JFK Liked Hitler and the Nazis?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

JFK Liked Hitler and the Nazis?

Look at what I just came across:

How JFK secretly ADMIRED Hitler: Explosive book reveals former President’s praise for the Nazis as he travelled through Germany before Second World War
A new book reveals President Kennedy was a secret admirer of the Nazis

By Allan Hall
23 May 2013
Daily Mail

From the article:

A new book out in Germany reveals how President Kennedy was a secret admirer of the Nazis.

. . .

President Kennedy's travelogues and letters chronicling his wanderings through Germany before WWII, when Adolf Hitler was in power, have been unearthed and show him generally in favour of the movement that was to plunge the world into the greatest war in history.

'Fascism?' wrote the youthful president-to-be in one. 'The right thing for Germany.'

In another; 'What are the evils of fascism compared to communism?'

And on August 21, 1937 - two years before the war that would claim 50 million lives broke out - he wrote: 'The Germans really are too good - therefore people have ganged up on them to protect themselves.'

And in a line which seems directly plugged into the racial superiority line plugged by the Third Reich he wrote after travelling through the Rhineland: 'The Nordic races certainly seem to be superior to the Romans.'

Other musings concern how great the autobahns were - 'the best roads in the world' - and how, having visited Hitler's Bavarian holiday home in Berchtesgaden and the tea house built on top of the mountain for him.

He declared; 'Who has visited these two places can easily imagine how Hitler will emerge from the hatred currently surrounding him to emerge in a few years as one of the most important personalities that ever lived.'

Here's the book the article was about: John F. Kennedy - Unter Deutschen: Reisetagebücher und Briefe 1937-1945 (John F. Kennedy - Among the Germans: Travel Diaries and Letters 1937-1945) by Prof. Dr. Oliver Lubrich (Editor), John F. Kennedy (Author), Carina Tessari (Translator).

Unfortunately the Amazon link only goes the the German site. Apparently this book is not on the English speaking market yet.

And to think that Ayn Rand left Random House, even after Atlas Shrugged, because Bennett Cerf would not allow her to call Jack Kennedy a fascist in print at his publisher. Here's a passage from Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns (p. 210):

The Virtue of Selfishness was the brainchild of Bennett Cerf at Random House, who was eager to add to the Rand franchise. She was a veritable golden goose for the house, which had published For the New Intellectual and the Brandens’ biography, Who Is Ayn Rand? Combined sales were well into the hundreds of thousands and showed no signs of leveling off. Cerf suggested that some of Rand’s speeches and articles from her newsletter could be repackaged as a stand-alone volume. In response Rand proposed a new book, titled The Fascist New Frontier, after her essay of the same name. Originally enthusiastic about the project, Cerf grew increasingly uncomfortable with the book’s title as he tried unsuccessfully to rouse the interest of his sales staff.

The title was intentionally provocative but also reflected Rand’s deep revulsion at the Kennedy administration. The famous line from Kennedy’s inaugural speech, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” inflamed Rand. (Milton Friedman also found this sentiment objectionable, attacking Kennedy’s statement in the very first sentence of Capitalism and Freedom.) In the title essay she juxtaposed excerpts from speeches by Kennedy and Hitler to demonstrate their similarity; to her, both were collectivists who demanded that men live for the state. Such a comparison was too much for Cerf, who requested that she delete the passages and select a new title. Rand angrily rejected both suggestions and accused Random House of breach of contract. She had chosen the publisher because they promised not to censor her work; from her perspective, Cerf’s request proved their agreement was a sham. She split from Random House and published the book instead with the New American Library, a division of Penguin.

Maybe Cerf should have asked someone close enough to Kennedy to get Kennedy's approval of fascism from the horse's mouth.

This is a great case of the myth triumphing over reality, to later be debunked by the very words of the myth's hero.

The good thing about capitalism is that when one company sells out, there are others who will pick up the slack.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

The apple did not fall far from the tree. Old Joe Kennedy, the father of the Clan thought the Nazis were just nifty folk.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

Sell a new book--all that this is about.

--Brant

what some kid "thought" back then compared to his old man is about close to zero as you can get

BC wasn't about to get tossed out of his hoity-toity social group by publishing that book

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

BC wasn't about to get tossed out of his hoity-toity social group by publishing that book

Brant,

I don't see how Cerf could do much worse on that score than Atlas Shrugged.

I think he honestly found the idea of JFK being fascist ridiculous and probably felt he was protecting Rand and the Rand brand from what he perceived to be real kookiness.

About JFK, I find it entirely plausible (and interesting in itself) that his younger opinions informed his later ones, if not in surface adhesion, at least in underlying substance.

Michael

[Serapis Bey]

It seems JFK knew the score.

As did Harry Truman before him:

"The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog."

And Mel Gibson too.

I'm off to take part in a parade tonight. TTYL

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's the link for the Truman quote: Harry S. Truman 1947 Diary, July 21.

Friggen' Democrats...

Michael

[Serapis Bey]

[Mark]

You need to put the Truman quote in context. It was made around 1946 when Jewish terrorists were sending letter bombs to England and had planted bombs in the King David hotel in Palestine, the British embassy in Rome, murdering native Israelis en masse, etc. Truman was being harassed by these Zionists to encourage Jewish immigration to Palestine and endorse a Zionist state. The next year they tried to assassinate him and various members of his staff with letter bombs.

Getting back to JFK, pre-war admiration of Hitler and the Nazis was not uncommon among British intellectuals, as was admiration for Mussolini and the Fascists (in both Britain and America). George Bernard Shaw, for example.

　

[BaalChatzaf]

Here's the link for the Truman quote: Harry S. Truman 1947 Diary, July 21.

Friggen' Democrats...

Michael

Truman wrote:

Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.

His annoyance was of a general nature, but in this instance aimed at Jews.

Prior to his political life, he ran a business firm in partnership with a Jew. Hardly the action of an anti-Semite like Hitler.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Serapis Bey]

Here's the link for the Truman quote: Harry S. Truman 1947 Diary, July 21.

Friggen' Democrats...

Michael

Truman wrote:

Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.

His annoyance was of a general nature, but in this instance aimed at Jews.

I wonder if Abe Foxman and his ilk are capable of such nuance?

Rhetorical.