Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

I have continued reading about Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and my respect for him has risen. There is a lot of talk about him making his fortune from bootlegging, but at the very least, that is a gross exaggeration. He had numerous and diverse business interests, including filmmaking (RKO Studios) where he spearheaded the making of Citizen Kane, which is considered, to this day, one of the best films ever made. 

You can't overstate how close he and Roosevelt were. They met during WW1 when Roosevelt was Undersecretary of the Navy, and Kennedy was running the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Boston. During FDR's first two terms, there were periods in which FDR consulted with Kennedy several times a week. They were so close that when Kennedy admonished Roosevelt for his affair with Missy LeHand, Roosevelt scoffed, "I'll stop seeing her when you stop seeing Gloria Swanson." 

The reason Joe Kennedy wanted to be US Ambassador to the UK was because he was planning to run for President after Roosevelt. Of course, he never got the chance, since Roosevelt kept running and running. But, Kennedy thought that to have any chance of winning, he needed to have foreign policy credentials, and that's where the ambassadorship to England came in. So, he asked his friend FDR for the appointment, and his friend FDR granted it. 

But then, it started turning sour between the two friends over one thing: Nazi Germany. Kennedy had a degree in economics from Harvard, and business was his business.  He was impressed with the economic turnaround that Germany had made, emerging from a much worse depression than ours (where their money died) in less than 5 years. By 1938, Germany was the strongest economy in the world. 

But, the main thing for Kennedy was that when currents, on both sides of the Atlantic, started moving inexorably towards war, he felt an obligation to try to stop it. Without seeking permission from Roosevelt, he held numerous private meetings with the German Ambassador to the UK, Herbert Von Dirksen, trying to avert war. He tried, unsuccessfully, to meet with Hitler. And he urged caution and restraint to Churchill and others. His attitude was that war was the worst thing that could happen, and no matter what, you try to stop a world war from happening. 

I have started studying WW2 in earnest, and it's because I have a cousin who is writing a book about the memoirs of our late uncle, Michael DiMeglio, who fought from Omaha Beach to the outskirts of Berlin. And what I have come to realize is that World War 2 involved monstrousness by all sides. It was not the "good war." Forget about it. Let it go. For the British, it was mainly an aerial campaign targeting German civilians. The British did very little strategic bombing. They mostly bombed cities trying to kill German civilians, as many as they could, and they killed millions. It was a policy of genocide. Imagine if someone today did what the British and Americans did at Dresden. And I have read the dastardly attempts to defend it, which continue to this day, just as defending the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to this day, but imagine if some nation actually did those things today how quickly and universally they would be condemned. 

And then, there were the Soviets. I mentioned their policy of "from 8 to 80" referring to the age range of the German females they would rape, the most horrific mass rape in human history, but if only they had just raped them. Why did they have to mutilate them? And many they killed. I have previously posted the link to a book by a respected British historian about the monstrous mass rape by the Soviet Army. But, here is another link about what they did:

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/features/2018/03/11/PICTURES-The-largest-mass-rape-in-history.html

But then, I began asking myself: what about the Americans? Did we also rape women? Alas, the answer is yes, and it is well documented- and not just enemy women but ally women. We raped our way across France. It was so bad that the new French government appealed directly to Eisenhower to make it stop. There are a lot of articles about it, and here is one:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334204/The-GIs-raped-France-We-know-mass-rape-German-women-Stalins-soldiers-Now-new-book-reveals-American-troops-committed-thousands-rapes-French-women-liberating.html

So, the next time anyone tries to say anything good about World War II, they better not say it to me. And, it reinforces what I strongly believe, that, universally and inevitably, WAR MAKES MONSTERS OUT OF MEN. It's the message of my movie, MY STRETCH OF TEXAS GROUND, the whole reason I made it.   

https://www.amazon.com/Stretch-Texas-Ground-Jeff-Weber/dp/B07RP4C92H/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_2?crid=2JOQQC9ZKFRAT&keywords=my+stretch+of+texas+ground&qid=1558243028&s=gateway&sprefix=My+Stretch+of%2Caps%2C167&sr=8-2-fkmrnull 

So, I honor Joseph Kennedy Sr. for doing all he could to try to stop World War II from happening. And even after he was fired by Roosevelt (which was disguised as a resignation) he came back here and started making public speeches denouncing the Lend-Lease Act which permitted the U.S. government to start sending war materials, not just to Britain, but to Soviet Russia. Do you have any idea how many tanks and munitions and parts for airplanes and also fabric for clothes and food that we sent to Soviet Russia? To Joseph Stalin, who killed more human beings than anyone, and by far? 

I continue to ponder the question of whether Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was assassinated. Elliott Roosevelt, the son of FDR, who was also an acclaimed fighter pilot, claimed to be in the followup plane, although it's not in the official record, and he said that they must have "tripped a wire." I don't know about you, but that is not satisfying to me. And, I should think they would have proofed the operation against such a thing. Another report has it that it was due to an "electrical fault." Again, that does nada for me. It has no value. It's just blather.  

There is a lot online about Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.'s anti-Semitism.  There are quotes of his that are derogatory towards Jews. And there are even some attributed to Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., who traveled through Germany in 1934, which was a year after Hitler became Chancellor. And he wrote glowingly of what he saw there. Now, I am totally opposed to any kind of ethnic, racial, or religious bigotry. And I am 1000% opposed to violence against anybody, most certainly including Jews. But, we are talking about trying to prevent the worst disaster in human history: World War II. And Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. tried to prevent it. And regardless of anything else, that makes him a hero in my book. 

One person responded to my first article by saying that Joseph Kennedy told someone that he believed Roosevelt had his son killed. That would be big, but so far, I have been unable to confirm it, but I'm still looking.