The Rest Is History - 392. JFK: The Road to the White House (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

“There were a lot of people who wanted Kennedy dead, a lot of powerful people. There are secrets still being held and I never bought for a minute that Oswald operated alone.” The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on 22nd November 1963 is one of history’s most iconic stories, a moment of terrible innocence lost and a foundational myth for modern America. The tragedy of the murder, coupled with the mystery surrounding it and the glamour of Kennedy himself, have only heightened the enduring fascination with the event. But what really happened in the days before, during and after the assassination? Did Lee Harvey Oswald really act alone? Or was he just a tool for darker forces at play in American politics - or for an international conspiracy at the terrifying height of the Cold War? Join Dominic and Tom as they launch their epic investigation into the life and death of JFK, beginning with the controversial Kennedy clan, the young ‘Jack’s’ upbringing and the personality of the victim himself. Along the way they discuss his battle with crippling illness, his sexual escapades and his romance with the woman who became his wife, Jacqueline Bouvier. *Dominic’s book The Fall of the Aztecs is available now from bookshops across the UK - the perfect Christmas present!* Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting. More details just arrived. These details about the same as previously. President Kennedy shot today, just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas.

Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy. She called, oh no. The motorcade sped on. United Press International reports that the wounds perhaps could be fatal. So that was CBS News interrupting Dominic, I think, a soap opera, wasn't it? Yeah. With the first news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, JFK, on the 22nd of November, 1963.

Yes, 60 years, Tom, it'll be since the Kennedy assassination. And I suppose you could say it's the first great televised historical moment, isn't it? One of the first moments for which we have television pictures, but that was also a television event. So the images of people kind of gathering outside TV stores, washing through the windows in absolute shock. And you starting with that reading, that beautifully done reading, I have to say, Tom. Thank you very much. Thank you. The right kind of mournful, serious tone that people expect from the rest is history. And lots of our American listeners will be very familiar with that. They'll have seen that clip a thousand times in documentaries. I mean, I would say the Kennedy

assassination is one of the three most famous assassinations in history, alongside Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln. Where's Franz Ferdinand? Shocking. No, not as famous. Not as famous. The thing about the Kennedy assassination, unlike those previous two, is that there is an incredible sense of mystery, paranoia, and suspicion of conspiracy around it. I mean, we did, what, two episodes on the assassination of Julius Caesar, but no one was really in any doubt as to who did it and why and we talked about lincoln's assassination in the episodes we did on the american civil war again there's not really much doubt who did it and why yeah but with this

there is controversy isn't there yes and i'm really looking forward to these episodes because the 60s and 70s in amer America is your kind of academic specialization. So I know that you focused on Kennedy's rival in the election, presidential election that brought Kennedy to power, Richard Nixon. But presumably you must have studied and written about and lectured on Kennedy as well. Do you know what, Tom? This is a funny admission. It was seeing Oliver Stone's film, JFK, a film that actually now I hold in quite low regard historically. It was seeing that that made me fall in love with American history. I vividly remember going to see it. I think it was probably in 1991, 2, when I was a teenager and being completely fascinated by the way in which

his assassination conspiracy theories opened the door into all these different subjects. So Vietnam, civil rights, the military industrial complex, the Cold War, and so on. The first extended bit of historical writing I ever did, which was my sixth form history project, we had to do like an extended essay, was about the domestic policies of President Kennedy. It turned out to be quite a boring piece of work. So let's hope the podcasts turn out to be more exciting. Well, I guess the justification for doing a big series on the Kennedy assassination is that the paranoid style in American politics.

Yes. Richard Hofstadter, which he wrote the year after the assassination. Yeah. But that paranoid style is in itself a theme. Absolutely, it is. America has never really, I mean, it's never really banished in itself a theme. Absolutely, it is. That America has never really, I mean, it's never really banished, has it? No, absolutely it is. I think what gives the Kennedy story such fascination is just the combination of that paranoia and the idea that if you can solve the mystery of

Kennedy assassination, if indeed there is a mystery, then that will unlock the key to understanding American power and politics and all American history. So there's that combined with the allure of Kennedy himself. So in other words, if it had been Nixon who had won that election in 1960 and then been assassinated, I don't think there would be quite the same public fixation. I mean, of course, it would still be very interesting, but it's the fact that Kennedy was so glamorous that he had a, shall we say, very colourful love life, the nature of his family. And the bit in the news report, you know, Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy, the tragedy of that. Yes.

The personal drama of it. Exactly. Camelot, you know, this is the Mort Dartha of American politics. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a tremendous story. And I agree, I always found Kennedy a very politically appealing figure. Right. He's a very charismatic figure.

