by David Nasaw
When Mooney insisted it would be “unpardonable” to cancel the meeting he had set up with the German officials, Kennedy promised to contact the president and ask him for permission.
The next morning, Mooney phoned Kennedy from Paris and “found a gloomy Ambassador awaiting me. He had been up half the night, he said, getting the telephone call through to the White House, only to be refused permission for a second time.” Disappointed, but undaunted and incapable of letting go of his grand opportunity, Kennedy suggested that the meeting with Dr. Wohlthat be moved from Paris to London. Welles and Hull had asked him not to fly to Paris to have dinner with an unnamed German, but they had said nothing about a meeting in London. Wohlthat agreed to move the meeting and arrived in London on Monday, May 8. The following morning, he and Kennedy met at eleven A.M. at Wohlthat’s rooms at the Berkeley Hotel. Two days later, the Daily Mail reported on the front page: GOERING’S MYSTERY MAN IS HERE. Fortunately for Kennedy, the State Department, and the president, there was no mention of the reason for his visit.29
Nothing came of Kennedy’s discussions with Wohlthat except an acquaintance that would be renewed after the war. Had Mooney not written about their meeting in his unpublished memoir, it would have remained a secret forever. What it reveals, in retrospect, is the degree of desperation that Kennedy felt that spring of 1939. Roosevelt’s open letter to the dictators had been greeted with scorn and ridicule. Chamberlain had turned overnight from a potential peacemaker into a wreck of a man who was fighting for his political life. Kennedy had no sympathy for Hitler or the Nazis, nor was he inclined in any way to aid and abet their ambitions for territorial acquisition, but despite his instructions from Washington, he refused to sit on his hands as war approached. He set up the meeting with Wohlthat for one reason only, to try to find a way to restart negotiations with the Germans and succeed where others had failed, in turning Hitler away from future aggression.
—
In early 1939, the Chamberlain government convened an international conference in London on the future of Palestine. Representatives of the Palestinian Arabs, neighboring Arab countries, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and leading Zionist organizations were invited to participate in formulating a plan for partition, which when arrived at would be presented to the British Parliament. There was not the slightest hope that anything would emerge from the deliberations. As the New York Times correspondent in London explained to his readers in the United States, with the Zionist and Arab positions “diametrically opposed . . . most observers seem to agree that the result will probably be a stalemate, after which the British Government will announce its own policy for Palestine.”30
On February 27, while the conference was still in session, Kennedy cabled Hull that he had met with Lord Halifax at Whitehall “about the Jewish question.” Halifax had informed Kennedy that the British cabinet “had not arrived yet at a definite plan but it looked as though” it was going to give up its “present mandate” in Palestine and replace it with “a Palestinian state with the Jews a minority, with immigration allocated for the next 5 years to between 100,000 and 150,000 with 10,000 children additional every two years. He was a little hazy on the figures, but said this approximated it. . . . He just wanted to give me a bare outline and you can see this is because they are still talking it over. They are really sparring for time, and, I should judge, giving the Arabs the better of it.” The ambassador closed his cable by reporting that he had asked Dr. Stephen Wise to “come in tomorrow to see if I can get any definite reactions or thoughts and will send them to you. Is there any angle on this that you want covered or have any suggestions for me to make to Halifax?”31
Hull’s response was cold and blunt. He did not have “any suggestions which you might make to Halifax on the Palestine question.” His concern was not with the substance of the British plan, but on insulating himself and the president from the protests that were sure to follow. “I may say in strict confidence that I feel we should be cautious about being drawn by the British into any of their preliminary proposals in advance of any final plan which they may decide upon for a solution of the Palestine problem. If any suggestions in that sense are made to you I am confident you will bear the above observation in mind and keep us promptly advised.”32
Kennedy heeded Hull’s warning and kept quiet. He broke ranks only once, when, having heard that the American Zionists were considering withdrawing from the conference, he “vigorously advised them not to . . . and thus avoid being blamed for the failure.”33
The conference broke up on March 17 with the rejection by both the Arab and the Zionist delegations of the proposals the British had put forward. The Chamberlain cabinet, having made its show of involving Palestinians, Arabs, and Zionists in their deliberations, was now free to submit to Parliament the plan for restricting Jewish immigration that Halifax had earlier outlined to Kennedy. The same day the conference broke up, the British counselor in Washington delivered to the State Department a copy of the plan Chamberlain was going to lay before Parliament. Roosevelt and Hull received the plan without comment, lest they be drawn into negotiations and the United States become a partner to British policy. They asked only that Kennedy petition the British to delay any announcement. Kennedy requested such a postponement, which was agreed to with the proviso that it would be a temporary one.34
The British had decided to close down immigration to Palestine at a moment in time when the need for safe havens was greater than ever. More and more Jews were ready now to flee Germany, but there was no place for them to go and no guarantee that they would be able to take with them even a portion of their assets.
