BOSTON — A diary kept by a young John F. Kennedy during his brief stint as a journalist after World War II in which he reflected on Hitler, the ambitions of the Soviet Union and the weakness of the United Nations is up for auction.
The diary was written in 1945 when the 28-year-old Kennedy was a correspondent for Hearst newspapers, rubbing shoulders with world leaders and traveling through a devastated Europe.
Boston-based RR Auction says the diary is expected to fetch about $200,000 at auction April 26.
The 61-page diary, mostly typed but including 12 handwritten pages, was given by Kennedy to Deirdre Henderson, a research assistant in his campaign office in the late 1950s.
“What’s remarkable is what he foresaw about the future of a world he would lead 16 years later,” said Henderson, who lives in the Boston area.
“This exceptional diary sheds light on a side of John F. Kennedy seldom explored and confirms America’s enduring sense that he was one of the most qualified, intelligent and insightful commanders in chief in American history,” said Bobby Livingston, RR’s executive vice president.
In the diary, Kennedy reflects on his time in a gutted Berlin. “On some of the streets the stench — sweet and sickish from dead bodies — is overwhelming,” he wrote.
He even saw Hitler’s bunker, speculating that he was not killed. “There is no complete evidence, however, that the body that was found was Hitler’s body. The Russians doubt that he is dead.”
Kennedy witnessed the territorial ambitions of the Soviet Union in negotiations to rebuild a post-war Germany and the role the U.S. should play.
“Yet, if we pull out, we may leave a political vacuum that the Russians will be only too glad to fill,” he wrote.