ONE CHARISMATIC ORATOR TO ANOTHER: How JFK secretly ADMIRED Hitler: Explosive book reveals former President’s praise for the Nazis as he travelled through Germany before Second World War. A lot of influential Americans of the political class admired Hitler at some point.

Related: Cornelius Vanderbilt IV meets Hitler:

Vanderbilt toured Europe with two French cameramen, and managed to interview the day’s notorious newsmakers, including Benito Mussolini and Josef Stalin. But the plutocrat-cum-journalist set his sights on a man even more dangerous. When he had a chance to sit down with the former Crown Prince of Germany, in Berlin, he asked, “Strange, isn’t it, that you Hohenzollerns are so much easier to see than Hitler?”

On March 5, 1933, the day elections gave the Nazis a parliamentary plurality, a triumphant Adolf Hitler addressed a hysterical crowd at the Sports Palace in Berlin. From the wings of the stage, Vanderbilt managed a brief audience with the new Reich Chancellor. According to Vanderbilt’s account, he introduced himself, in German, and then Hitler, with a motion to the throngs that awaited, began speaking: “Tell the Americans that life moves forward, always forward, irrevocably forward. Tell them that Adolf Hitler is the man of the hour, not because he has been appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg but because no one else could have been appointed Chancellor instead. Tell them that he was sent by the Almighty to a nation that had been threatened with disintegration and loss of honor for fifteen long years.” Vanderbilt, an all-American blue blood, risked a final question. He shouted, “And what about the Jews, Your Excellency?” Hitler brushed it off—“My people are waiting for me!”—and pointed Vanderbilt toward Dr. Ernst Hanfstaengl, his Harvard-educated (and Anglo-acclimated) foreign press chief. “He will tell you about the Jews and all the other things that seem to bother America.” Hanfstaengl proved mostly interested in Vanderbilt’s money.

The old-money Vanderbilt seems to have been more discerning about Hitler than the new-money Kennedy. Tragedy that he didn’t shoot him.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Gilbert emails:

Hi Glenn – I laughed out loud at this: “pity he didn’t shoot him”.

My German-speaking grand-dad was the AP reporter based in London who was sent to cover Hitler’s election. He met him twice. I never knew this (neither did my mother – his own daughter) until I asked him what his biggest regret in life was. He told his story then reached out his hands and said, “my biggest regret was not strangling that man when I had the chance….” I’d never seen my no-drama Grand-dad so animated. He died two years later. His best friend was the AP photographer sent with him to the event. Afterwards they took 2 weeks and toured the continent. We found those sepia photographs in my Granddad’s things after he passed…pictures of pre-ww2 Europe, pre-destruction Germany and then right there: my granddad standing next to the most notorious man of the 20th century. It was bone chilling.

Some people just need killin’, as the Scots-Irish used to say. Okay, still do.