Original subtitles

- He'll lead us to a fruitful America.

From the state of Massachusetts,

John F. Kennedy!

- John F. Kennedy lived a life

that would help define an entire generation.

- Together, we shall save our planet,

or together, we shall perish in its flames.

- What was it about that guy?

- Looks, style, empathy.

- He was incredibly charming.

- Intellectual and progressive.

- He was the future. He was next.

[soaring orchestral music]

- President for just over 1,000 days,

Kennedy navigated events and crises

that changed the world.

- Kennedy is feeling the pressure

from the Civil Rights activists.

- This was a country on nuclear war footing.

♪ ♪

- This could be the last mistake

that anybody makes politically.

♪ ♪

- He changed us in the process of his own growth.

- We choose to go to the moon in this decade

and do the other things, not because they are easy

but because they are hard.

- 60 years after his assassination,

we are still fascinated by the triumphs

and flaws of the youngest president

ever elected.

- I ask you to join us in all the tomorrows

yet to come, in building America,

moving America, picking this country

of ours up and sending it into the '60s.

♪ ♪

[birds chirping]

[soft dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- The story begins on a quiet spring afternoon

in May 1917 in the Boston suburb

of Brookline, Massachusetts.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy gave birth to a baby boy

in the master bedroom of the modest Kennedy household.

The future president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy,

known by his friends and family as Jack,

was born on May 29th around 3:00 p.m.

♪ ♪

The world in 1917 was shifting.

That year, America entered

the Great War, which had begun in 1914.

The Silent Sentinels protested in favor of women's suffrage

in front of the White House.

The average annual household income was $800,

and the cost of a movie ticket was just seven cents.

With hundreds of thousands of miles of railroad tracks,

America, also the world's largest producer

of coal and iron, was at the center

of a new industrial age.

- Kennedy is born into this time

when the United States is rising as a world power.

- Delivered by the family doctor,

Jack was proclaimed healthy and handsome.

Young Jack's life was happy and carefree

until he contracted scarlet fever at age two.

In a world without antibiotics,

his prognosis was dim.

Jack was sent to the Boston City Hospital,

where his condition was so poor

that he received last rites.

- The last rites are not administered trivially.

That's a mark of a very, very serious near-death experience.

- In an unexpected turn, his health stabilized

and he was released.

This was an early sign of Jack's lifelong

chronic health struggles.

♪ ♪

Jack's mother, Rose,

was effectively a single parent.

Though she tolerated her husband Joe's affairs

with other women,

his numerous business ventures,

including banking, ship manufacturing

during the First World War,

and stock brokering,

added to his frequent absences.

- He was, by this time,

well on his way to becoming

an important businessman, and it hadn't been easy.

From the very beginning, Joe and Rose

reached an agreement that Rose was gonna raise the kids

when they were little.

As the boys got bigger, Joe would step in.

But Joe Kennedy wasn't around much,

with one exception.

Jack developed scarlet fever at the age of two,

and before work and after work,

Joe goes to the hospital.

He sits at the bedside.

He watches over his son.

He confers with the doctors and the nurses.

He becomes the one and only parent.

Jack Kennedy doesn't see his mother

at a critical moment in his upbringing

for months and months.

♪ ♪

- When he was around, Joe showered attention,

especially on the boys.

Rose was cold, self-absorbed.

There was something particular about the coldness

from Rose that you can't. really explain away.

- Rose, like Joe, often went away

for large stretches of time when the children were young.

A young Jack was said to have remarked,

"Gee, you're a great mother to go away and leave

your children all alone."

He told a friend while he was an adult,

"My mother never hugged me, never, never."

♪ ♪

- Instead of pitying himself, he found something else

to occupy his mind.

♪ ♪

From Sinbad the Sailor to Peter Pan,

Jack was enthralled by reading.

His literary interests did not lay solely

in swashbuckling adventure.

