JFK’s Secret Love Affair With a Suspected Nazi Spy
She was also Hitler’s special guest at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
Most of us are familiar with JFK’s alleged and illicit love affair with famous American actress and model Marilyn Monroe. On May 19th, 1962, during a fundraiser and early birthday celebration for President John Kennedy Sr. (D-Massachusetts) Marilyn took to the Madison Square Garden stage in a glamorous outfit to sing him happy birthday, sparking the rumors.
However, lesser known is the famous president’s entanglement with a suspected Nazi spy, Inga Arvad, who had known ties to Hitler and prompted the FBI to launch a secret investigation into the future president.
She wrote love letters to JFK
In 1942, Inga Arvad wrote a letter to her lover, Jack, that said, “Remember to save this letter for defense against Inga-Binga in the Supreme Court of the U.S. I will be seeing you — here or there or somewhere in the world, and it will be the best, or rather second best moment in a lifetime. The best was when I met you.” Here, “Inga-Binga” was Inga Arvad, and the recipient “Jack” was the nickname for the man who would go on to become the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy.
At that time, the U.S. had just entered into war with Japan and Germany after the infamous Pearl Harbor attack in December of 1941. Jack was in command of a patrol torpedo boat named PT-109. He had enlisted for the Navy early on, but fate had greater things in store for him.
His father, Joseph Kennedy Senior, was an influential political figure in Washington. Coming from a family deep-rooted in politics, Jack planned to enter politics himself and perhaps even run for president. And as we all know today, he would become one of the most celebrated presidents in U.S. history.
Arvad was a failed actress turned journalist
A decade before the letter was written, Inga Arvad represented Denmark in the Miss World competition. She was a Danish beauty who had worked in some minor European films.
In 1935, she married Hungarian film director Paul Fejos. He had cast her as the lead in a movie that flopped. As is evident by her letters, Arvad had a way with words, which is probably why she then segued into a career as a journalist.
The list of women JFK had been involved (or at least allegedly involved) with, both before and during his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier, was quite long. From Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, and Mimi Alford to Judith Exner, Marlene Dietrich, and more, the president had no shortage of illicit lovers. However, none of them captured the attention and interest of the FBI quite like Inga Arvad.
You see, there was one big problem with Arvad — she had ties to another man from her past. You’d think the past is the past and that former lovers aren’t really a cause for concern, and you’d be right most of the time. However, there could be exceptions, especially if that man from her past was none other than Adolf Hitler himself.
Hitler invited her to his private box at the Summer Olympics
When working as a freelance reporter, Arvad covered the wedding of Herman Göring, the commander of Germany’s air force and Hitler’s second-in-command.
Through Göring, she scored an invite to a party by Hitler. Hitler was immediately struck by her charm and described her as the “perfect Nordic beauty.” He granted her three interviews, took her out for lunch, and was even photographed laughing with her.
“You immediately like him,” Arvad wrote about Hitler, “He seems lonely. The eyes, showing a kind heart, stare right at you. They sparkle with force.”
It was around this time when Hitler invited her as a guest to his private box at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. She was photographed standing alongside him, perhaps something that would serve as a stain on her reputation later.
However, back then, Hitler hadn’t revealed the extent of his depravity quite like he would in WWII. It was this photograph that would later attract the attention of U.S. intelligence and fuel rumors that she was working as a spy for the Nazis.
She had an affair with JFK when he was in his early twenties
According to some reports, Arvad was later asked to be a spy for the Nazis, which scared her off, and she immigrated to America in 1940. Others believe she accepted the position.
Regardless of what really happened, Arvad, now in the US, found her way to the American papers through her interviews with Hitler. Eventually, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she began to work for the Washington-Times Herald. Here, she met JFK’s little sister, Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, through which she was eventually introduced to JFK (or Jack as she called him).