I'm looking forward to you telling me that he's not at all. No, because the funny thing about Kennedy, Tom, is that when I started out as a sort of, you know, as a graduate student and then as a young academic, Kennedy was held, I would say, by and large, in quite low regard by historians because there had been a backlash against the Camelot myth. So there were a whole load of monographs saying, oh, actually Kennedy, very passive on civil rights. The sense of Kennedy's family was that they were semi-criminal or whatever. And there was also a sort of sense, I think, in academia that as a subject, Kennedy was vulgar because he was too popular, because he was too sensational. So I'm guessing the whole, I mean, I'm giving away a spoiler here for people who haven't seen the Kevin Costner, JFK film, the Oliver Stone film. But the whole point of that is that he's

basically assassinated to stop him from stopping the Vietnam War. Yes. Which I'm guessing is perhaps not entirely plausible. No, because that is a really live historiographical argument. What would Kennedy have done in Vietnam if he had not died? So the interesting thing with the mystery element to it is when you're trying to solve any murder mystery, so it be an Agatha Christie or a Dorothy L. Sayers murder or whatever,

the personality and the behavior of the victim are crucially important. The murderee, as Martin Amis would call it. Yeah, the murder-ee. The nature of the person who is murdered helps you to understand why he's murdered and who did it. So in episode one, should we have a look at Kennedy's character, his origins, the things that shaped him? Sure, because I think understanding the victim in this story will help us to solve the case, Tom. Fantastic.

Because it will help us to eliminate other possibilities and to get to the truth. So he is of Irish stock and America's first Catholic president. Those are the two things that I always knew about his upbringing. Yes, Tom, he is very Irish. His great-great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, had moved from Ireland in the late 1840s to escape the famine. Then there's another Patrick. Then there is Joe, Joseph Kennedy. Now he is Kennedy's father, and he is a titanic figure of Kennedy's life is also a book about his father because his father is such a towering influence. Joe Kennedy, who becomes a stockbroker and so on and a kind of political figure, Joe Kennedy had married the daughter of the mayor of Boston, a guy called Honey Fitz. And the daughter was called Rose Fitzgerald. And she is Jack Kennedy's mother. So they get married. Can I give you an amazing fact about John Fitzgerald?

Honey Fitz. I know you love an amazing fact. So he was mayor of Boston, wasn't he? He was, yes. And he was the person who set up the first ever public Christmas tree in America in 1912. Really? And it was half an hour before one was switched on in Madison Square Park in New York. That's an absolutely tremendous fact, Tom.

I went down a wormhole last night. You clearly did. And I thought, that's an interesting fact. You clearly did. Maybe we should do a podcast about the history of Christmas trees instead. Well, it's coming, isn't it? Yes, exactly. So you have Joe Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald. They have two sons initially. So they have Joe Jr., who was born, I think, 1915. And they have Jack, who was born in 1917. And Jack is born in a place called Brookline, which is a kind of middle-class affluent suburb of Boston. So they are moving rapidly up through the sort of social echelons of Boston. So this rapidly moving up through social echelons, they are Catholic. Boston famously

is founded as a Protestant city. So is there prejudice among the Boston Brahmins against Catholics? There undoubtedly is. So the funny thing with Jack Kennedy, actually, he has a great lesson in the importance of nuance and understanding class. And people always think that the British are peculiarly obsessed with this, but you see this brilliantly in Boston. So the Kennedys are a rich family. His father is very successful on Wall Street, has two Rolls Royces, has enough money to buy a summer home on Cape Cod at Hyannisport, the kind of Kennedy compound, as it ends up being called. He's a billionaire, I think, in today's money, Tom.

Because he wanted to make 2 million by the time he was 35. 35, exactly. Yes, he did indeed. He had gone to Harvard though, Joseph Kennedy, and not been allowed in to the big clubs on campus. He hadn't been admitted to the Protestant boarding school dominated social clubs that the Boston Brahmin boys went to. Later on, he joins some country clubs, but he's not invited to all of them when he's successful. And Joe Kennedy, who is a very prickly and proud man, really feels that. He feels a tremendous sense of being an outsider, even though he's extremely rich, very well integrated in society. The fact that he's a Catholic and they are Catholics and they are Irish and they're shut out,

that really eats away at him. I don't think it ever ate away at Jack Kennedy, actually. In fact, Jack Kennedy was very good at being accepted by these things despite being a Catholic. But for the family at large, it creates this sense of being it's sort of us against the world, Team Kennedy, all of this kind of thing. Go on, Tom. Because Honey Fitz, the grandfather of JFK, after whom jfk is named john fitzgerald yes the mayor with his christmas tree he gets that nickname honey doesn't he because he's incredibly charming yeah people love him yeah and joe kennedy seems not to have had that not he wouldn't have done i mean he's as you said very prickly man but jfk really does have that he seems to have inherited

this charm via his mother from his grandfather. He definitely did. When he was a boy, people used to say he really takes after Honey Fitz. Everybody loves him. He's very funny. He's very charming. So in personality, he's much closer to Honey Fitz. His father's influence, though, is really important. One thing about his father, by the way, everybody thinks that Joe Kennedy was crooked.

It's one of the few things that most people know about Joe Kennedy. That he was a bootlegger in Prohibition. Yeah, but he actually wasn't, Tom. Wasn't he? There Joe Kennedy. That he was a bootlegger in Prohibition. Yeah, but he actually wasn't, Tom. Wasn't he? There's no evidence that he was a bootlegger at all. So there's a historian called David Nassau who's really gone into this. A lot of that is probably prejudice against a prickly, proud Irish Catholic businessman. And people say, oh, he's crooked.