He devoured weighty historical tomes

like "Lays of Ancient Rome," a popular collection of poems

written in the 1840s,

and "The Pilgrim's Progress,"

a work of theological fiction by John Bunyan.

- There was something special about Jack.

He taught himself.

[upbeat jazz music]

♪ ♪

- When Jack was 10, his father relocated

the family to New York.

A formidable business opportunist

and an investor in the stock market,

Joe Sr. had grown his wealth by applying his skills

to various business ventures, including the film industry.

- He was spending most of his time now in New York.

He was a film producer.

He was a film executive.

And the business side of the movie business

was in New York.

The Bronxville house,

where Jack really grows up, is--

you know, it was a mansion

with a huge lawn, big driveway,

lots of land for the kids to play.

- The family began spending their summer

and early autumn months at the beachside village

of Hyannis Port, part of the Cape Cod area

in Massachusetts.

After renting a summer residence

at 50 Marchant Avenue for several years,

Joe Sr. purchased the home.

- The family spends more time together

in Hyannis Port than anywhere else.

What binds them together is not their home

in Bronxville but Hyannis Port.

- Jack was surrounded by eight siblings--

Joe Jr., Rosemary,

Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia,

Robert, Jean, and Ted.

Though they were raised in considerable wealth,

Joe and Rose taught their children

about the value of money, the importance

of a strong work ethic, and the need to stay informed

about world affairs,

which often led to heated political discussions

at the dinner table.

- Joe and Rose led conversations

about current events and global events

for all nine of the siblings over dinner.

And Joe was like a quiz master.

[soft dramatic music]

The parents seeded the children,

particularly the boys, with this sense

of history, current events, global events.

And from that, the boys

did pursue it on their own.

- Jack lived his early life in the shadow

of his older brother, Joe Jr.,

who was the promising Kennedy child,

being primed for a political future.

Joe Jr. was successful in school,

but Jack's grades were comparatively poor.

- Jack was a smart aleck as a kid.

He had friends.

Every smart aleck, every jokester has friends.

But he didn't try hard the way Joe did.

Joe was the model kid.

Joe Kennedy put his faith in the future

of the Kennedy dynasty, in his oldest son, Joe Jr.

- Joe Sr. seriously believed

he would become the first Irish Catholic president

of the United States.

Jack was an afterthought.

♪ ♪

- Coming up on future episodes of "Kennedy"...

- John Fitzgerald Kennedy is a unique character

in U.S. and world history.

- He had risked his life.

He'd climb one rung of the ladder,

and then he'd start looking to the next one.

But he would have given up all of his political success

to be pain-free.

- There was a chance that he would die.

Was he going to pity himself,

or was he going to overcome it?

♪ ♪

- And we stand today

on the edge of a new frontier.

- When he walked into the Oval Office,

he had a lot to learn.

- You have Kennedy trying to manage the Cold War,

but also adhere to the real dilemma

that African Americans are facing.

- He guided the country through

the most dangerous period of its existence.

- The idea we could get into a nuclear war was very real.

That's where Kennedy is the leader.

- And so, my fellow Americans,

ask not what your country can do for you,

ask what you can do for your country.

♪ ♪

[soft dramatic music]

- Jack's playful personality and rebellious energy

was at odds with his solemn

and polished older brother, Joe Jr.,

molded by Joe Sr. in his own image.

Though Jack looked up to his older brother,

the two were competitive, engaging in heated fights

on the living room floor.

- Jack adored his older brother,

Joe, followed him around.

The two of them played together all the time,

though Joe was a bully.

Jack brought a lot of

the physical abuse on himself.

He couldn't stop teasing.

He started fights that he knew he was gonna lose.

- Underweight and frail, Jack was almost always pinned

and defeated in these brotherly brawls,

but he always got back up and tried again.

In one of these competitive episodes,

Joe Jr. suggested that he and Jack race their bicycles

around Brookline.

