1940 — Kennedy Writes A Controversial Book
As war tore through Europe and beyond, Kennedy returned to the United States to complete his studies at Harvard. In 1940, he completed his final year thesis by writing about British negotiations during the Munich Agreement, which would be titled “Appeasement in Munich.”
However, rather than just focusing on criticizing the appeasement policy that the British government then pursued, he instead examined the failures of the British government to take steps to prevent World War II and argued that if they had taken the threat Hitler and the Nazi’s posed earlier, the war could have been entirely prevented.
Although initially intended as just a thesis, Kennedy’s father, keen to elevate his son’s reputation, encouraged him to turn it into a book even though his son’s views in the thesis directly opposed his father’s support for appeasement. Continuing support which would prove disastrous for Joseph P. Kennedy’s own political aspirations as he was soon removed as the Ambassador.
The book would become a bestseller under the new title of “Why England Slept.” And while it would go on to sell 80,000 copies in the United Kingdom and the United States, many criticized the work arguing that if it hadn’t been written by the son of such a rich and influential man, it would have never been published.