He's probably in league with the mafia and all this stuff. Now, he was very ruthless. But as Fred Logerville writes in his biography, Joe Kennedy always moved very cautiously in his business affairs, always placing a premium on achieving and maintaining the appearances of respectability. He knew that as an Irish Catholic, he was vulnerable, that his opponents would seize on any mistake to say, so actually, the evidence of bootlegging is minimal. The truth of the matter is he's a rapacious businessman who makes a lot of enemies and they say he's crooked,

but he's probably not really crooked. He's also a very competitive dad, isn't he? So he's endlessly telling his children that they have to be the best. If he does sport with them or board games, he's always out to beat them as hard as he possibly can. He does things like he will throw them into the seat on one of the yachts to get them to swim. Well, you know, I mean, that's what parenting is all about, a single swim. But he kind of passes that on, doesn't he? That kind of will to win to JFK, but also to JFK's elder brother, Joe Jr., who is absolutely the alpha male. He is. So Joe Jr. is the apple of his father's eye.

Joe Jr. is slavishly obedient to his father, follows his father's opinions in all things, very serious, kind of rough, slightly kind of clunking kind of character, I would say, Joe Jr. Jack is different. He should be called Biff. Yes, he absolutely should be. He should be a high school star. Yeah, exactly.

He's a person who always comes out ultimately badly from high school comedies. Yes. But Jack is quite different. So Jack is a very sickly boy. He got scarlet fever when he was two, and that basically set the tone for everything that was to follow.

He's just endlessly ill, but also he clearly has a congenital spinal issue that goes undiagnosed for a very long time. So he is a very poorly little boy. He's also very bright. People talk about him loving reading. They're not a great family of readers, the Kennedys, but he is. So he loves reading Walter Scott.

And he loves the Arabian Nights, which we've recently been talking about. Exactly, Tom. He loves adventure stories and romantic stories. He clearly is somebody with a kind of lively, swashbuckling imagination. Now, the thing is, their family dynamic is one that would actually crush a sort of lesser person because you talk about the winning thing. I mean, even in the summer, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, so that's the mother. She would post a schedule for events every evening for the following day. So it'd be like tennis, 10 o'clock, golf,

a conversation about politics at 11.30, all this kind of thing, which visitors to the house found generally terrifying and absolutely chilling. Yes, clarinet practice at 12.03. Exactly. And didn't she make them, when they went swimming, they'd all have to wear different swimming caps so that she could keep tabs on who was swimming well? She did. I mean, by the time Jack is going away to school, she's got about nine kids.

Plus, the other interesting thing from the family dynamic is that Joe is an absolutely inveterate womaniser. And he doesn't really bother to hide it from his children yes so he's having affairs with basically everyone kind of secretaries and waitresses and chambermaids and what kinds of but doesn't he also in a kind of foreshadowing of his son's relationship with marilyn monroe he has a relationship with glorious swanson who's a massive star in hollywood yes so joe kennedy goes to hollywood in the 1920s he starts up this relationship with Gloria Swanson, big film star. He does it under his family's nose. So the Swansons, that's Gloria and her husband, they even come with the Kennedys on holiday to Europe. And Joe is still carrying on with Gloria.

That's very Kaddish behaviour. And how does Mr. Swanson and Rose Kennedy, how do they feel about that? I'll be honest with you, my research stopped at Mr. Swanson, so I don't know how, what Mr. Swanson... I mean, is he getting out his horse whip or what's going on? No, clearly not. It's going off and playing a few rounds of golf or something, I think, Tom. But Rose Kennedy, she just completely turns a blind eye to it. She pretends it's not happening and doesn't admit it even to herself, I think.

Because she's very devoutly Catholic, isn't she? She is, and she's a very introverted, serious person. And I think the Kennedy boys, they clearly got the message that this was fine and that your wife would always put up with it. Well, doesn't Joe encourage it? He's kind of, oh, lads, what have you been up to? He absolutely does.

And what is more, not only does Joe encourage it, but Joe will try to get in with their girlfriends as well. So he'll sometimes ring up Jack's girlfriends and take them out on a date and stuff. And then they sometimes say when he said goodbye, he was like 40 years my senior, but he would kiss me passionately on the lips. So, you know, the issue of JFK's womanizing has always sort of hung over him. But he was brought up to believe that it was natural, normal, acceptable. Chip off the old block. Absolutely. Absolutely. Anyway, we're jumping ahead. He goes to boarding schools. He goes to

a Catholic boarding school first, and then he goes to a school called Choate. And Choate is a kind of, it's not the very highest echelon. Their very highest echelon wouldn't admit Catholics, but it's kind of the echelon just below it in public school terms it's minor major i think i'm glad you clarified that for us yes and actually at tote he's happy he's not brilliant academically because he's never terribly focused he's too dreamy and actually he's just has too much fun he's a prankster he's a japester climbing trees catapults all that kind of stuff pillow fights yeah you know very billy bunter tom stealing jam uh yes wrestling tramps but he's not fat is he no he's not fat quite the reverse quite the reverse and everyone loves him so yeah he's still a great reader so i was astounded

to read this the book he read as a teenager that transformed his life that he loved more than anything else was winston churchill's the world crisis about the first world war right well that is interesting because i mean he is of irish stock yeah and you know if there's one thing that irish bostonians are famous for it's their devotion to british imperial heroes they love them right and i know again i'm slightly jumping the gun here, but Joe Kennedy will go on to become ambassador to Britain in the build-up to the war and then through the Blitz. And it's marked by a certain degree of Anglophobia, isn't it? Well, I'm not sure whether he's Anglophobic. Well, okay. Hostility to Churchill. Yeah. He despises Churchill. He despises