The frenzied race landed Jack in the hospital

with 28 stitches.

[acoustic music]

- John Kennedy becomes a teenager,

more or less, at the onset

of the Great Depression in the early 1930s.

It was just an unimaginable calamity.

That kind of suffering and trial by unemployment

didn't touch the Kennedy family at all.

- They were completely shielded

from the Great Depression.

They knew that it was happening.

But maybe Joe Kennedy's real genius

was exposing his sons to the world

so that they would understand that the world was larger

than the closeted life they all lived.

♪ ♪

- In September 1930, Jack began

his eighth-grade year at the Canterbury School

in New Milford, Connecticut.

Jack loved sports, playing both baseball and football

in spite of his abnormally low weight

and constant health issues.

Jack often wrote to his parents

about everyday life at school,

including the difficulty of his studies,

his frustration with the school's

strict religious practices, and the freezing weather.

[soft dramatic music]

In April 1931,

when he was almost 14 years old,

Jack suffered abdominal pains

that resulted in an appendectomy--

the first of many surgeries in his life.

♪ ♪

After this operation, he withdrew from Canterbury

and returned home to Hyannis Port.

♪ ♪

Having had the summer to recover,

Jack transferred to the Choate School

in September 1931, a private boarding school

in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Joe Jr. was already a student there

and showed Jack the ropes.

♪ ♪

- Its hallmark, from George St. John,

the headmaster, was to make sure that every boy

got attention

and got the kind of education that he needed.

As a new third-former, as they were known,

the ninth-graders, he was nervous.

Fortunately, he did have an older brother

to sort of steer him and give him the ropes.

But he was pretty much on his own,

but I think that was part of the family tradition, too--

to make your own way.

Put into a dormitory-- so that's your first network.

Then, you're in classes-- that's another network.

Sports-- that's another network.

You sort of find your way with the activities

that you're involved in.

♪ ♪

- Jack did well in classes he enjoyed,

like math and politics,

but performed poorly in subjects

that didn't interest him, such as Latin.

Where he truly excelled was American history,

a subject he found fascinating.

- Kennedy loved history.

He knew it very well,

and I think it gave him

this grasp of how things work.

♪ ♪

His knowledge of history informed him

that being a great orator was important.

How does power work?

How, historically, have our alliances worked?

♪ ♪

- Despite his untroubled, relaxed persona,

Jack's sharp intelligence was noted

by those around him,

including the Choate headmaster

George St. John.

- I think he saw great promise in John Kennedy

but was a little frustrated by his occasional

nonconformist activity.

That just angered him

because he saw such great promise in him.

He knew he was a smart boy,

and he just wanted something better out of him.

♪ ♪

- While at Choate, Jack met someone

who would become his lifelong friend,

a classmate named Lem Billings.

- One of Jack Kennedy's greatest talents

was making friends and keeping them--

lifelong friends.

Lem Billings was one.

- They were both working on the school yearbook.

That's, in fact, how they met.

But sometimes they disagreed with each other.

Sometimes they would fight against each other,

but there's also a lot of affection as well.

Early on, JFK is somewhat mystified

by Lem's lack of interest in girls,

which, even then, as a young teenager,

JFK was very active and interested in.

♪ ♪

- While Jack excelled socially at Choate,

there was another part of him most did not see.

- You see all these contrasts.

So what does he present as?

Handsome, born to an extremely wealthy family,

rich playboy. But what do we really know?

What we really know is a lot of pain.

- One thing after another that sent him to the infirmary

or even more specialty care, when they couldn't

figure out what was really going on.

- He's having fatigue, these diffuse aches and pains.

He developed colitis, so he could not gain weight.

♪ ♪

- In February 1934, Jack's health

deteriorated rapidly.

He was sent to Rochester, Minnesota

for medical tests at the Mayo Clinic.

Joe Sr. came to visit his ailing son.

Rose didn't visit once.