“The letters of inquiry that we are getting about the refugees would break your heart,” Eddie Moore wrote John Burns in mid-February, “and the sad part of it is that little can be done on any of the cases.” For Kennedy and Moore, who prided themselves on their ability to cut through red tape and get things done, the situation was intolerable. As the requests mounted in number, Moore lashed out at his and Kennedy’s friend Arthur Goldsmith for offering refugees false hope that letters of introduction to the embassy would get them visas. “I am not going to let you or anybody else put me in a box. Neither am I going to allow anybody in distress to leave my office feeling that I haven’t been of every assistance to them, so please don’t tell any more people what you told Mrs. Egger [an American woman who had come to London to get visas for her parents] or write letters for them to me such as the one that you gave her.”35
Goldsmith wrote back to explain, not to apologize. He did not know Mrs. Egger. It was her husband who had come “to see me, and as a matter of pure humanitarianism, the same emotion which always animates you, I took the one desperate chance that you might be able to be of some help to her as she was already set on going to Europe. . . . If Mrs. Egger appeared over-distressed or irritating, I can only say that in this horrible situation in which everybody in the world—particularly Jews—finds himself, this is understandable and I know you understand it. . . . At this particular writing, in this country, we are so low in spirit that we would have to mount a stepladder to kick a snake in the belly. How are you and your dear, sweet wife?”36
—
There were very few secrets in London that spring, least of all that the White Paper on Palestine, soon to be released, would recommend the restriction of Jewish immigration to Palestine. The only remaining hope for the Zionist leaders was that American government officials might intervene with British officials before the new policy was set in stone. On April 30, Moshe Sharett, in effect the Zionist movement’s and Jewish Agency’s ambassador to Great Britain, was delegated by the leadership to “go to Kennedy.” In his diary entry, he “questioned whether it was worthwhile—I have no faith in Kennedy’s good will. Besides, he won’t do anything without instructions from Washington. My seeing him won’t give him those instructions. Besides, today is Sunday and Kennedy is an observant Catholic. The embassy’
s office is closed. It is unlikely Kennedy is home on Sunday and it would be unpleasant to disturb him at his private apartment.”37
Sharett waited until Monday morning, then “asked for a meeting with Kennedy and was invited for 4:30 P.M. . . . The doorman knew of my coming and took me upstairs. Since the ambassador hadn’t come as yet, he took me into the waiting room. After a few minutes a butler came and took me to a waiting room closer to the ambassador’s office. He asked me to be seated. Kennedy came in, greeted me but instead of ushering me into his office led me back to the outside waiting room, gave me a seat, sat down himself and asked me to begin. I was surprised at this procedure, but at the conclusion of our conversation I understood the secret.” Sharett told the ambassador that he knew about his earlier talks with “our American friends” and with Weizmann, and that the Zionist leadership valued “his interest” in their cause. Sharett understood that the “ambassador of a government [Kennedy] receives his instructions from it” and was not a free agent. Still, he had “to inform him that we have come to the final hour. . . . If there is the inner strength to act, this is the moment. It will be tragic, a thousand times over if this moment is passed over.” Kennedy, Sharett wrote, heard him out “without moving a muscle in his face. When I finished he said: ‘You undoubtedly know . . . that we are doing all we can.’” Sharett emphasized again “the urgency” of acting now to prevent the British from closing off Palestine. Kennedy repeated, “We are doing all we can.” He then rose, shook Sharett’s hand, and “turned to return to his office. I could not but think: had he received me in his office he would not have been able to end the conversation so abruptly when it was convenient for him.”38
Kennedy, for his part, had cut short his meeting with Sharett because he had nothing to say that Sharett wanted to hear and saw no reason to prolong the discomfort. The British had made their decisions on Palestine and were not going to budge. And Roosevelt, Kennedy knew, had no intention of interfering.