Churchill. He loves Neville Chamberlain. He greatly admires Neville Chamberlain. Jack Kennedy, I hadn't really appreciated the extent of this until reading up for this episode. Jack Kennedy is a passionate, passionate Anglophile. He loves English literature. He loves English history. And he loves English politicians and political traditions. And he loves Churchill, presumably. He loves Churchill more than anybody. So he starts reading about the First World War. Herbert Henry Asquith, who was listeners to our Writers History Club will remember, is undoubtedly one of the very great British prime ministers, Tom. Asquith said of the world crisis, Winston has written a book all about himself,

called it The World Crisis. But Kennedy thinks it's brilliant. And Kennedy is inspired by this to go on and read Churchill's massive million word biography of the Duke of Marlborough. I'm liking Kennedy more and more. He read a biography of Lord Melbourne and became absolutely a mad devotee of Lord Melbourne. That's Queen Victoria's prime minister. Queen Victoria's prime minister. And later on, Kennedy writes a book all about British politics in the 1930s, while England slept, all about Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain.

But Lord Melbourne, his wife, Lady Caroline Lamb, notoriously had a fling with Byron. She did, yeah. So maybe this is all part of the kind of aristocratic world that Kennedy is aspiring to. I think Kennedy and his family, they're very proud Americans, of course, but there's a part of him I think that would love to have been British. They like the style, they like the wit. Of course, Kennedy's sister marries a British aristocrat. He's always going on holiday to Britain, on trips to London, of course, France as well. His wife, Jackie, is a great Francophile. But Kennedy's anglophilia is a huge part of his character, I think. He wants

to be an English gentleman. He wants to be like a much more impressive Bertie Worcester. Well, except that Britain is very much on a downward spiral, even before the war, but obviously very much so after the war. And presumably Kennedy, I mean, the fact that he's American, and therefore there's the option that if you become president, then you are basically leader of the free world. I mean, that must be a crucial part of what's driving him as well, because they are thinking in those terms, aren't they? They absolutely are. Honey Fitz is saying about Joe, aka Biff, the elder brother, he's going to be president. And I mean, this isn't a joke. They're seriously aspiring to it. They're very passionate

about it. There's always a slight sense with JFK that he goes into politics because, spoiler alert, Joe Jr., his elder brother, dies in the Second World War, and therefore he is the one who has to go into politics. But actually, it's very clear that Jack Kennedy was always passionate about politics. He's always reading books about world leaders and kings and prime ministers and presidents. And I think, as you say, he will end up seeing the United States as the successor to Britain, as the kind of leader of the Western world. He's very proud of that. And he wants to be the person who does it.

And he's always writing essays at school about leadership, about how you command a democracy, about how you handle international relations, all these kinds of things. I mean, he's really, really interested in it. So the image that I used to have of JFK, which I think I sort of absorbed from the academic historiography of the 90s, which was, he's a dilettante, he's an entitled, spoiled playboy. That's not really right. I mean, it is obvious that he's always, I mean, he's a dilettante, he's an entitled, spoiled playboy. That's not really right. I mean, it is obvious that he's always, I mean, he's not the world's deepest thinker. But he's thinking about it. Yeah, he is thinking about it.

So when Joe Kennedy gets appointed ambassador to Britain, he must have been thrilled by that. I think he absolutely was. He absolutely was. So he'd done quite well at school, but his school days had been blighted by these persistent illnesses. He's always been hospitalized with kind of irritable bowel syndrome, possible colitis, fevers, all of these kinds of things. And his back is still hurting him. He has a very bad back. By the time he leaves school, he's very popular.

The one thing everyone says about Jack Kennedy is that he's funny. He's really good company. He's charming. He's good-humored. He's a hit with the girls, all of these kinds of things. And then, as you say, his father is appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt because his father was one of the only Wall Street executives who backed Roosevelt and the Democrats. So as a reward, his father is sent off to London to be the ambassador. And Jack, who has started out at

Harvard, he goes and spends a lot of time in London. By the way, Tom, he did French in his first year at Harvard. Do you know what his essay choice was for his extended essay? I do, because I've seen your notes. Yeah. François Premier. Exactly. The life of Francis I. The dashing, womanising King of France who met Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. And do you know what mark he got, though?

Did he fail? He got a D+, and his biographer, Fred Logevall, who wrote a tremendous biography and is in fact a tremendous fellow. Fred Logevall thinks that today standards have fallen so much, Tom, they would get a B. Oh, good. But back then it got a D. So he spends loads of time in Britain. In fact, not just Britain. He goes to Germany. He goes to Nuremberg. He goes to Italy and he sees the Mussolini rally. So does he see the Nuremberg rally?

