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John F. Kennedy


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             In 1937, while JFK was still in his sophomore year, Joseph Kennedy, Sr. was appointed Ambassador to Great Britain. This prestigious post opened new social avenues to the Kennedy family, and gave them front-row seats for the drama of World War II's approach. In the European theater, Adolf Hitler was preparing to occupy Austria and Czechoslovakia, and the British government was pursuing a policy of appeasement, designed to stave off war at all costs. As ambassador, Joseph Kennedy would staunchly support appeasing Hitler, and would be fiercely critical of Winston Churchill's calls for a stronger policy against the Nazi threat. History would not regard this impulse of Joseph Kennedy's to placate Germany any more kindly than future events would treat his strident anti-Semitism. "Never do business with Jews," he once told his sons, this bigotry ironic for a man who had himself been the victim of so much anti-religious sentiment, since he was Catholic.
             In 1938, though, these concerns lay in the future, and JFK used his father's position to arrange a grand tour of sorts that would take him from France to Poland, down through Russia into the Mediterranean, and finally back up through Berlin and Paris, before bringing him home. He had made an earlier journey in the summer of 1937, and had returned very impressed with the organization and efficiency of the fascist states of Italy and Germany. This time, he arranged for his tour to count as a Harvard semester, and sailed for Europe in the winter of 1939, as Nazi tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia. Using his father's connections, JFK was able to stay in ambassadors' homes for the majority of his trip, and he sent detailed reports to Joe Sr. from every stop. JFK's most prescient observation came in Poland, where he noted that "rightly or wrongly the Poles will fight over the Question of Danzig," referring to the controversy over a Polish seaport that led to Hitler's invasion of Poland.


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