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
Why do you bother with these musty fantasies? The "fake-escape" scenario was impossible. Hitler passed on his last opportunity to escape by air. He was issuing orders up to that point.
Wow. Getting excited over someone's logo. I take both with a grain of salt, but when they provide profuse references---and it coheres with my own reading---I'm inclined to think the references would back up what they say. When I know more and better (e.g., TWA 800), I compensate. Their entries on physical science are reliable (I use them a lot).
Same result: JFK files contain no evidence of Israeli involvement. And I don't know what Snopes or Wikipedia has to do with the files released. I was just watchiing how it went down on the board: a nothingburger.
Contemporary Israel means the nation-state, or you are using a private language.
Yes you're correct. There are a LOT of things you don't know and misrepresent. I'm tired of punching down with information, but that's my job apparently so I'll provide information and you provide mere denial so our position can be established.
Who brought up any idea of "Israeli" involvement in jfk ? You, not me. So go ahead and argue with yourself. Then do 9/11.
Is-ra-el is a composite word. It's origin had little to do with a 'place' or race. It then devolved from Ideation to a 'nation with variations'. Contemporary "Israel" is run by the Cabal and isn't run from Israel in any case. But you didn't know that and here comes the attempt to spin that idea from the position of ignorance in three.......two......one.....
Two opposites revolve around an axis. Is and Ra as extremities of EL.
What the EL could that mean?
Saving IS-RA-EL for last.........raising the conversation to the PRINCIPLES behind the literalist understanding. "Pearls to swine" when the point is missed.
You're the one using 'private language'. You know things about language?
https://kupdf.net/download/jesus-christ-sun-of-god-ancient-cosmology-and-early-christian-symbolism-by-david-r-fideler-ocr_58a100e36454a7335db1eb87_pdf
Raise up to the Great Awakening.
Claims, claims, and no examples.
Lots of people have brought up Israeli involvement in the JFK assassination. I wouldn't know about it if I hadn't seen it frequently here. And their anticipation that the release of the files would provide the final proof. You are not aware of it?
Israel is the name given to Jacob by God after he wrestled the angel. It is not a "composite word." Later applied to the entirety of his descendants as a tribe, and then to the land they inhabited.
No, I'm not using any private language, but you sure are: "Is and Ra as extremities of El." Whatever that could mean. It is pretty frequent of the haughty to talk "above" the hoi polloi and jeer at their puzzlement. But the end result is that you have explained nothing but your desire to cast aspersions.
Why give Jacob the name Israel? Why 'Israel'? Why Jacob? What was Jacob's ladder and what is represented by seven angels going both up and down two, not one ladders? Being a literalist, you can't possibly translate accurately.
You're just pretending to know things you don't. You can't control the narrative with guesses, wiki/snopes 'research' and insults. I don't owe you the correct interpretations, that takes work from you not me. How's the reading of the link I sent you coming....the one that teaches you how to 'spell' and count correctly and how the names were formed. Names like Is (Isis/space) Ra (emanation) and EL (god as 'E' and 'L'. A composite word. You lie to pretend. Go pester someone who doesn't know better and you won't get your butt hurt. Or.......read and understand the link and join discussion of higher principles than a literalist interpretation can reach.
You want to argue with the Bible? Go right ahead, but it will get you nowhere. Jacob was a name. He was renamed Israel by god. His descendants were then known as "the tribe of Israel" (meaning, of him). And where they lived was called "the land of (the tribe of) Israel". There is no coded meaning in a name as a name (especially a mash-up of Egyptian and Hebrew).
Your references are out of nowhere. I don't lie, but you like to use insults and castigation instead of rational discussion. So what enlightenment have you conveyed? All I see is a big distraction from whatever was the source topic.