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I was of your opinion until I learned of old Joe's actions in 1940-41. As you said, I believed that the Kennedys were "Mobsters, yes, but not Communists".

Pater Familias Joe Kennedy Sr. was Ambassador to the Court of Saint James, that is, Ambassador to Great Britain, from 1937 to 1940. His correspondence with the State Department and Roosevelt's executive department people shows that he followed the Moscow line closely in 1939-40.

Before the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941 the Moscow Line (the official Soviet, and therefore Communist, Definition of Reality) followed the Ribbentrop-Molotov "Non-aggression Pact" worldview.

From June 1939 to June 1941 the Soviet Union and Germany, Stalin and Hitler, were allies in Hitler's war. All communists were instructed to make propaganda in America that we should stay out of the European War, which didn't concern us, that England was doomed in any case, etc. When the Soviet Union was invaded in June 1940 the Moscow line changed direction one hundred and eighty degrees and overnight "American" communists became pro-war fire breathers. Old Joe behaved in this pattern.

The switch from an anti-war Party Line into a vehement pro-war Line happened almost overnight. American Communists uniformly followed this reversal of the Moscow Party Line and can be identified thereby.

Examination of the record can only sometimes identify Communists by their behaviour in July of 1941. The mass media is "strangely silent" concerning this mighty reversal and only private documents remain as evidence (as far as I have been able to find out).

America was only "united" behind war when the mass media changed policy in - why, amazing, isn't it, the anti-war elements of the mass media changed to pro-war in July, 1941 (with honorable exceptions like John McCormick's Chicago Tribune).

The Left nowadays is virulently anti-Iraq war, but with the same enthusiasm seen today in those days pursued American involvement in the "war on fascism" (as the Reds put it).

I believe you will find the historical background information in this piece very familiar but I hope other readers may find it useful. The Army-McCarthy hearings era is interesting (I was six years old at the time) in the context of Communist operations in the United States, 1930 to (sadly) the present .

Very interesting. I believe you're on to something. A number of Freepers have already remarked that old Joe Kennedy was sympathetic to Hitler, but none of us remembered that that was in the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact.

As soon as you put the dates together, it makes sense.

I've always viewed that as Joseph Kennedy following the Nazi party line, and backing off from it after FDR chewed him out. MI5 and the FBI raised concerns about him after he hired a Nazi spy named Tyler Kent to his staff in late 1939. In December 1940 the FBI reported to FDR that Kennedy was involved in negotiating a peace between Germany and Nazi sympathizers in France, prompting FDR to hold a cabinet meeting about what to do with Kennedy. A bit after that Kennedy made a public statement attacking Lend-Lease. That was the last straw for FDR, and he called Kennedy in and personally laid into him. I believe Kennedy's shift in party line started after that incident.