In November of 1941, still married to Paul Fejos, Arvad began a romantic affair with JFK, who we’ll call Jack for now. At the time, Jack was in his early 20s and working as an ensign for U.S. Naval Intelligence. The two would exchange love letters and secretly meet up in hotel rooms. However, this was far from a casual fling; Jack hoped to marry Inga amidst rumors that he had taken preliminary measures to convert her to Catholicism and have her previous two marriages annulled.
The FBI Director was suspicious of Arvad
Soon after the affair began, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover became aware of JFK’s romance with Inga Arvad. Hoover had it in for the Kennedy family since as far back as the 1920s when he heard rumors about Joseph Kennedy making money on the side by selling illicit alcohol.
When he realized this suspected former bootlegger’s son was having an affair with a Danish journalist who had known ties to Hitler, he suspected her of being a Nazi spy and put his agents on the case. To make matters worse, Inga’s now former husband was a known associate of Axel Wenner-Gren, rumored to be a prominent financier of the Nazi Party.
Besides all of these suspicious connections, one of the biggest sources behind the consistent claims that Inga Arvad was a potential Nazi spy was none other than Jack’s younger sister Kathleen Kennedy herself. A journalist and colleague of Inga at the Washington Times Herald, Kathleen began looking into Inga’s past when she became involved with Jack.
It didn’t take her long to find photos of Arvad with Hitler at the Berlin Olympics from 1936. These pictures then found their way to the publisher of the Times-Herald, Eleanor Patterson. Patterson said that Arvad could not work for the newspaper until any suspicions of her ties to the Nazis were cleared. She even recommended that Arvad accompany her assistant editor, Frank Waldrop, to the FBI headquarters to make an official statement.
The FBI couldn’t prove that she was a Nazi agent
The FBI was interested in more than just a statement from Arvad. Ever since she arrived in Washington, she had very quickly made friends in high places. Hoover suspected that her whole affair with Jack was a classic honey trap where she was gathering wartime information from Kennedy and reporting back to the Nazis.
Hoover had wiretaps placed in their hotel rooms, and their telephone conversations were recorded. In these conversations, the FBI agents were probably exposed to a little more intimacy than they cared for. The pair often remarked about how someone might be listening in on their conversations, which indicated that they were not completely oblivious about the situation.
On January 17, 1942, F.B.I. Assistant Director Milton Ladd reported to Director Hoover that they had been unable to gather anything concrete to support the claims that Inga Arvad was a Nazi spy. They had prepared a 1200-page report on Arvad, yet nothing stood out or signaled to the Americans that there was a Nazi sympathizer or agent in their midst.
The Kennedys also disapproved of the relationship
As Jack and Inga’s relationship got more serious, Kathleen wasn’t the only Kennedy who disapproved of it. Jack’s father, Joe Kennedy, also realized that Inga’s ties to Adolf Hitler would likely scandalize the Kennedy family name.
Pretty soon, Jack’s superiors in the Navy also began to fear that Arvad was looking to steal naval secrets. After some meddling from the FBI, the Kennedys, and the Navy, Jack was transferred to a desk job in Charleston, South Carolina, in January of 1942.
The transfer wasn’t the end of their affair, however, as Arvad is known to have visited Jack on several occasions. She stayed at the Fort Summer Hotel where she was joined by Jack during these visits. She was also followed around town by an undercover agent. The pair finally ended their relationship in 1942 due to the intense scrutiny they faced from just about everyone.
Arvad’s entanglement with Jack wasn’t her last relationship with a powerful man, though. Towards the end of WWII, Arvad became engaged to British Parliament member Robert Boothby. However, this time around, when the British press discovered her connection to Adolf Hitler, she broke off the engagement as she believed it might hurt Boothby’s political career. After Boothby, she married actor Tim McCoy, bearing him two children and living out the rest of her life with him until she died of cancer in 1973.
Today, most historians believe Arvad was innocent and that all the scrutiny she faced was undeserved. But given the context and timing of her affair with JFK, U.S. counterintelligence officials were probably right to have their suspicions. Decades before social media or the internet, Inga Arvad learned the hard way that a picture can be worth a thousand words.
