5 - “No ‘Rubber Stamp’ Ambassador”

Summary

Chapter 5 investigates my counter-example, the rogue diplomat whose indiscipline harmed U.S. interests. Joseph P. Kennedy, a contributor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1932 and 1936 election campaigns, demanded Embassy London as a reward, and FDR obliged. Upon arriving in Britain, Kennedy concluded that Adolf Hitler's Wermacht was invincible, that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's strategy of appeasement was correct, and that America had to remain neutral. Kennedy repeatedly misrepresented the Roosevelt administration's anti-fascist policy. Whereas FDR and Secretary of State Cordell Hull were endeavoring to bring American--and world - opinion around to a posture of resistance to Hitler, Kennedy proclaimed that America had no stake in the conflict and that, moreover, he expected Germany to win any war that might break out. No matter how often FDR ordered Kennedy to hold his tongue, he would not comply. Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland horrified the ambassador, who forecast an end to democracy in Europe and America. At the close of Kennedy's thousand days in London, Anglo-American relations were in tatters and Britain stood alone against the Nazi juggernaut. Few did more than Kennedy to bring about this hideous state of affairs.