7 – He Claimed That Democracy Was Dead
If you are a proud American, one of the last things you should believe is that democracy is dead. Someone forgot to mention this to Kennedy because when he was serving as ambassador in the United Kingdom, he said: “Democracy is finished in England. It may be here as well.” His opinion may have been based on his dim view of Winston Churchill, the man who succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister. Kennedy said of him: “Never trust a man who is always sucking on a whiskey bottle.”
He uttered his democracy statement when the Luftwaffe was trying to bomb England into submission. Kennedy feared that Hitler couldn’t be stopped in his rampage through Europe even before the UK entered the war. Once Britain became involved, Kennedy said: “It’s the end of the world – The end of everything.”
Kennedy’s anti-Semitism reared its ugly head once again as he told Von Dirksen that President Roosevelt was influenced by Jews. At that stage, he truly believed that the Jews were about to take control of the United States. He was also quoted as saying that “the Democratic policy of the United States is a Jewish production.” An increasingly desperate Kennedy attempted to meet Hitler in September 1940 without the approval of the State Department. He was dismissed by the British populous as a coward when he fled to the London countryside in a plane during the Blitz.
Finally fed up with Kennedy’s utter defeatism, along with low view he was held in by the British public, the Roosevelt administration put pressure on him to resign. Finally, Kennedy gave in and submitted his resignation in November 1941. His reputation was in tatters, and a number of people believed that there was more to his defeatist statements than met the eye.