♪ ♪

He was at death's door.

[soft dramatic music]

In early 1934, undergoing medical tests

at the Mayo Clinic, 16-year-old Jack

was plagued by constant pain,

surrounded by strangers, and dealing with

one medical mystery after another.

To pass the time, he wrote rambling letters

full of jokes, often sexual in nature.

In letters written to Lem Billings

during his time at the hospital,

Jack's buoyant personality showed no signs of waning.

- He's making jokes, and they're jokes

about his imminent death,

and he's saying, "Yeah, they were here today.

"I looked at the chart when they left the room,

and I think they're measuring me from my coffin."

Looking at some of the numbers for his blood levels

and saying, "Yeah, you know, if I get any lower, I'm out."

Kind of making light of the whole thing.

That was, I think, invaluable to what he became,

which was someone who understood pain.

- It was just one of those things

where he had a choice to make.

Was he going to pity himself, or was he going to

deal with this and overcome it?

- People who experience

that kind of pain and sickness,

they understand life is pain,

you know?

There's joy, too, but there's also just a lot of pain.

His humor was one way of dealing with it.

- After months in and out of different hospitals,

Jack was finally stable enough to return home

in the summer of 1934 with orders

from his doctors to follow a strict diet

and reduce stress.

- Lem was so concerned about him

and helped take care of him when he was ill.

- Jack and Lem were especially tight-knit,

following each other around at Choate and beyond.

So close, in fact, the teens decided

to lose their virginity at the same Harlem brothel.

- They went to prostitutes,

although it's not clear that Lem actually

ever did anything with a prostitute.

Nobody really knows.

After a while, of course, JFK being as smart as he was,

he realized that Lem didn't really have

any interest in women.

He had an interest in Jack.

- Lem felt more than friendship

for his companion.

A Choate tradition was to use toilet paper

for notes, because they could easily

be flushed and destroyed.

- Boys who wanted to engage in sexual behavior

would hint as such on toilet paper.

- Lem sent such a note to Jack,

expressing his affection for the charismatic young man.

Jack politely rebuffed Lem's romantic overture,

but they would remain friends and confidants

for the rest of Jack's life.

He had no interest in publicly exposing Lem's sexuality,

something that would subject his friend

to ridicule and harassment.

His relationship with Lem was a testament

to Jack's character in a time

when homosexuality was far from accepted

in everyday society.

- Jack took great risks in keeping this friendship

with Lem Billings, which shows the sense of loyalty

that he had.

♪ ♪

- After being called "troublemaking muckers"

by Choate headmaster George St. John,

Jack, Lem, and two other friends

established the Choate Muckers Club.

Together, they began sneaking into town for milkshakes,

going to dances, and arranging pranks

around campus.

- Then they came up with this wild and crazy idea

that they were gonna disrupt a major dance--

it's called Festivities--

by depositing a load of manure

at the entrance to the dance.

You can imagine the boys up in their rooms,

just hooting and hollering about this thing.

Wouldn't it be a great thing to do?

They never did it. They never did it.

But it was fun to think about.

It was a testimony, again, to Jack's ability

to make friends, even if in that particular case,

it was because of involvement in potential hijinks.

♪ ♪

- At last, his time at Choate came to an end.

Jack was now 18 and filled

with a new sense of independence.

- I think he was certainly ready to leave,

once graduation came around.

♪ ♪

- Jack found his second home on the water

when back in Hyannis Port during 1935 and '36.

Sailing from Edgartown to Martha's Vineyard,

even winning the 1936 Atlantic Coast Championship,

his love of the ocean was a Kennedy hallmark.

- I think you can't understand the Kennedys

without understanding Hyannis Port.

It's this big, old, rambling house.

There's nine children spilling out of the rooms.

They're all sailing.

They're all in competition with each other.

There's a tennis court.

If they're not playing tennis,

they're playing touch football.

If they're not doing that,

they've got a pickup baseball game going.