Eight days later, on May 9, Kennedy informed the State Department that the White Paper on Palestine was going to be presented to Parliament the following Monday. “The Jews will not be pleased with it, but the Government feels that it cannot delay the matter any longer and that it has made the only fair decision.” Roosevelt asked Kennedy to seek another postponement. “Any announcement about Palestine at this time by the British Government,” the president wrote Welles, “is a mistake, and I think we should tell them that. What can I say to Justice Brandeis?” The British agreed to delay the release of the White Paper, but only from Monday to Wednesday.39
In Washington, Justice Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Ben Cohen, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Senator Robert Wagner, and William Green of the AFL-CIO converged on the White House to plead with Roosevelt to intervene with the British. The president assured them that he had instructed Kennedy to keep in touch with Chamberlain. The impression conveyed to the Zionist leaders in Washington, a Mapai (the most powerful political party in pre-state Israel) report concluded in June, was that “FDR cables the U.S. ambassador in England every day and demands that he be especially attentive to the Zionist stance.” That was not the case, however. The president did not ask Kennedy to do anything other than ask for a delay in the release of the White Paper. By intimating to the Zionist leaders that he had instructed Kennedy to do otherwise, Roosevelt made it appear as if Kennedy were at fault for not doing more to stop the British from restricting immigration to Palestine.40
Kennedy, of course, had laid himself open to scapegoating by making it brutally clear to Zionist emissaries such as Sharett that there was nothing he could do to alter British policy on Palestine. Because he had, the previous November, confided to Weizmann that the “Jewish question” was one of his top priorities, the Zionists in London and Washington now regarded him as “two-faced.” What they did not understand, the Mapai report later concluded, was that what Kennedy meant by the “Jewish question” was entirely different from what the Zionists meant. “When a Zionist official meets a government figure and hears ‘the Jewish question’ he assumes Eretz Israel [Palestine]. But this doesn’t have to be the case. His interlocutor may have in mind solving the Jewish question in Guiana.” This was certainly Kennedy’s position. Knowing that the British would never open Palestine to substantial immigration, he had sought other outlets for the resettlement of German Jewish refugees. For him, and for Roosevelt, the questions of Jewish rescue and Palestine immigration were separate ones.41
Kennedy was caught unawares by what he perceived as the turn against him. He had been a friend of the Jews in London, had done what he could to find safe havens for them somewhere in the British Empire, had, in fact, been so outspoken on the issue that the State Department had warned him to cease and desist. And now, suddenly, he was accounted as the enemy, though the decision not to pressure the British to open immigration to Palestine had been made by Roosevelt and Hull, not by him. His problem was that, instead of dissimulating, as Roosevelt had, he had made it clear that, as far as the American government was concerned, Palestine was a British issue. Unlike Roosevelt, he had not expressed his sympathy with or commitment to the Zionist project of resettling German Jews in Palestine. On the contrary, he considered the issue closed and settled. His remarks on the hopelessness of the Zionist cause, had, in fact, so distressed Harold Laski that he got in touch with Louis Brandeis, who directed him to “convey some of the information about Kennedy to the ‘skipper’ [Roosevelt].”42
