In a new book Presidents At War, author Steven M. Gillon takes a look at how World War II impacted a generation of presidents — from Eisenhower and JFK through George H.W. Bush — and, he says, “how it defined each presidency and shaped the world.”
Gillon, a senior fellow at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, also takes a look at what was happening behind the scenes, including the affair between a young John F. Kennedy, prior to his presidency, and Inga Arvad, a Danish American journalist who was suspected of being a spy for Germany.
Kennedy met Arvad, a columnist for the Washington Times Herald, in 1941 when he was working as an ensign in the Office of Naval Intelligence. According to Gillon, “his brief stint in the military almost came to an end when he fell in love with her.”
As he writes: “JFK spent much of his free time with her, much to the consternation of the FBI who suspected her of being a German spy because she managed to get access to Hitler when other western journalists could not.” (In 1936, Arvad was Hitler’s guest at the 1936 Summer Olympics.)
“Hitler had attended Inga’s wedding to her then ex-husband,” he writes. And so, he continues, “With the direct approval of President Roosevelt, the FBI tapped her phones, intercepted her mail, and kept her under constant surveillance.”
In January 1942, the FBI leaked the story of the affair to gossip columnist Walter Winchell of the New York Daily Mirror. As Gillon writes, “Less than 24 hours after the story was published Kennedy received new orders to take a desk job at the Charlestown Navy Yard in South Carolina.”
Gillon says the Navy brass “wanted Kennedy to be discharged from the Navy entirely.” But eventually, with the help of his family’s influence, JFK got a prized spot as a PT boat captain.
In the end, he says, “There was no proof that Inga was a spy.”
Still. the relationship ended before JFK became the 35th president. “He tried to rekindle it,” says Gillon, “but she had moved on.”
Things grew even more complicated when JFK became involved with a young East German named Ellen Rometsch. According to Gillon, in July of 1963, the FBI warned Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy of a potential scandal involving his brother and his rumored affair with Rometsch, whom the FBI also suspected of being a spy.
“News stories appeared claiming that a spy was having an affair with a powerful member of the Kennedy administration,” Gillon says. “No one suspected that it was with the president himself. Congress decided to open an investigation, but the White House rushed her out of the country before she could be called to testify.”
According to Gillon, “She was an Elizabeth Taylor look-alike who met Kennedy through Senate Sec. Bobby Baker, a close confidant of Lyndon Johnson. There were rumors that Rometsch made repeated visits to the White House where she supposedly participated in naked pool parties. RFK, understanding the potential explosive nature of the revelations, arranged to have her deported to West Germany.”
Still, according to Gillon, the rumors surrounding their relationship persisted, especially after her deportation and reporters heard rumors of her association with “several high executive branch officials.”
Says Gillon: “RFK contacted FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and asked him to discourage any Senate investigation into the allegations. Afterwards, Hoover met with Senate leaders and assured them that his investigation had turned up no evidence that she was a spy or had ever visited the White House.”
Nonetheless, he adds, “the investigations continued and were ongoing when JFK left for Dallas in November 1963.”
According to Gillon, at the time that Kennedy was trying to keep Arvad out of the news, General Dwight Eisenhower — Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe and future 34th U.S. president — did little to disguise his affair with his driver, Kay Summersby, a former model who was separated from her husband and engaged to another man.
As Gillon writes, “Kay started out as Ike’s driver but he soon promoted her to serve as his personal assistant. She accompanied him on trips to the combat zone and sat in on high profile meetings, including those with Roosevelt and Churchill.”
“Although he was twenty years her senior, Ike did little to disguise his affection for Kay,” he writes. “When asked if Ike and Summersby were intimate, a Chicago Tribune war correspondent observed, ‘You didn’t often see a general kissing his chauffeur.’ ”
According to Gillon, Summersby later revealed in her memoir that while there was lots of passion, the general had difficulty consummating the affair.
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Gillon notes that when word of Eisenhower’s relationship with Summersby made its way back to his wife, Mamie, she feared that Kay had become her surrogate in London.
“Pictures of them together in newspapers, magazines and newsreels made her increasingly suspicious,” he writes. “But eventually he broke off the relationship.”
As he concludes, “Today we are obsessed with the private lives of our presidents. But these examples show that even some of our finest presidents have had moments of personal weakness. But their indiscretions did little to diminish their effectiveness in office or tarnish their reputations as members of the ‘Greatest Generation.’ “
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