American Experience

Slate: The Ambassador

British Newsreel Announcer (archival): America’s new ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, is welcomed by the Lord Mayor on his arrival in Plymouth. And what do you think he finds all England interested in? You guessed it— his nine children, so much so that, in London, Mr. Kennedy has to issue a public explanation.

Joseph P. Kennedy (archival): Well, not wishing to add to the housing problem of England and make it any worse than it is, I’m bringing them over in installments— five, two and two.

British Newsreel Announcer (archival):And here’s the first installment sailing, charming Mrs. Kennedy and five of the children, ranging from 18 to six years of age. Excited? Why Edward’s speechless, so Mother decides to let older brother Robert do the talking.

Rose Kennedy (archival): That’s all right. Don’t get him excited.

Robert F. Kennedy (archival): This is my first trip to Europe. I was very excited and I couldn’t even sleep last night.

John F. Kennedy (archival): Bye, Rosie.

Rosemary Kennedy (archival): Bye, Jack.

Narrator: By July 4, 1938, as the ambassador played host to London’s smartest society, he felt he had assuaged every social slight his family had suffered, as he saw his older children acquire the polish that would open every door. Jack, Joe and their favorite sister, Kathleen, known as “Kick” were “the pick of the litter,” said a family friend, the ones their father thought would write the story of the next generation.

The Kennedys were a sensation, but Joe Kennedy had entered a world in which even real diplomatic skill could not have averted catastrophe. By the end of that summer, Adolf Hitler had absorbed Austria, swallowed part of Czechoslovakia. Awed by the strength of the Nazi military machine, Kennedy wanted Britain and America to keep out of war. Like most Americans in 1938, he believed the democracies had to coexist with the Nazis.

Joseph P. Kennedy (archival): The horns of the dilemma are economic chaos and war and any step to prevent either of these is worthwhile taking.

Narrator: Kennedy seemed unable to see the moral case against the Nazis. He told the German ambassador that he “understood their Jewish policy completely.” On September 1, 1939, the policy of appeasement Kennedy had championed collapsed. Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began. England would stand and fight. Kennedy’s gold trio — Joe, Kathleen and Jack — joined their father to witness Britain’s declaration of war. The ambassador himself had phoned Roosevelt with the news, choked with emotion and foreboding, but even in his worst fears, Kennedy could not imagine the toll the war would exact on his children and his dreams.

Newsreel Announcer (archival): The British Cunarder Aquitania arrives in New York harbor with two canvas-covered 12-pounders in plain sight, the first armed Merchantmen to steam into port. Among returning notables are Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy and three of her nine children — Bobby, Eunice and Kathleen.

Narrator: Kennedy sent his family home, out of harm’s way. He remained alone in London, increasingly cut off, even from Roosevelt, who now feared America would have to enter the war. Kennedy, who still thought American intervention would only bring disaster, was now bypassed by FDR in favor of direct communication with a new power in the British government — Winston Churchill.

Michael Beschloss, Historian: Churchill saw Kennedy as the greatest impediment to his aim of getting the United States to help Britain in its struggle against Nazi Germany. He thought that Kennedy was a defeatist, an appeaser, perhaps pro-Hitler.

Narrator: While Londoners endured the German assault, Kennedy spent the nights at a rented country house. The good will he had courted vanished. The British people sensed his defeatism and the British government tapped his telephone and opened his mail in an effort to discredit him.

Professor Milton Katz, Harvard Law School: [reciting satirical verse] Joe, Joe, Kennedy, Kennedy / Went to the Court of St. James / Where he was frequently seen with the King and Queen / At cricket and other games.

But when the bombs began to fall / All over London town / Said Joe, Joe, “I must go / England has let me down.”

Narrator: In October 1940, Kennedy returned home, convinced the President was secretly plotting to get America into the war. In a sensational interview he thought was largely off the record, he predicted that democracy was finished in Britain, perhaps in the United States. The interview ended Joseph Kennedy’s political career. Even in an America reluctant to go to war, his defeatism set off a storm of controversy that would not be forgotten. In February 1941, Kennedy submitted his formal resignation. He was 52 years old.
His own presidential ambitions in ruins, Joe Kennedy now had extravagant hopes for his eldest son. He was convinced that now Joe, Jr. would be the first Catholic president and he would do all he could to make it happen.

Jack Kennedy, fresh out of Harvard, continued his active social life, but he had begun to show an interest in foreign policy and his father saw an opportunity in Jack’s undergraduate thesis, “Why England Slept.” Joe Kennedy arranged for a friend to do extensive editing and promoted it hard.

Around this time, Joseph Kennedy made a decision about one of his children that would haunt him the rest of his life. The retarded Rosemary had begun to behave unpredictably, out of control.

Rose Kennedy (archival): Well, sometimes she’d go to the Post Office with them and then, she’d decide she didn’t want to come home with them. Well, that would be all right with an ordinary child, but with her, you couldn’t tell in which direction she might wander off or whether she’d be picked up in car by someone.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, biographer: Joe found out about this newfangled operation called a lobotomy and what the lobotomy promised was that if you could take away the part of the brain that controls where you anticipate the future and worry, that you could make a person happy, living day to day. So, if they could take away that sense of her limitations, that she wasn’t measuring up to her sisters and brothers, she could just be happy being Rosemary.

Narrator: Kennedy ordered the risky operation performed. It went badly.

Rosemary emerged more seriously retarded and was sent to live in a nursing convent in the Midwest. During Joseph Kennedy’s lifetime, no hint of what had happened to his daughter was ever made public.

The world Joseph Kennedy had carefully built to shelter his children was blown apart on December 7, 1941, when war came to America.

Joe and Jack had enlisted in the Navy. Joe became a flyer. Jack’s poor health forced him to settle for a desk job in Washington, but he lobbied hard for active duty and, by April 1943, was in the Pacific, commanding a patrol boat. His vessel, PT-109, was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Two crewmen were killed. Kennedy towed a third man to safety, surviving 16 hours in the ocean, furthering injuring his back. He spent the rest of the war struggling to recover from his injuries and malaria.

In London, Kathleen volunteered for the Red Cross and fell in love. Defying her staunchly Catholic mother, she married a Protestant, the English Lord Hartington. Within months, Hartington would be killed at the front.
Joe’s tour was up, but, determined to match his younger brother’s exploits, he volunteered to pilot a bomber crammed with explosives toward a German rocket site on the coast of France, aim the plane at the target, and bail out.

Just before take-off, Joe said to a friend, “If I don’t come back, tell my dad I love him very much.” Kennedy’s plane exploded in mid-air.

On a warm Sunday afternoon in Hyannis Port, Joseph Kennedy learned that his beloved oldest son was dead.