A young John F. Kennedy thought fascism was the right system for Germany, a new book that reviews the late president’s travel diaries from his trip to Germany pre-World War II divulges.
The new revelations are found in “John F. Kennedy — Among the Germans. Travel diaries and letters 1937-1945,” a book recently released in Germany, according to the Daily Mail.
According to the British tabloid’s account of the book’s contents, Kennedy kept a diary during a 1937 journey to Nazi Germany. During the trip, he concluded: “Fascism? The right thing for Nazi Germany.”
“What are the evils of fascism compared to communism?,” he jotted in his diary.
Kennedy also seemed to have been enamored with Nazi-style racial theories.
“The Nordic races certainly seem to be superior to the Romans,” he wrote.
In an August 1937 entry in his diary, Kennedy, then 21 years old, suggested that the world’s hostility toward Nazi Germany had less to with the actions of Hitler and his regime and more to do with jealously.
“The Germans really are too good — therefore people have ganged up on them to protect themselves,” he wrote.
Praising the autobahn highway system and Hitler’s retreat in Berchtesgaden, Kennedy predicted Hitler would ultimately rise above his critics to become “one of the most important personalities that ever lived.”
The Daily Mail cautions that Kennedy’s reflections weren’t all positive, noting that Kennedy concedes at one point in his diary that Hitler’s popularity owed something to his propaganda machine.
From 1938 to 1940, Kennedy’s father, Joe Kennedy, was the U.S ambassador to Great Britain, where he expressed sympathy for Hitler and Nazi Germany and ferociously opposed American entry into World War II.
JFK would ultimately serve in the Navy during World War II.