#155: Harvard, London, and a World War; JFK, Part II

JFK's collegiate path was never in doubt - his application essay is evidence of that - but after he begins university, his father's new senior position in the US government gives Jack a front row seat to the collapse of peace in Europe and leaves him struggling with how and why that happened. Fortunately for him, that gives him a great idea for his senior thesis which then becomes a best-selling book, but also leaving him grappling with what his role will be when the United States inevitably enters World War II.

The introduction and transition music heard on the podcast is composed and recorded by the eldest Ghosts of Arlington, Jr. While the rest of his catalogue is quite different from what he's performed for me, you can find his music on bandcamp.com under the names Caladrius and Bloodfeather.

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Transcript

In the London of the late 1930s, the air in the city carries a nervous energy, like a room where everyone is waiting for bad news that hasn’t quite arrived.

In a crowded café not far from government buildings, a young American sits at a small table, notebook open, listening more than he speaks. Around him, conversations drift between languages—English, French, and German—punctuated by the rustle of newspapers showing headlines following events on the continent: speeches by Hitler, new demands, and, even more troubling, new concessions.

The young man has spent years reading about history from a sickbed. Now, he is watching it unfold in real time. He studies the faces around him: diplomats, journalists, ordinary Londoners who have lived through one world war and can sense another approaching.

He is not a decision‑maker. He has no votes and holds no office and no real power. But he is asking himself the same questions that keep those who do awake at night. Are the leaders of the free world ready for what is coming? What happens when democracies hesitate and dictators do not?

The name on his passport is John Fitzgerald Kennedy. For now, he’s just “Jack,” a Harvard student traveling abroad and observing while his father serves as the senior U.S. government representative in the United Kingdom - formally known as the United States ambassador to the Court of St. James.

Years later, many will say that the war forged Jack Kennedy. But even before the war he was a young man taking notes while sitting in a front‑row seat to the failure of the Treaty of Versailles and peace.

Welcome back to Ghosts of Arlington. I'm your host, Jackson Irish, tracing the shadows of Arlington National Cemetery through the lives buried there. Today, the emergence of a man determined to take part in the defining world events of his time.  Thank you for joining me for Episode 155: Harvard, London, and a World at War; JFK, Part II.

[INTRO MUSIC]

There is never any real doubt that Jack will be accepted to Harvard. His short application essay reflects the confidence of a decision already made. The simple prompt asks “Why do you wish to come to Harvard?” His 90 word response reads <<QUOTE>> “The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt it is not just another college, but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a ‘Harvard man’ is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain.”

In other words, Harvard sounds great and I always wanted to go; plus my dad went there. Thanks!

When Jack Kennedy arrives at Harvard, he carries the advantages of a privileged name and the baggage of a battered body. On paper, he is exactly the kind of young man the university expects: well‑connected, well‑off, a Kennedy. In reality, he is still wrestling with chronic health problems and a reputation for being better at last‑minute charm than long‑term discipline.​

Harvard gives him a stage and a test. In classrooms, he sometimes coasts by on the bare minimum and sometimes dazzles. His interests gravitate toward history and government, especially the study of how nations rise and fall, how alliances work, and how leaders choose between risk and caution. Professors notice that when he cares about a topic, he can see beyond the surface—connecting policy decisions to the personalities and pressures behind them.​

Outside class, life is a blend of old habits and new responsibilities. There are clubs, social events, and the familiar temptation to skate by on charm. But there are also reminders that the world is changing. News from Europe grows more ominous: Germany rearmament, military expansion, and fascist regimes built on intimidation and hatred. For a student who has been reading history since childhood, the patterns feel uncomfortably familiar.​

To fill his time, Jack occasionally writes for the campus newspaper - The Harvard Crimson - but has little involvement in campus politics, preferring to focus on athletics and his social life. He plays football and even makes the junior varsity team as a sophomore until an injury exacerbates his already existing back problems and forces him to call it quits. He also gains membership in the Hasty Pudding Club - a society founded in 1795 “to cherish feelings of friendship and patriotism” and claims to be the oldest collegiate social club in the US as well as the Spee Club, one of Harvard’s elite final clubs. Final clubs are apparently so named because they are the last social clubs a person can join before graduating.

And Jack’s health continues to be a wild card. There are days when he moves easily across the Yard, and days when pain and fatigue make even simple routines feel like endurance tests. That contrast—between the outward image of the carefree college boy and the private struggle to function, sharpens something in him. He knows what it means to seem fine while fighting an invisible battle. That experience will matter later, when the stakes rise.​

In 1938, after his 2nd year at Harvard Jack and his older brother, Joe, Jr. sailed to England for the summer. If Harvard is one classroom, London becomes another, much larger one when his father, Joe, Sr., is appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom just as Europe begins sliding toward war. For Jack, this creates an extraordinary opportunity—and he spends much of his time outside of school working for his father as a diplomatic assistant. He travels on official business to Ireland, France, the USSR, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Libya, Syria, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador. He attends the coronation of Pope Pius XII, witnesses a rally for Benito Mussolini, and of course, spends time in London watching his father operate at the highest levels of diplomacy.​

