiding their faces in the sand, to justify tolerating it as a means to preventing the continent from again morphing into a bloody battlefield. Meanwhile, to the newly arrived American ambassador to Great Britain, a new war was out of the question. In late September 1938, British, French, and Italian diplomats fatefully met in Munich and there gave in to Hitler’s demands for the Sudetenland. The British delegation was led by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whose reputation would ultimately be destroyed by this concession to the Germans.
Returning to Britain, he announced, “We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.” Later that day, he stood outside 10 Downing Street and this time said, “My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.”
Events would swiftly prove him wrong.
Ambassador Kennedy, as soon as he’d arrived in London, formed a close