MSU historian pens book about elder Kennedy’s diplomatic work

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Books on the Kennedy family would fill a library, but few, if any, are as tantalizing, informative and soaring in their completeness as Michigan State University History Professor Emeritus Jane Karoline Vieth’s new book, “Tempting All the Gods: Joseph P. Kennedy, Ambassador to Great Britain, 1938 to 1940.”

In her new book, published by the MSU Press, Vieth carefully examines the two years Joseph P. Kennedy served as the ambassador at the Court of St. James’s on the eve of World War II. Vieth began working on the book as part of her dissertation more than 40 years ago and continued her research as she taught British history and the history of World War II at MSU.

Vieth said her book distinguishes itself from similar books on the elder Kennedy’s ambassadorship, because it is more than a history of his service. It delves deeply into what Kennedy was thinking during his time in England and his often-fraught relationship with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

“Most historians used the usual sources, such as diplomatic dispatches while researching. Their books became ‘He said this, and he said that,’” Vieth said.

That was the approach Vieth used when she wrote her dissertation on Kennedy in 1970, which served as the first draft of her book. “Since then, I’ve rewritten the book three to five times, and it has gotten better,” she said.

As expected, Vieth made several trips to England over the years to research her book, but she said the “big change” came when the Kennedy family opened the private papers, letters and memoir of Jospeh Kennedy Sr.

“Getting into the archives was a mean feat, and I became buddies with Doris Kearns Goodwin,” she said.  Historian and author Goodwin was a friend of the Kennedy family who had private access to the Kennedy papers, writing extensively about the family.

Vieth would visit the Kennedy Library several times. And as one of the first historians to read the documents, Vieth said, “The research shifted the tenor and tone of the book. I got what he was feeling.”

Kennedy’s tenure in London was a crucial time because it was then that Hitler began his march to domination with the annexation of Austria. It was timed to occur with Kennedy’s arrival on the continent, and then Hitler’s move on Czechoslovakia ended with the Munich Pact and culminated with the outbreak of World War II as Germany invaded Poland and began bombing London one year later.

In the book, Vieth details the continued isolationism policies espoused by Kennedy. Through Vieth’s in-depth research, we learn that in addition to Kennedy’s fear of what war would do to his vast financial investments, he feared would happen to his family — particularly his older boys, who would certainly serve in the war.

Vieth said the new draft shifted the tone of the book. “There were a lot more adjectives,” Vieth said.

The author said her revisions “ushered in the tragic elements,” which would include the loss of his son, Joseph Jr., the assassinations of two more sons, the wartime death of a son-in-law, the loss of a daughter in an airplane crash and the lobotomy of another daughter.

The author also mines personal letters to the president. In one, a journalist friend warns Kennedy to not take the job, writing, “If you do it, it will bring down every possible calamity.”

The author said that Kennedy had a “chip on his shoulder” and attributes this in part to “getting back at the Boston Brahmins,” who had excluded him from private clubs at Harvard and in his professional life.

Reflecting on her life’s work, Vieth — who is not a Kennedy apologist for some of his more radical views and his anti-Semitism — said, “I started out detesting the man, and then over time I realized he was much more complex.”

“His heart was open, and he would do anything he could to protect his sons and anyone else’s sons from war. He was a father first,” Vieth said.

Some of the best writing in the book pertains to the relationship between the president and Kennedy.

“Roosevelt was his own ambassador and he could control and manipulate anyone. Any day of the week he could out maneuver his opponents,” she said.

It also appears from Vieth’s writing that Roosevelt could control and keep Kennedy in his place. She writes about an audience Kennedy had with Roosevelt before leaving for England, where Roosevelt asked him to “drop his pants” to make a point. The ambassador did as he was told.

Vieth also said that her interest in the Kennedys was somewhat serendipitous and was influenced by the 1962 summer she spent working as a waitress in Hyannis Port, where the Kennedy family compound is located. 

“We were all very aware of the Kennedys,” she said.

Vieth sees the biography as somewhat mythical in scope and a retelling of the Greek myth “Daedalus and Icarus,” where Icarus flies too close to the sun despite being gravely warned. Vieth may have summed up the true essence of the Kennedy dynasty.

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