Kennedy continued to speak his mind, seemingly unaware of the consequences. In conversation with Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald, he had remarked that while American Jews would be outraged at the new plan for Palestine, their protest would never be loud enough to get Roosevelt to intercede. And this was true. When word of what he had said was cabled to the Zionist leaders in the United States, as he had to have known it would, all hell broke lose. Ben Cohen, fearing that Kennedy was being set up as a scapegoat, cabled to warn him. Kennedy replied that he was shocked that “American Zionists are repeating these unfair stories. It is rather a peculiar slant for the Zionists to take at this late day after my work for their cause. However I am getting used to this type of experience.”43
Solomon Goldman, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, cabled his apology from Washington the next day: “Feel it duty say American Zionists have always regarded you devoted friend. Recall with appreciation warm reception accorded me during visit London. Rumors between continents unavoidable but be assured we feel indebted for earnestness with which you have furthered interests American Jews and cause of people whose fate must be of deepest concern to you.”44
Thanking Goldman for his note, Kennedy could still not resist complaining about his unjust treatment. “I can’t tell you how pleased I was to receive your cable. I was really frightfully upset by the one I got from Ben, because, while realizing he sent it in the most friendly spirit, it seemed to me that it was another of those unfortunate things that happened to me no matter how much work I did on the Jewish problem. . . . Therefore your wire was a very pleasant relief. If you see Ben tell him I quite understand the reason for his sending it and that I am appreciative of his interest, but that I was very much upset to think that was the result of all my efforts.”45
The British White Paper on Palestine was published on May 17 and was even worse than the pessimists among the Zionist leadership had anticipated. The British announced that they intended to establish an independent Palestine within ten years with a majority of Arabs. To safeguard against further violence and to preserve the present Arab majority, they were restricting Jewish immigration for the next five years to ten thousand a year, plus, “as a contribution towards the solution of the Jewish refugee problem,” an additional twenty-five thousand, “special consideration being given to refugee children and dependents.”46
WASHINGTON SILENT ON THE WHITE PAPER, read the New York Times front-page story on May 18. Roosevelt had nothing to s
ay, and neither did the State Department, which claimed it had not received the full White Paper text. Over the next few days, when that excuse was no longer possible, Hull declined to comment on the White Paper, claiming that decisions on Palestine were Britain’s to make. Roosevelt held his silence.
From Paris, Chaim Weizmann wrote Solomon Goldman on May 30 to find out what precisely was going on in Washington. He had learned from the head of the League of Nations Mandates Commission that the Americans, instead of protesting the British action on Palestine, were “‘behaving very nicely to them.’ The British have been saying that all along and were somewhat amused at our reliance on America. . . . Again I feel a great deal will turn on the attitude of the President. But what the real attitude of your Government is—that is a point which needs elucidation. I shall try to see Bullitt here and perhaps he would explain something; I have not much faith in Kennedy.”47
Goldman responded to Weizmann that he and his Zionist colleagues in the United States had “every reason to believe that the President has the finest understanding of, and the deepest sympathy with, our movement.” Roosevelt had, in fact, been in conversations with Louis Brandeis on a new plan for Palestine. “He stated in so many words . . . that two to three hundred thousand Arabs can and must be moved from Palestine to Iraq. He estimated that we should need a sum of $300,000,000 to achieve such a wholesale transfer of Arabs. He thought that the Jews might be in a position to raise $100,000,000, that the British and French might extend a loan of $100,000,000, and that the United States an equal sum. He seemed to indicate that as soon as he was somewhat relieved from the pressure of other affairs, he might try to tackle the job. . . . I understand that on two occasions he used the trans-Atlantic telephone and spoke directly to Chamberlain.”