And they never lacked for companionship,

because they had each other.

They're each other's best friends.

- Kennedy felt at one with the sea.

He was able to get clearer mind--

they call it "blue mind"--

where everything comes clear to you

when you're in a maritime environment.

And that's why so often, he would be at Cape Cod

when he would make his big decisions in his life.

♪ ♪

- In the decades to come, the family compound

would serve as a source of stability and calm

in Jack's ever-changing world.

♪ ♪

[soft piano music]

♪ ♪

- The principal of the Choate school

wrote to the Harvard deans--

I assume, the admissions office--

and says, "Jack has rather superior

"mental ability without the deep interest

"in his studies or the mature viewpoint

"that demands of him his best effort all the time.

"He can be relied upon to do enough to pass.

"We have been and are working our hardest to develop

"Jack's own self-interest.

"Great enough in social life, to the point

"that will assure him a record in college

"more worthy of his natural gifts

of intelligence, likableness, and popularity."

[soft acoustic music]

- Jack entered Harvard in fall of 1936.

- It is said that his grades weren't very good

when he was a student at Harvard.

- At Harvard in his first year,

he's interested in one thing--

conquering as many women as he can.

And he's pretty good at it.

[jazz music]

- Though the 19-year-old Jack

lost the election for freshman class president,

he was active socially.

He took on the task of organizing

the freshman smoker, a large party

held at the end of the year.

Jack supplied first-rate tobacco

and arranged for appearances by two jazz orchestras,

dance groups, and baseball stars.

The party impressed his fellow students.

Jack Kennedy had captured their attention.

[soft dramatic music]

- He would just grab the coolest person there

and kind of go off in the corner

and have a private conversation.

I mean, he was not-- he was not an extrovert.

He was really very much of an introvert.

He did not draw energy from big groups of people.

He much preferred smaller conversations.

You know, had lots of friends.

He had various circles of friends.

- It was fun. It was light.

I think of him as a character of literature

like Long John Silver,

like incredibly charming but dangerous.

You know? Like irresistible.

- It's a combination of looks, style,

eloquence, empathy.

- I think the only word you can use is,

Kennedy had charisma. It was natural.

And he would come into a room

and he was the center of attention.

- He probably elicited more humor

with fewer words than anyone.

It was a very acerbic, deadpan,

sarcastic sense of humor,

great sense of timing.

- By all accounts, being around Kennedy

was incandescent.

It was, as Winston Churchill said of Franklin Roosevelt,

like opening a bottle of champagne.

- "He looked like he could be blown over

with a good breath," said Jack's new football coach.

Tall and lanky, the 20-year-old Jack

didn't look much like an athlete,

but he tried his best to stay active in athletics

like football and swimming.

His first two years at Harvard were lackluster academically,

largely due to his interest in athletics and girls.

However, Jack began to take his education

more seriously in his junior year,

even making the dean's list.

- While successful people mature at different rates,

he had to find his place.

Here, he's got this older brother, Joe Jr.,

who is considered the shining star

of the family, and Jack has trouble dealing with that.

And it's not until later,

when he's in his advanced years

at Harvard, that he gets quite serious.

♪ ♪

- On December 9, 1937,

"The New York Times" broke the news.

Jack's father, Joe Kennedy, later nicknamed "Jolly Joe"

by the press, would be the new United States

ambassador to Great Britain.

- Just arrived in England after a very pleasant trip

from the United States.

I'm looking forward, with great anticipation,

taking up my duties here.

♪ ♪

- The Great Depression is a terrible calamity

for millions upon millions of Americans.

When Franklin Roosevelt took the oath of office

in March of 1933, we estimate that there were

13 million people unemployed.

That was about 25% of the entire workforce

of the United States.

- Joe was worried.

He was a conservative, but he understood

that Hoover did not have a clue

as to how to end the depression

and save capitalism and American democracy.