Not a Nuremberg rally, but he sort of visits Nuremberg, which is all decked out in- Yeah, swastikas and things. Yeah. He went to, I mean, I'm just looking at the list of countries. Poland, Russia, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia. I mean, extraordinary apprenticeship for somebody who is interested in politics and is 20, 21. So when his dad becomes ambassador to Britain, is he in London with his dad? Has he got a kind of ringside view of all the drama of appeasement and all that kind of stuff?

Yeah, he does often on Tom. He's at Harvard as well. So he's kind of coming and going. And as Britain slides towards war, now, interestingly, his father, Joe, is very isolationist, is desperate for Britain not to get involved in the war, is actually spending loads of time and kind of emotional investment in Neville Chamberlain and Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Hitler. And Jack, it's clear, does not really agree with his father because he's this kind of romantic swashbuckling Churchill fan. This is the point at which he starts to break with his father, I would say, as war approaches. Then, of course, war breaks out in 1939. Joe Kennedy is devastated by this. He rings Chamberlain and is virtually in tears that Chamberlain has been forced to take Britain into war. Joe Kennedy absolutely agrees

with you, by the way, that Britain is on its uppers. Yeah, well, he famously says, doesn't he, democracy is finished in England. Yeah, in that voice. And also in the Blitz, he leaves London and Churchill's son Randolph says something to the effect of, I always thought daffodils were yellow till I met Joe Kennedy. Oh, very good. Very good. Yeah. He ends up being largely despised. Certainly the people around Churchill absolutely despise him. So when Churchill comes in as prime minister, Joe Kennedy is distraught. He describes him as an actor and a politician. He obviously is a politician, but Joe Kennedy despises him.

Churchill apparently inflames Joe Kennedy by constantly offering him drinks. Because he's a teetotaler. Because he drinks very little. In fact, Jack Kennedy drinks very little as well. Right. And Churchill makes a point of ostentatiously forgetting it and always pouring him glasses of brandy. Anyway, Tom, I think we should take a break.

And when we come back after the break, we should get Jack Kennedy into the war because he emerges as this extraordinary kind of war hero. Okay. So we'll take a break now. And when we come back, JFK, war hero. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. JFK, war hero. sister live tickets head to the rest is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com

hello welcome back to the rest is history and we are talking about the upbringing of john f kennedy or dominic as he was known by friend and family, Jack. In the interval, we've been bollocked by Theo, who doesn't understand that John and Jack are the same person. So we just want to make it absolutely clear for one and all that John and Jack Kennedy are the same person. That Joe Kennedy is his dad and that Joe Jr. I think we should just call him Biff. John Jack Kennedy's elder brother, Biff, from now on. I just think it would simplify things. Okay. So war breaks out.

Jack Kennedy then, he doesn't go straight into the war. He goes back and he writes his senior thesis, Tom at Harvard, which ends up being published as a book. And it's a history of appeasement. And it's a history of the national government in the 1930s. Some people might say a very unglamorous subject for such a glamorous man. But the tremendous thing about this and why it's very important that we mention it and that everybody reflect upon it and draw the appropriate lessons is that he has a lot of time for Stanley

Baldwin. Dominic, I'm glad you've got that in. That's excellent. But let's move on. It's shocking. I had so much more to say about that, Tom. But we're moving on. We're moving on. Because meanwhile, Dominic, the storm clouds of war are gathering over the United States, aren't they? America enters the war. How does this impact on JFK? So even before Pearl Harbor, JFK has been drafted and he has gone off to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, DC. And actually before he goes off to fight, he is involved with one of these sort of mysterious interludes, Tom,

in his early life. So he's already lots of girlfriends. He's actually already had venereal disease, which has left him with a kind of unshakable urethritis infection. Unshakable is perhaps not the word. No, unfortunate word. So his terrible little health continues. Anyway, he ends up meeting a Danish journalist called Inge Arvad. He calls her Ingebinger. And she is very glamorous. She's older than he is, four years older, already on her second marriage. She's kind of blonde and charming and sophisticated. And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say she really is the love of his life. I mean, of course, he later has Jackie, but it's

Inger Arvad that he falls head over heels for. And the issue here is that Inger Arvad had interviewed Adolf Hitler in 1935 and written this very Milton Boone, kind of Barbara Cartland style thing about Hitler's mesmeric eyes. Very Unity Mitford behavior. Very Unity Mitford. And then Hitler had even invited her to sit next to him in his box at the Berlin Olympics, or at least to sit very close to him. So she had these associations. Of course, she's a Dane, so she speaks German. She knows lots of Germans. The FBI become very concerned that she is carrying on with the ambassador's son. And they place wiretaps on Kennedy and Inger. So this is in 1942. Because they think she's a spy.

