The only diary known to be written by President John F. Kennedy is up for auction on April 26th:
A diary kept by President John F Kennedy as a young man travelling in Europe, revealing his fascination with Adolf Hitler, is up for auction. Kennedy, then 28, predicted "Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived". "He had in him the stuff of which legends are made," he continued.
Kennedy wrote the entry in the summer of 1945 after touring the German dictator's Bavarian mountain retreat. It is thought by historians to be the only diary [ever] kept by the 35th US president.
[...] He wrote that Hitler "had boundless ambition for his country which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him". The 61-page diary was kept by Kennedy around four months after Hitler committed suicide. [...] In a description of the auction, [Deirdre Henderson] wrote: "When JFK said that Hitler 'had in him the stuff of which legends are made', he was speaking to the mystery surrounding him, not the evil he demonstrated to the world."
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @06:34AM (5 children)
Ex-Wife Reveals Trump had book on Hitler and read it
Media: gigantic scandal and proof he should be impeached!
JFK "fascinated" with Hitler and read his autobiography also
Media: huh? what? oh look over there, a squirrel
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @06:54AM
They already killed JFK so there's no need to impeach him.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 25 2017, @07:02AM (1 child)
First: Trump is relevant now. JFK is no longer in office, and in fact, no longer alive. Therefore anything Trump does and thinks is important right now, while everything JFK did or thought is only of historic interest. If the same had been revealed decades after Trump died, the media would not have cared much either.
Second: It clearly wasn't a gigantic scandal. Indeed, I had to search the net to make sure you didn't just invent that event. If it had been a gigantic scandal, I surely would have heard about it.
Third: Since that topic came up before he was president, impeaching him wasn't even an option at that time.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 25 2017, @07:05AM
Oh, and I forgot:
Fourth: It was not a book on Hitler, it was a book of Hitler's speeches which he allegedly read. Big difference.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:39PM
Your attention span must be shorter than the medias. JFK is dead. Had that been possibly known back then, with the war still fresh in everyone's mind, it would have hurt him.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @06:15PM
Maybe 50 years after Trump's death some interesting and half-way redeeming things might emerge about him the same way as Hitler.
Hitler and Trump are important figures to study, even if, perhaps especially if, one is horrified by the things that they catalyzed: the holocaust and N-day respectively.
But they were just men. One man alone couldn't have caused either event. It took a nation of men in both cases, and a leader cannot lead unless his followers follow. It's humanity's greatest strength and greatest weakness.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday March 25 2017, @07:38AM (1 child)
Hitler is treated as the evil bogeyman, He Who Shall Not Be Named, as are the Nazis in general. Example: on a recent television, where individuals can bring objects to be appraised, and the interesting ones are televised, some WWII German regalia came out of some dusty attic. You'd have thought the presenters were handling items contaminated with the plague. It's generally not possible to have a factual discussion about any aspect of WWII that touches on the German side of things, because EVIL.
Hitler wasn't Asimovian "mule" who arose unexpectedly. He was a charismatic fanatic who capitalized on the the European climate of the time: circumstances in Europe following WWI, the Great Depression, and other factors. We ought to learn from history, but how can you learn from something you are barely allowed to discuss? I should certainly hope that people with significant political power have studied history. And that means understanding all sides in a conflict, not only the books written by the victors.
You'd think that 70+ years would be enough to let people see events with some degree of detachment, but...apparently not.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:56PM
"You'd think that 70+ years would be enough to let people see events with some degree of detachment, but...apparently not."
the power structures have a vested interest, and need strong, remote , "events" to stoke emotion.
With emotion there is no need for evidence.
Hence, our media has a feedback only for hype, opinion and fear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @11:40AM
Fascination with Churchill is seriously scary. One needs to be a full-time devil-worshipper to be fascinated with Churchill, anything he said, did or wrote.
The guy was a war-criminal (and also a common criminal) and we need to discuss this evil man more. No fascination with him, just scientific discussion as to how a devil-worshipping criminal mind gets into power to send the whole world into a world war, ends the British Empire, starves over 3 Million Bengalis to their deaths:
http://www.ibtimes.com/bengal-famine-1943-man-made-holocaust-1100525 [ibtimes.com]
https://espressostalinist.com/genocide/bengal-famine/ [espressostalinist.com]
Churchill was pure evil.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:40PM
oh thanks, before i read your PC horseshit i was turning into a nazi!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 25 2017, @02:15PM (1 child)
I think this bit of trivia only points out that we don't really know our politicians all that well. We hear them blather about one, two, three, key issues. They take positions on a few other issues. And, they always say whatever they think their audience wants to hear.
Fascination with Hitler? Who among us has NOT been fascinated by him at some time? Good or bad, saintly or demonic, it's not everyone who can say that they conquered most of Europe, and some nice chunks of Africa. Hitler was a force. If he were a little less ambitious, he may well have accomplished his goals. I know that my countrymen like to take credit for defeating Hitler - but the fact is the Russian winters defeated Hitler. I can't remember now how many divisions were squandered, being shipped to Russia in summer uniforms, only to be mired until winter, and death. Had those divisions been available on the Western Front, things may very well have gone differently.
Anyone who has studied Hitler should consider how things might have been, if Hitler had listened to better advisors. Consider how it might have been, and feel the shivers running up and down your spine.
Sure, Hitler was evil - but there seems to be no natural law that good always triumphs over evil.
(Score: 3, Funny) by linkdude64 on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:23PM
" but the fact is the Russian winters defeated Hitler."
This is the real reason Liberal scientists want to stop Hitler's Master Plan to warm the globe and defeat his greatest enemy!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @06:27PM
Bullshit: "When JFK said that Hitler 'had in him the stuff of which legends are made', he was speaking to the mystery surrounding him, not the evil he demonstrated to the world."
No you lying sack of shit, JFK probably wasn't blinded by "OMG Hitler evil!!!" like most people are. We'll never know of course, but the words are evidence that JFK found at least some aspect of Hitler to be admirable.
Remember also that some parts of the USA were sterilizing people for eugenics reasons long after the end of World War II. Yes, the Democrats sometimes supported supported this.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Nuke on Saturday March 25 2017, @07:19PM
[Deirdre Henderson] wrote: "When JFK said that Hitler 'had in him the stuff of which legends are made', he was speaking to the mystery surrounding him, not the evil he demonstrated to the world."
Thanks for clearing that up for me, Deirdre. I had been just about to reach for my angina pills