And Joe Kennedy understands

earlier than most

that the Depression is the greatest threat

to American capitalism that this nation

has ever seen.

So he, very early, went and he joined

the Roosevelt bandwagon.

Kennedy really enters politics for the first time.

- Joe had been a very enthusiastic

and a very important supporter of FDR,

particularly around election time,

1932, 1936, and 1940.

And Joe Kennedy was a very important Catholic

at a time when the Catholic vote,

as it remains today, was very important,

and he would not just contribute money,

but he would entice other important people

like William Randolph Hearst as well as Catholics

around the country to support FDR.

So he thought that FDR owed him.

♪ ♪

- Finally, Roosevelt gets in touch

with Kennedy, and he offers him the position.

- Joe Kennedy's new role in the public sphere

would push the entire Kennedy family

into the center of world politics.

[soft dramatic music]

- By early 1938, Joe Kennedy was the new United States

ambassador to Great Britain.

- That would have been the most important

and most prestigious ambassadorship

that would have been offered,

and Franklin Roosevelt gave it to Joe Kennedy.

- You're kind of excited.

- Roosevelt sends Kennedy to England

as a statement as much as anything else.

It's a statement to the English

that I'm gonna send you an Irish Catholic.

He also tells Kennedy, "Look, I need eyes

"and ears over there.

"Europe is falling apart, and I can't trust anybody.

"I need someone over there to tell me,

are the British gonna be able to fight?

"Are the British gonna be able

to stand up against the Nazis?"

- Kennedy, from the beginning, doesn't simply report

on what's going on in Europe.

Kennedy is determined that he knows better

than Roosevelt and everybody else.

- The American people do not have to go to war.

They will not go to war

if they will to stay out of war.

- He opposed U.S. involvement in the war.

He was actually a person who might be classified

today as an appeaser.

He didn't want to go to war with Germany.

He thought the U.S. would lose

and that it would be a grave error

for the country to get involved

in that kind of conflict.

- Hitler! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!

[crowd shouting]

[ominous music]

- He comes to the conclusion that the English

are too foppish, too weak,

they have no backbone,

that Hitler and the Germans

are gonna run right over him.

- If I am called an appeaser because I oppose

the entrance of this country into the present war,

I cheerfully plead guilty,

and so must every one of you who want to keep America

out of this war.

- Roosevelt enlists Kennedy

not simply as an ambassador

but as a troubleshooter,

an eyewitness who's gonna report back

what's going on.

Ambassadors don't run foreign policy.

Ambassadors are stick figures, really.

- The problems between FDR and Joe

really lie with Joe,

because once he became ambassador,

he forgot about what that position was really like.

That role is to translate

the president's view to the British leaders

and the British people.

And what Joe wanted to do was relay his own thoughts,

and his thoughts did not match FDR's thoughts.

So FDR grew to distrust him and opened up

a separate private channel with Churchill.

Joe resented it, and the relationship

tumbled from there.

♪ ♪

- In 1939, with his father now living and working

in London as ambassador to Great Britain,

Jack decided to travel overseas.

He set off on a seven-month tour of Europe,

the Middle East, and the Soviet Union,

meeting with leaders, diplomats,

and everyday people to gather information

about the growing threat of war.

Jack's journey began in London

where he took tea with Princess Elizabeth.

Then he was off to Eastern Europe,

stopping in Warsaw, Poland.

As he traveled, he often corresponded

with Lem Billings and reported his observations

back to his father.

- Bye, Rosie. - Bye, Jack.

- So long, Jack!

- I--see, that's enough.

- On another leg of the trip, Jack was joined

by his Harvard roommate, Torby Macdonald.

They crossed into Nazi Germany and were heckled

by local stormtroopers who believed

they were disrespecting the statue of a Nazi hero.

Days later, traveling at high speeds

near Paris, en route to see his father,

Jack lost control of his vehicle,

flipping it.