Because they think she might be a spy. Actually, it seems pretty clear she's not a Nazi agent. He's not telling her anything. He doesn't have access to any very exciting information anyway. He, at worst, is being a little bit naive, but actually probably not even being naive because she's not actually a spy. But that relationship, it doesn't lead anywhere. But I think that gives you an indication of the kind of person he is. He loves having a sophisticated older woman as his lover. He loves the thought of a European wife. I mean, of course, Jackie is a great Francophile, and that sort of European-ness is very important to him about her later on. Anyway, the thing with Inga Arvad breaks up. He goes off to midshipman school in the summer of

1942. His great dream is to command what's called a PT boat, which is a torpedo boat, these little boats with maybe a dozen people on them, kind of scooting around the South Pacific. He is already in tremendous pain with his back. His back is in a terrible state. Basically, his spine is collapsing. I mean, could he have been invalided out? Is it kind of one of the things where he's pulling strings? Yes, I think there is a bit of string pulling, actually. I think plausibly, if he'd been that desperate to avoid it, he could have probably done so. But he is desperate to go.

Which reflects very well on his patriotism and courage. What also reflects well on him, Tom, just to talk about his personality for a second, off he goes to the war. He has had a very, very spoiled upbringing. Millionaire son, Rolls Royces, yachts, Cape Cod, Harvard, boarding school, not always accepted into the very, very highest, most exclusive clubs and stuff, but accepted by a lot of them. Once for nothing, he's been favoured by fortune because he's very good looking and funny and he's bright and all this stuff. But all the men who serve with him, they love him. They think he's great fun, a great character. He doesn't drink with them and play cards. Nixon, when he went off to the war, he was well known for the kind of playing cards and stuff. Kennedy doesn't

really do that. He likes to sit and read. But they still like him. They like him because he's very friendly. And so this presumably bodes well for a future political career. Does exactly. If he's got that common touch. He does indeed. Hey, do you know what books he took with him to the South Pacific? I do.

He took Bunyan with him, didn't he? Pilgrim's Progress. Is that right? No. That shows to me that you have read the notes that I sent you. And I said you didn't need to read. But you haven't read them as closely as you could have done. He read John Buchan's memoir, Pilgrim's Way.

Oh, I think the less of him then. I thought it was John Bunyan. I saw Bunyan, I saw a JP, Pilgrim, and my brain did the rest. That's very Tom Holland. But he also took War and Peace and read that. Well, I guess if you're stuck in a submarine for, what, weeks at a time. In a torpedo boat. Yeah, that's what he was thinking.

Now, what happens next is really the making of him politically. So on the night of the 1st of August 1943, he's commanding his little boat zipping around the South Pacific. And basically, a Japanese destroyer crashes into their boat in the middle of the ocean and cuts it in half. So two of his crew are killed or lost is that his fault it's slightly his fault he kind of should have seen the destroyer yeah i mean i mean secretly the destroyer's fault right i mean it's kind of a crash yeah but the destroyer is a destroyer

yes yeah exactly well it is slightly his fault anyway what happens next is very impressive so he and 10 of the others survive. The boat is there in debris. They're kind of bobbing around in the darkness. He decides they'll all swim to this coral island nearby that he can just see vaguely on the horizon. And is this because the destroyer has just plowed on, has barely even noticed it? Yeah, the destroyer's kept going. So they're just going to sink.

He basically tells some of his men, hold on to this big plank. And then he gets another one, a guy called McMahon, who's been badly injured. And he's in a life jacket. He's an engineer. And Kennedy puts the strap of the life jacket in his teeth and swims, dragging him with his teeth using this strap. I mean, that's hard work. Yeah, that is hard work, isn't it? Especially if basically you have no back. Yeah. And it takes him four hours. Four hours, Tom, swimming through the darkness. And the island is called Plum Pudding Island, isn't it? Yes. They move on different islands.

So they all get to the island and Kennedy says, we need to get help. I'll have to just swim out and hang around, try and attract attention from passing US torpedo boats. But that doesn't work. They all go to another island. Again, he's towing this bloke with his teeth. Then on this other island, Tom, and this is a detail that Hollywood scriptwriter would love and indeed did love, they meet a couple of blokes who are like native South Pacific islanders in canoes.

This very Captain Cook. Kennedy gives them a message, which he writes on a coconut, which they take to some Australians and eventually they end up being rescued. And so how long are they kind of on the island? Golly, days and days. I mean, they're not there for months. And what are they eating? Is there food?

I mean, are they... I don't know all the details of this. Are they eating coconuts, I suppose? I suppose they must eat some coconuts, shrubs, beetles. Maybe they've got some rations. Lizards. I mean, you're asking for information I don't possess. But the fact of the matter is, even though the Kennedy kind of machine

later massively romanticised and sensationalised this story, it did happen. He is incredibly brave. And it is incredibly brave and very, very impressive. It also took a toll on his health that never, ever left him. So it leaves him with yet more fevers, hideous ulcers. He gets malaria. And he arguably never recovered from the malaria at all.

And does it get written up and make him a kind of a war hero back in America? It absolutely does. It ends up in the Reader's Digest. Oh, so Reagan. Ronald Reagan would undoubtedly have read this story, Tom. Right, right. The one person who it's bad for is the fellow you call Biff, Sir Joe Jr. Oh, because he blows up over Suffolk, doesn't he?