From embassy receptions to parliamentary debates, Jack sees how the machinery of power actually works. He hears arguments about appeasement, rearmament, and the willingness—or unwillingness—of democracies to confront aggressive regimes. He also sees the limits of individual judgment. His father, a powerful and confident man, is deeply skeptical about Britain’s chances and about the wisdom of deeper American involvement. Those views, controversial then and later, leave a mark on Jack, both as an example and a cautionary tale.​

At the same time, the mood in Europe is shifting from anxiety to inevitability. During his travels, Jack observes, and takes notes—sometimes literally, sometimes just mentally—about how leaders behave when danger is close but not yet undeniable. He talks with officials, journalists, and ordinary citizens. He absorbs the textures of a continent trying to pretend that peace can be extended just a little longer.​

For a young man who has spent years feeling physically fragile, there is something bracing about being in a place where entire nations feel vulnerable. The stakes are no longer exam grades or family approval. They are national survival, the lives of millions, and the credibility of the very democracies Jack has studied in his books.

His last bit of official travel in Europe took him to Berlin, the heart of the Third Reich, where a US diplomatic representative gave him a secret message about war breaking out soon to pass on to his father, and to Czechoslovakia. He returned to London on September 1, 1939, the very day that Germany invaded Poland; the start of World War II.

Two days later, Joe, Sr., Joe, Jr., and Jack are in the House of Commons hearing speeches endorsing the UK’s declaration of war on Germany. As his final official act in Europe, Jack was sent as his father’s representative to assist with arrangements for American survivors of the torpedoed passenger liner SS Athenia, before flying back to the United States on his first transatlantic flight.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

All of these impressions—lectures at Harvard, conversations in London, the steady drumbeat of European crises—coalesce into a question that Jack Kennedy cannot shake: How did things get this bad this quickly?

Back at Harvard, he begins to take his studies more seriously. He makes the dean’s list and turns that question into a serious piece of work. His senior thesis - titled “Appeasement in Munich” - examines why Britain, a great power with so much experience in statecraft, seemed so slow to rearm and respond to the threat posed by Nazi Germany. It is not an abstract topic. For Jack, it is a way of wrestling with what he has seen: leaders hesitating, citizens divided, institutions struggling to keep up with a ruthless adversary.​

With the help of Joe, Sr.’s connections, the thesis is published as a book in 1940 with the title “Why England Slept” and is one of the first to offer information about the war and its origins; it quickly becomes a best seller. Its title echoes an earlier work, “While England Slept,” a collection of Winston Churchill speeches between 1932 and 1938, highlighting the theme of delayed awakening to danger. The project shows several things at once. First, that Jack can sustain serious research and analysis when truly engaged. Second, that he is already thinking in terms of how ideas are communicated to the public. And third, that he is willing to question the judgment of older, more established leaders—respectfully, but firmly.​

For the Kennedy family, the book is also a useful calling card, a sign that the younger son has intellectual heft to match his name. That combination—genuine insight plus well‑placed support—will be a pattern throughout Jack’s early career. It raises an enduring question: where does privilege end and personal merit begin? Jack himself, aware of his advantages, feels pressure to prove that he is more than his privilege.​

By the time Jack graduates cum laude from Harvard in June 1940 he is an honor student with a bright future, but the world is at war all around the still-neutral United States. Europe is engulfed, and the debates he has been studying are no longer theoretical. For a young man raised in a family that equates honor with service and success with visible achievement, the question is no longer whether he will be involved, but how.​

But his health remains a complicating factor. Military service, especially in a combat role, is not an obvious fit for someone with recurring back and medical problems. Yet the same stubbornness that kept him pushing through pain in classrooms, on the gridiron, and during international travel now turns toward the war. Jack does not want to watch this conflict from the sidelines. He wants to participate.​ The boy who read about battles from his bed, the student who studied the failure of deterrence, and the observer in London who watched leaders hesitate is now a man determined to test himself in the crucible of war.

He is still, in many ways, an unfinished product: shaped by privilege, shadowed by illness, sharpened by exposure to history’s turning points, and only beginning to understand his own ambitions. What comes next—his service in the Navy, command of a small wooden boat in the Pacific, and the night that will define his legend—will demand everything he has learned about courage, responsibility, and the cost of hesitation.​

In this chapter of Jack Kennedy’s life - really, the last chapter of his youth - the boundaries between observer and participant blur. At Harvard, he moves from a somewhat erratic student to a critical strategic thinker capable of tackling the biggest question of his era: how democracies fail to stop looming disasters. In London, he watches the old world stumble toward a second cataclysm, and he sees up close both the strengths and limits of diplomacy—and those of his own father.​

The thesis that becomes “Why England Slept” is more than a student project. It is an early sign of a mind that will, years later, face crises in Cuba and Berlin, still haunted by the memory of what happens when free nations react too slowly. The war has not yet touched him directly, but it is already shaping the questions he asks and the choices he will make.​

Next week on the Ghosts of Arlington Podcast, Jack Kennedy leaves the seminar room behind and steps onto a much more dangerous stage. We will follow him into the U.S. Navy, into the world of small, fast boats in the Pacific, and into the dark waters of the South Pacific where PT‑109 will make his name a story of heroism, leadership, and survival that will echo through his entire political life.​