In his true lighthearted fashion,

Jack laughed off his near-death experience.

While upside-down in the car,

he is said to have quipped to Torby,

"Well, pal, we didn't make it, did we?"

- [speaking German]

- On August 19, Jack arrived

in the German capital of Berlin.

At that moment, Hitler's troops

were preparing to attack Poland,

making their way to the border.

Less than two weeks later, Hitler's forces invaded.

The Second World War had begun.

- Jack understood that if you want to understand the world,

you need to go see the world,

and he was very eager to see the world.

♪ ♪

- In fact, when Britain declared war on Germany

on September 3, 1939,

two days after the Nazis invaded Poland,

JFK was in the House of Commons

in the visitor's gallery.

He saw Chamberlain make the announcement

that World War II had started.

- This morning, the British ambassador

in Berlin handed the German government

a final note, stating that unless we heard

from them by 11:00 that they were prepared

at once to withdraw their troops from Poland,

a state of war would exist between us.

I have to tell you now that no such undertaking

has been received, and that consequently,

this country is at war with Germany.

♪ ♪

- During his time visiting the House of Commons,

Jack was deeply inspired by Winston Churchill

and was awestruck listening to his first wartime speech

rallying the free world to stand up

to the oncoming battle against Hitler.

After listening to Churchill's remarks,

Jack was motivated to do his part as well.

Upon the outbreak of the war,

German U-boats began sinking ships.

The first ship lost was the Scottish passenger liner,

SS "Athenia."

Joe Sr. sent his son to meet

with and assist hundreds of American survivors

hospitalized in Glasgow.

During this trip, Jack spoke publicly,

reassuring those affected that they would be

safely transported back to the U.S.

He was also tasked with gathering

firsthand information about the attack.

Finally, safe passage home was secured

for the American survivors.

Jack's work was done.

After seven months in Europe,

Jack Kennedy was now 22 years old.

He had seen Nazi Germany up close,

listened to his political hero Winston Churchill

speak in the House of Commons,

shared tea with the future Queen

of the United Kingdom, crashed his car in France,

and helped fellow Americans

in the wake of a wartime attack.

- He was exposed from a very early age

to a really incredible array of international experiences,

quite untypical for people in his generation

in this country.

- Jack had experienced firsthand

what it meant to be involved

in high-level political, cultural,

and military situations and began to break away

from his father's stifling political beliefs.

His whirlwind tour of Europe

laid the foundations of a new worldview

that would evolve for years to come.

- I think it was just the self-confidence

that Jack got from traveling abroad,

from being on his own, from being encouraged

through all of those early meals

led by Joe and Rose to think for himself,

that he eventually did think for himself,

and from his travels, came to different conclusions

than Joe came to, that America needed to play

a prominent role on the world stage

if freedom were to prevail.

♪ ♪

Using his experiences in Europe as a guide,

Jack began work on his thesis, just meeting his deadline.

He examined why England was so unprepared

for World War II, and titled his final project,

"Appeasement at Munich."

Jack later expanded his thesis into a book,

called "Why England Slept,"

an ode to Winston Churchill's book,

"While England Slept."

"Why England Slept" quickly sold 80,000 copies,

bringing in some $40,000 in revenue.

He donated his British earnings

to the English city of Plymouth,

which had recently been bombed

by Hitler's powerful air force.

With his American earnings, he bought a new convertible.

In June 1940, Jack graduated from Harvard.

It was the end of an important chapter

in his life and the beginning

of a new equally important chapter.

♪ ♪

Next on "Kennedy"...

- 16 months after Pearl Harbor,

the United States was locked in a fierce Naval campaign

against Japanese forces.

- Jack was a man who wanted to be at the center of action.

- Kennedy takes command of "PT-109".

This is a very dangerous place to be.

These are Japanese-held waters.

The Japanese destroyer--

- She is speeding directly towards "PT-109."

♪ ♪