He does. In the Air Force. In the Air Force. So he has been over suffolk doesn't he he does in the air force in the air force so he has been put in the shade by this totally put in the shade and people sort of say well you know that gave him this drive to do better and he ends up volunteering for this mission called operation anvil which is basically your flyer plane packed with explosives yeah into kind of german bases and you'll parachute out at the last minute what could possibly go wrong so something does go wrong in august 1944 the thing explodes joe jr is killed what this does for jack he's now the eldest and he is now free to pursue the political career so when he goes back at the end of world war ii he is a big hero so he has become a kind of household name

because if you've got into Reader's Digest, tens and tens of millions of people will have seen your story. He's the son of the former ambassador. They're a very glamorous family. He's very good looking. He's charming. Everything is in his favor. The one thing that's not in his favor, which is so easy to miss, I think, when you're seduced by the Camelot legend is the terrible health. So for the 10 years or so after the war, I mean, he could have died multiple times. He spends time in comas. He's read the last rights. He never actually recovers from the experience of the South Pacific, from the exhaustion, from the malaria and all that stuff. Anyway, people don't see that in Boston in 1946,

when he decides to run as a Democrat from the 11th Congressional District. Why a Democrat? Because they've always been a Democrat family. The Democrats have always been the party of Irish Catholics. It wouldn't even be a decision. You wouldn't need to think about it at all. But does it also reflect conscious thought about what the Democrats are about? Absolutely, yes. Yes. He has come out of the war unlike his father. He is a passionate internationalist. So in his big biography, Fred Loge has come out of the war unlike his father. He is a passionate internationalist. So in his big biography, Fred Logevill says of Kennedy, if you don't understand the impact of the Second World War on him, you miss everything. The Second World War is everything. He loves

Churchill. He absolutely thinks America should be part of the world. He believes in fighting crusades for freedom against international evil. He's been in the military. He believes in courage and not in appeasement. All of that sort of stuff is kind of seared into his soul. And he wants to take that into politics. He also believes in a kind of slightly vague, amorphous way, I think, in public service, in using the power of the government in a sort of restrained way to do good. So he's not a radical Democrat, a radical liberal or anything like that. He is a pragmatic, sensible, left of center by American standards, liberal Democrat. This is the kind of invidious question because it's, I'm sure, impossible to answer. But do you think his motivation, is it primarily political? Is he motivated by political ideals

or is he motivated by a sense that he should become president because this is what his daddy and his granddaddy want him to do? That is a tough question to answer, Tom. I mean, maybe they're so interfused that you can't really distinguish them. I think they're really interfused. I actually think it's too easy to point to the latter. Dismiss him as entitled. Yeah. Golden spoon in his mouth.

He's an entitled little brass who just wants to please daddy his teachers at harvard the friends he makes all of these people of course there's always a degree of them being dazzled by his wealth i mean his best friend is a guy called len billings who actually was gay and had a crush on jack kennedy but people like len billings they don't think he's just a spoiled daddy's boy they think of him as a person who will sit up late at night over the one glass, because he's not a big drinker, or over a cigar, talking about what is the role of government in a world competing between democracy and communism. And he's interested, isn't he, both in ideas and in talking to people? And that seems so important for successful politicians.

Yeah. To have that combination. Yes, absolutely. So he meets with Nixon, doesn't he? When he becomes a congressman, he does. Yeah. So when he starts out, like a lot of people, he's young, he's 29 when he's elected, turns 30 in his first year in Congress. He looks kind of skeletal because he's lost all this weight and he's had all this malaria. And he's stiff at first and finds speaking difficult and stuff. But he quickly picks it up. He's very popular on the campaign trail. He's very charming. He's funny. He's bright. He's not a kind of just a posh airhead by any means. And as you say,

when he goes into Congress, he gets on pretty well with Nixon. So Nixon, similar story, been in the Navy, been in the Pacific, newly married, the young family, they get on well. There's a famous story about them doing a debate together in pennsylvania in 1947 then they get the train back to washington together the late night train they're kind of in a compartment the two of them young guys early 30s chewing the fat they are chewing the fat putting the world to rights they are that's exactly what they're doing tom they're just wittering on to each other about foreign policy and communism and all this kind of thing and nixon tells that story later in life in a slightly kind of romanticized way. Jack and I were great friends and all this stuff. But there's no reason really to doubt it.

It talons what we know of their respective characters. It sounds entirely likely, yeah. So he's making his way through Congress and it's being perennially punctuated by these health episodes. So in 1947, he's diagnosed with Addison's disease. Addison's disease is basically, it's a failure of your adrenal glands, and it means that you are very weak. You've got very low blood pressure. Your skin looks kind of yellowish and brownish, which actually JFK's skin, if you look at color photos of him later, it does. And it makes it very hard for you to fight infections.

