Hitler, JFK said "He had in him the stuff of which legends are made,"

John F. Kennedy’s little-known diary has put a focus on his view of Adolf Hitler.

The 61-page diary, which historians believe is the only one Kennedy ever kept, comes from his days as a Hearst newspaper reporter shortly after World War II. Fresh off his time in the Navy, then-28-year-old Kennedy headed to Europe, where he traveled with English Prime Minister Winston Churchill and then to the Potsdam Conference in Germany with Navy Secretary James Forrestal.

“You can easily understand how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived,” Kennedy wrote in his diary in 1945.

“He had boundless ambition for his country which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him,” he added. “He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.”

Kennedy made his notes about Hitler after visiting what had been the dictator’s mountaintop retreat, just months after Germany surrendered to the Allied Forces. Years later, Kennedy would address crowds in Berlin as U.S. President.