We’ve all heard the rumors of John F. Kennedy’s illicit affair with Marilyn Monroe,
but lesser known is the presidential Casanova’s relationship with a suspected
Nazi spy. Today on Nutty History, we’re sharing all the juicy deets on JFK’s ex,
Inga Arvad, who rubbed elbows with Hitler and prompted a secret FBI
investigation into the future president. Wave hello to the FBI agents watching us!
In 1942, Inga Arvad penned another love letter to her dearest Jack,
writing “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.” Man, you don’t
find romance like that on Tinder. The letter’s recipient, Jack, was formally known as John,
and he’d go on to become the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy Jr. Inga Arvad,
the Danish beauty queen who wrote to him, had a way with words, which is probably why she turned
to a career in journalism after her acting career didn’t take off. And it was this line
of work that led to her connection with another famous name of the time - Adolf Hitler. While
working as a freelance reporter, Inga managed to scoop coverage of the wedding of Hermann Göring,
a high up member of the Nazi political party. From there, she scored an invite to a party by Hitler.
Adolf Hitler was apparently quite captivated by Inga Binga, granting her two to three interviews
and describing her as the “perfect Nordic beauty.” The two enjoyed a lunch outing together,
and he invited Arvad as his guest to his private box at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Arvad’s photographed relationship with one of the most notorious mass-murderers of all time
would become a permanent stain on her reputation, but at the time,
Hitler wasn’t yet the Hitler we know and loathe today. In a profile of the dictator, she writes,
“You immediately like him...He seems lonely. The eyes, showing a kind heart, stare right at you.
They sparkle with force.” Sure, kind-hearted might not be the first word to jump to mind to
describe Hitler, but she did pick up on the same charisma that helped him take over the country.
By some reports, Inga Arvad was later asked to be a spy for the Nazi party, got spooked,
and headed to America. But others believed she’d accepted the job. Whatever the real reason, Inga,
who was married at the time to a Hungarian film director, Paul Fejos, immigrated to the
United States in 1940, using her interviews with Hitler as her way in for the American papers.
She eventually moved to Washington D.C., where she began working for the Washington Times-Herald and
was eventually introduced to John F. Kennedy, reportedly by his younger sister Kathleen. In
November of 1941, the married Inga Arvad began a romantic affair with JFK Jr., who was then
in his early 20’s, working as an ensign for U.S. Naval Intelligence. The duo exchanged lengthy love
letters and held trysts in hotel rooms. But it wasn’t just a casual situationship. It’s thought
that the young Kennedy hoped to marry Inga, as there was talk of her converting to Catholicism
and having her two prior marriages annulled. But the Kennedys, and the FBI, had other ideas.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover heard about the romance between JFK and Inga Arvad and thought
he smelled something fishy. Although John Kennedy was a lowly ranking Naval officer at this point,
his family was already on the political radar. JFK’s father,
Joseph Kennedy Sr., was the former United States ambassador to the United Kingdom.
There was also suspicion that Joe Kennedy had hit the big bucks working in the bootlegging business
back in the ‘20s. When Hoover discovered a Kennedy son, in the military, was dating a journalist
known to have a past relationship with Hitler, he suspected a spy was in their midst. To top it off,
Inga’s husband was also known to associate with Axel Wenner-Gren, a prominent financier of the
Nazi party. Hoover feared that Arvad’s beauty and charm were a honey-trap, and that she was a Mata
Hari esque spy who was gaining wartime information from Kennedy and reporting back to the Nazis. The
FBI director put agents on the case to suss out Inga, placing wire-taps in their hotel rooms
and recording their telephone conversations, at times hearing a little more intimacy than
they probably cared for. The pair often seemed aware that someone was listening, making remarks
about it during their conversations. Despite the 1,200 page report on Inga, the FBI couldn’t find
any evidence that she was actually a Nazi spy. But maybe she was just a really good Nazi spy.
The Feds weren’t the only ones who took issue with the star-crossed lovers. Kathleen Kennedy,
despite her introduction, later discovered Inga’s pics with Hitler, and these somehow ended up in
the hands of Inga’s publisher. As the relationship seemed to become more serious, Joseph Kennedy also
disapproved, not wanting Arvad’s Nazi affiliation to scandalize the Kennedy family name. Oh Joe,
small potatoes compared to the scandals yet to come. Meanwhile, the Navy was also concerned
about the relationship. Yet they couldn’t just oust someone with such an important father.
After some combination of meddling from the FBI, the Kennedy family, and the Navy,
Kennedy was transferred to a desk job in Charleston, South Carolina.
The transfer didn’t extinguish the flame, though. Inga Arvad visited JFK on several occasions,
staying at the Fort Sumter hotel while knowingly being followed around town by an not-so-undercover
agent. The two finally broke off the relationship in 1942, most likely due to the scrutiny and
pressure from outside forces. As Arvad wrote to JFK, “You have two backbones...Your own and your
father’s.” It looks like his father’s won this one. It seems Inga Arvad just had a thing for men
in high places, as she later became engaged to Robert Boothby, a British member of parliament.
After the British press got a hold of the Hitler connection, though, Inga broke off the engagement,
not wanting to hurt Robert’s chances of re-election. Decades before social media,
Inga Arvad learned the hard way that a picture can be worth a thousand words. Today, most historians
think that Inga Arvad was innocent, meaning her life-long flack was probably undeserved. In a
letter to Kennedy, she describes a hypothetical scenario of Hitler walking through her door
and stabbing him with a kitchen knife. That seems to make her feelings on him pretty clear cut,
but perhaps it was all part of a greater ruse. Let us know in the comments what you think about
this wire-tapped Romeo and Juliet, along with what other nutty history you’d like to hear about next.