And that's a problem if you've got lots of other things going wrong. It's unbelievable. He's doing all this stuff and he's as ill and in as much pain as he is. Well, later on in 1954, his back has collapsed so much that the doctors say to him, you will basically be in a wheelchair unless we do emergency surgery. We're going to have to do this spinal fusion surgery, which is very experimental, and we're going to have to put in a metal plate. The downside is that this kind of operation makes it very likely you'll get an infection. But because of your Addison's disease, the infection could well kill you. And he goes

ahead with the operation anyway, and actually he ends up almost dying. And he has to lie on his back for weeks in a darkened room. There's a big benefit to this, actually. It means he misses the Senate vote on censoring Joe McCarthy, the anti-communist firebrand. So he doesn't have to censor McCarthy. And that plays well with his sort of Irish working class constituents who think McCarthy's a great guy. The Green Wall. I think there's a lot of resentments and jealousy of him. First, when he's a congressman, then when he's a senator from 1953 onwards. There's always this resentment. People think he's had everything handed to him to play. The Kennedys always outspend their rivals in campaigns 10 to 1. And liberals say, oh, well, he didn't condemn Joe McCarthy. He didn't do this, that, I think when you stand back and look at him, he's a very good politician. He's very bright.

He's clearly on the sort of more pragmatic liberal wing of the Democratic Party. He's well-liked. He's a good package. And once he's sorted his health out, he's clearly going to be a player in sort of frontline politics. But Dominic, a frontline politician needs a wife, right? Very good point, Tom. Very good point. He does need a wife.

And he is conscious of that. So in 1951, he'd met Jacqueline Bouvier at a Georgetown party. She is from an impecunious kind of stockbroker socialite family. Her parents had split up, and this had taken a great kind of psychological toll on her. She is a sort of shy but very sophisticated woman. She's 12 years his junior. I hadn't realized how big the age gap was. And actually, the marriage is not perfect. Well, to put it mildly. Yeah. He was cheating on her consistently up to their wedding day, and then after their wedding

day. And actually, I think if he were listening to this podcast, he would resent the use of those words because he doesn't really see it as cheating he thinks it's what a chap does because it's what his father had done openly yeah he's learned it from joe senior yes from joe senior and he clearly thinks you know a wife just has to put up with this just has to turn a blind eye to it but he said to his friends i'm both too young to get married and too old. And what he meant by that was, I'm too young. I want to have fun. I don't want to give up on my floundering ways. I like to go out and party. And too old, meaning I'm too set in my ways. I'm never going to change, not even for Jackie. And they bicker quite a lot. So does he marry her out of political expediency or is there a spark of love?

No, I think he's definitely attracted to her. He likes the fact she's a Francophile. She's very sophisticated. Great taste in hats. Great taste in hats, exactly. She studied at the University of Grenoble and at Sorbonne. She spent time at Vogue in Paris. She's very cool. People have said of her that the Kennedys are obsessed with these touch football games on the kind of lawn outside their summer house. And she never joins in. She doesn't know the rules.

She doesn't join in. She stays a bit aloof. I so admire that. Well, you wouldn't join in, Tom, if I invited you around and insisted on you playing touch football? No, I'd sit there with my hat. Would you? Looking glamorous, sophisticated, and classy, Dominic.

Like the Jackie Kennedy of the rest is history. So yes, he's set fair. In 1956, he has a first brush with presidential politics because as this kind of young, handsome senator from Massachusetts, he is almost picked as the Democratic vice presidential nominee with Adlai Stevenson. And he actually really dodges a bullet there because Stevenson is just about to be steamrolled by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who's seeking re-election. And his vice president, Richard Nixon. And his vice president, Richard Nixon.

So if Kennedy had been on the ticket, he comes very close to being on the ticket. There's a big hullabaloo at the convention. They end up picking a name to conjure with Tom, Tennessee's Senator Estes Kefauver. They pick him instead of JFK. And had they picked JFK,k you know could he have come back in 1960 he could but he would have had one big loss you know on his record yeah as it is he's established himself as the kind of the great white hope as the glamour boy of the democratic party everyone has seen him on tv they've heard of him because of the war. They know he's got this glamorous wife, blah, blah, blah. He's got all this money. So actually, he looks like a nice

bet in 1960. He looks like a winner. He does look like a winner. So his dad would be proud of him. And his dad is still very much lurking in the background, isn't he? He's still around. Yeah, absolutely. So if his back can hold up, who knows? Could he get into the White House, Tom? Well, we'll find out, won't we? Will he transform America? We'll find out in the next episode. Well, do you know what? When I was reading Murder Mysteries as a boy, so I was addicted to Agatha Christie. I think we talked about this in Agatha Christie podcast. I would literally miss meals to find out what was going to happen in the mystery. And if you were of that disposition,

then all you have to do is to join the Restless History Club at restlesshistorypod.com. And you can find out what happens next. Right now, in fact, you can hear the whole solution to the mystery. Will JFK become president? Once he's become president, will anything unexpected happen? And if something unexpected does happen to him, why, who, what, where and when? So find it out now or if you don't want to you can wait but it'll be so much better yeah to listen to it all right now wouldn't it tom i

think it absolutely would so we've introduced the murdery and in our next episode we will look at how jfk becomes president and the course of that presidency and what happens before it is so brutally ended so we will see you very soon bye-bye bye and the course of that presidency and what happens before it is so brutally ended. So we will see you very soon. Bye-bye. Bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip

and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.