Page 114 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
Basil Blackwood – ‘Duff’ – resigned his parliamentary position when war was declared, and enlisted.He went to Burma, and wrote very touching letters home to Maureen and the children from there: ‘I love you very much you silly old thing … I hope we and the children will be very happy after the war and in the meantime … be good as gold and very faithful’.He was killed only days later, in March 1945.
Billy’s father, William Cavendish, took over Duff’s role as under-secretary of state for India and Burma in 1940 when he resigned.There is some suspicion (as per Paula Byrne’s book,Kick) that Maureen was William’s mistress for a time – which would tie the two men even more closely together – but I have left that out of this story as I couldn’t corroborate it.
The plot around Prince Friedrich is invented, but it is inspired by the many plots involving German princes around this time.There were a host of these, that came to various levels of fruition.Many were motivated by self-interest.
When Kaiser Wilhelm II (Fritzi’s grandfather) abdicated in 1919, he left a considerable power vacuum, and a great many disgruntled nobility, including four ‘kings’ of Germany – Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg – and also six grand dukes, five dukes and seven princes, who along with all of their heirs, successors and families lost their titles and domains.
In the scrum to recoup some of this, many joined the Nazis.Hitler was quick to spot an opportunity, and frequently appealed to these former princes by expressing sympathy for a restoration of their lost inheritances.The Berlin Federal Archives list 270 princely members of the Nazi Party in the years 1928–42.
However, there were some who saw opportunity – and duty – in other ways, and lent themselves to plots against Hitler.The best-known was probably the Oster Conspiracy of 1938, which planned to overthrow Hitler and the Nazi regime and restore the monarchy under Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, grandson of Wilhelm II and eldest brother of Prince Fritzi.
There was also Prince Friedrich zu Solms-Baruth III, jailed and tortured in 1944 for his part in Operation Valkyrie, another failed plot to kill Hitler, and various others.Even now, every few years, letters or documents come to light, often in private collections, giving details of other princes who were the focus of all sorts of plots, small and large.
In writing those parts of the book, I liked the idea that, really, nothing about the plot actually exists.It’s a series of whispered conversations, a number of ‘what if’s’ that even the principal character knows nothing about, and that is abandoned summarily when overtaken by events.Once war was really inevitable, the plots to get rid of Hitler and put Prince X or Y in his place dwindled.In the book, that’s exactly what happens.Fritzi is of supreme interest one day, immaterial the next.All without him knowing anything.
Joe Kennedy was a complex man.He seems to have been public-spirited but also selfish; courageous but without much in the way of clear moral values; striving to be a realist but highly pessimistic.His ambassadorship was a cautionary tale: a dazzling start, and an ignominious end.He failed to follow the shift in public opinion, in England or America, and found himself thoroughly out of step with public sentiment when that swung behind the idea of standing up to Hitler’s gross ambitions.
He has been accused of being anti-Semitic, and there is evidence for that.He certainly saw Jewish conspiracy in efforts to persuade the US to enter war with Germany.But as vice-chairman of the Evian Commission from July 1938, he was also in negotiations to get some Jewish children out of Germany.According to biographer David Nasaw, in his bookThe Patriarch, Kennedy showed genuine concern for the refugees, and was deeply frustrated by how slow any action was.At the Evian Conference on refugees, Kennedy, representing the US, urged countries to find a solution (with very limited effect; only the Dominican Republic was willing to accept more refugees at that time).
Kennedy did little to persuade the US to relax its restrictions, but he did help arrange for 190 Jewish children to be brought into Boy Scout camps in England.
By 1938, about 150,000 German Jews – one in four – had already fled.Many more wished to leave – like Hannah’s parents in this book – but couldn’t find anywhere willing to take them in.By the time war began, Britain had admitted some 70,000 European Jews, but about 500,000 more had been denied.
That too is why I didn’t feel I could close this story with a happy ending; because that wasn’t the case for so many people.