Inga Arvad

[dobee]

I thought it strange to find her photo there at that time, but it appears to have been released as part of, or perhaps to add color to a larger news story about a peace conference in London, and some of the Nazi leaders who would be attending.

It is interesting to ponder what her role might have been at that time, if any, and more importantly several years later, when Joseph P. Kennedy was Ambassador to Great Britain. It was rumored that Kennedy was conducting his own secret meetings with Hitler up to the start of WWII, and Inga Arvad as a personal friend of Hitler would have been a perfect go-between. That is, if he or his sons indeed knew her before she came to the States.

In some of JFK's letters home he mentions being in the company of a beautiful divorcee, and on one occasion took a ravishing blonde to a party in London and was introducing her around to all of the guests as "Honeychild Wilder, the cotton queen of New Orleans." As we know from the excerpts of the FBI tapes in Nigel Hamilton's book, this was one of their private little jokes.

[delia_A]

It was rumored that Kennedy was conducting his own secret meetings with Hitler up to the start of WWII

Really? I've never read that. Was it rumored at the time? Has there been any verification in released documents?

[dobee]

I couldn't remember how I knew that about Kennedy and Hitler, but I just checked the Wikipedia article on Joseph P. Kennedy, and it's in there. It's attributed to Seymour Hersh's book "The Dark Side of Camelot."

In 1938, Roosevelt appointed Kennedy as the United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James's (the United Kingdom) in London. Kennedy hugely enjoyed his leadership position in London high society...

Throughout 1938, while the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany and Austria intensified, Kennedy attempted to arrange a meeting with Adolf Hitler.[28] Shortly before the Nazi aerial bombing of British cities began in September 1940, Kennedy once again sought a personal meeting with Hitler, again without the approval of the Department of State, "to bring about a better understanding between the United States and Germany".[29] It has been surmised that Kennedy also had personal reasons for wanting to avoid war; "He feared for the lives of his three eldest sons, Joe, Jack and Bobby, all of whom were or soon would be eligible to serve."[30]

It's interesting to view all of young John F. Kennedy's travels around Europe from the perspective that he could have been doing his dad's diplomatic work. "The JFK Assassination Chronology" compiled by Ira David Wood lists many of the places he went from 1936 to 1939. It would be equally interesting to document Inga Arvad's whereabouts at the same time, to see if they could have even potentially been meeting.

I can't answer your question about verification in documents. Even the supposedly "made public" documents are not so easy to find anymore, like the FBI files on Inga Arvad at the FBI FOIA webpage. First the link stopped working, and now the link is gone. Your most reliable source for this story will likely be someone who claims he or she once saw the documents and this is what they said.

[Helge]

Inga Arvad