Kennedy rejected the warnings of the prominent Member of Parliament Winston Churchill that any compromise with Nazi Germany was impossible. Instead, Kennedy supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's apparent policy of appeasement. Throughout 1938, while the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany and Austria intensified, Kennedy attempted to arrange a meeting with Adolf Hitler.[39] 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".[40] 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."[41]
Kennedy also argued strongly against giving military and economic aid to the United Kingdom. "Democracy is finished in England. It may be here," he stated in the Boston Sunday Globe of November 10, 1940. With Nazi German troops having overrun Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France, and with bombs falling daily on Great Britain, Kennedy unambiguously and repeatedly stated his belief that this war was not about saving democracy from National Socialism (Nazism) or from Fascism. In an interview with two newspaper journalists, Louis M. Lyons, of The Boston Globe, and Ralph Coghlan, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kennedy said:
It's all a question of what we do with the next six months. The whole reason for aiding England is to give us time ... As long as she is in there, we have time to prepare. It isn't that [Britain is] fighting for democracy. That's the bunk. She's fighting for self-preservation, just as we will if it comes to us..... I know more about the European situation than anybody else, and it's up to me to see that the country gets it.[6]
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