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posted ago by DarQ2light ago by DarQ2light +63 / -0

In 1945, 28-year-old John F. Kennedy toured postwar Europe as a Hearst correspondent. After visiting Hitler's Berchtesgaden retreat and the Eagle's Nest, he wrote one of the strangest and least-discussed passages of his early life.

Kennedy wrote that Hitler had "boundless ambition for his country which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world," but also that Hitler had "a mystery about him in the way he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him." He added that Hitler "had in him the stuff of which legends are made," and that Hitler would emerge from the hatred surrounding him as "one of the most significant figures who ever lived."

That is not a fake internet quote. It is not a meme. It is not three random lines stitched together from different places. It comes from JFK's own 1945 European diary.

The diary was 61 pages total — 12 handwritten pages and 49 typed pages — and covered more than Hitler. Kennedy also wrote about Stalin's Russia, Churchill, Roosevelt, Potsdam, postwar Europe, and the shape of the world after World War II.

Kennedy later gave the diary to Deirdre Henderson, one of his Senate research assistants. She eventually edited and published it as Prelude to Leadership: The European Diary of John F. Kennedy, Summer 1945, through Regnery Publishing.

The original manuscript resurfaced publicly when it went to auction in 2017. Early press coverage reported an expected price around $200,000, but RR Auction later listed the diary as sold in 2017 for $718,750.

The honest reading is simple: Kennedy was not endorsing Nazism. But he absolutely did write about Hitler in fascinated, historically admiring language — ambition, mystery, legend, significance. Anyone pretending the passage does not exist is hiding the ball.

Sources:

RR Auction listing — original diary and excerpt: https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/348094606780104-john-f-kennedys-diary-from-1945-with-comments-on-hitler-fdr-politics-and-world-war-ii/

CBS News — JFK diary auction and Hitler passage: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jfk-john-f-kennedy-diary-auction-thoughts-on-adolf-hitler/

TIME — JFK diary and Hitler comments: https://time.com/4711687/john-f-kennedy-diary-hitler/

Regnery — Prelude to Leadership publisher page: https://www.regnery.com/9780895264312/prelude-to-leadership/

Amazon — Prelude to Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Prelude-Leadership-European-Kennedy-Summer/dp/0895264595

AbeBooks — used copies: https://www.abebooks.com/9780895264596/Prelude-Leadership-European-Diary-John-0895264595/plp