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In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin Hardcover – Unabridged, May 10, 2011
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Erik Larson has been widely acclaimed as a master of narrative non-fiction, and in his new book, the bestselling author of Devil in the White City turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power.
The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.
Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.
- Print length464 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateMay 10, 2011
- Dimensions6.4 x 1.41 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100307408841
- ISBN-13978-0307408846
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- HITLER’S PURGE WOULD BECOME KNOWN as “The Night of the Long Knives” and in time would be considered one of the most important episodes in his ascent, the first act in the great tragedy of appeasement. Initially, however, its significance was lost. No government recalled its ambassador or filed a protest; the populace did not rise in revulsion.Highlighted by 3,319 Kindle readers
- Throughout that first year in Germany, Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and of the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest.Highlighted by 3,271 Kindle readers
- The Gestapo’s reputation for omniscience and malevolence arose from a confluence of two phenomena: first, a political climate in which merely criticizing the government could get one arrested, and second, the existence of a populace eager not just to step in line and become coordinated but also to use Nazi sensitivities to satisfy individual needs and salve jealousies.Highlighted by 3,088 Kindle readers
- In the end, Dodd proved to be exactly what Roosevelt had wanted, a lone beacon of American freedom and hope in a land of gathering darkness.Highlighted by 2,540 Kindle readers
- “At a time when hundreds of men have been put to death without trial or any sort of evidence of guilt, and when the population literally trembles with fear, animals have rights guaranteed them which men and women cannot think of expecting.”Highlighted by 2,514 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
The Splendid and the Vile | The Devil in the White City | Dead Wake | Thunderstruck | Isaacs’s Storm | Lethal Passage | |
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Review
"Tells a fascinating story brilliantly well."--Financial Times
"Highly compelling...Larson brings Berlin roaring to life in all its glamour and horror...a welcome new chapter in the vast canon of World War II."--Christian Science Monitor
"Terrific."--Los Angeles Times
“A stunning work of history.”--Newsweek
“Larson has meticulously researched the Dodds’ intimate witness to Hitler’s ascendancy and created an edifying narrative of this historical byway that has all the pleasures of a political thriller….a fresh picture of these terrrible events.”--The New York Times Book Review
"Larson has taken a brilliant idea and turned it into a gripping book."--Women's Wear Daily
"Harrowingly suspenseful." Vogue.com
"A gripping, deeply-intimate narrative with a climax that reads like the best political thriller, where we are stunned with each turn of the page."--Louisville Courier Journal
"Electrifying reading...fascinating." Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Larson’s latest chronicle of history has as much excitement as a thriller novel, and it’s all the more thrilling because it’s all true.”--Asbury Park Press
"A superb book...nothing less than masterful."--Toronto Globe and Mail
“Even though we know how it will end — the book's climax, the Night of the Long Knives, being just the beginning, this is a page-turner, full of flesh and blood people and monsters too, whose charms are particularly disturbing.”--Portland Herald
"Larson succeeds brilliantly…offers a fascinating window into the year when the world began its slow slide into war."--Maclean's Magazine
"Erik Larson tackles this outstanding period of history as fully and compellingly as he portrayed the events in his bestseller, THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY. With each page, more horrors are revealed, making it impossible to put down. IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS reads like the true thriller it is."--BookReporter.com
"Larson's strengths as a storytellerhave never been stronger than they are here, and this story is far more important than either "The Devil in the White City" or "Thunderstruck." How the United States dithered as Hitler rose to power is a cautionary tale that bears repeating, and Larson has told it masterfully."--Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Reads like an elegant thriller…utterly compelling… marvelous stuff. An excellent and entertaining book that deserves to be a bestseller, and probably will be.”—The Washington Post
“Larson's scholarship is impressive, but it's his pacing and knack for suspense that elevates the book from the matter-of-fact to the sublime.”--Pittsburgh Review
“A master at writing true tales as riveting as fiction.”--People (3 1/2 stars)
"Larson has done it again, expertly weaving together a fresh new narrative from ominous days of the 20th century."--Associated Press
""Mesmerizing...cinematic, improbable yet true."--Philadelphia Inquirer
"[L]ike slipping slowly into a nightmare, with logic perverted and morality upended….It all makes for a powerful, unsettling immediacy."--Bruce Handy, Vanity Fair
“Dazzling….Reads like a suspense novel, replete with colorful characters, both familiar and those previously relegated to the shadows. Like Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories or Victor Klemperer’s Diaries, IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS is an on-the-ground documentary of a society going mad in slow motion."--The Chicago Sun-Times
“[G]ripping, a nightmare narrative of a terrible time. It raises again the question never fully answered about the Nazi era—what evil humans are capable of, and what means are necessary to cage the beast.”--The Seattle Times
"In this mesmerizing portrait of the Nazi capital, Larson plumbs a far more diabolical urban cauldron than in his bestselling The Devil in the White City...a vivid, atmospheric panorama of the Third Reich and its leaders, including murderous Nazi factional infighting, through the accretion of small crimes and petty thuggery."--Publishers Weekly(Starred Review)
Praise for Erik Larson
THUNDERSTRUCK
“A ripping yarn of murder and invention.”—Los Angeles Times
“Larson’s gift for rendering an historical era with vibrant tactility and filling it with surprising personalities makes Thunderstruck an irresistible tale.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Gripping….An edge-of-the-seat read.”—People
DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY
“[Larson] relentlessly fuses history and entertainment to give this nonfiction book the dramatic effect of a novel….a dynamic, enveloping book.”
—The New York Times
“A hugely engrossing chronicle of events public and private. Exceedingly well-documented, exhaustive without being excessive, and utterly fascinating.”
—Chicago Tribune
“An irresistible page-turner that reads like the most compelling, sleep-defying fiction.”—Time Out New York
ISAAC’S STORM
“A gripping account…fascinating to its core, and all the more compelling for being true.”—New York Times Book Review
“Superb...Larson has made the Great Hurricane live again.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Gripping….The Jaws of hurricane yarns.”—Newsday
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Means of Escape
The telephone call that forever changed the lives of the Dodd family of Chicago came at noon on Thursday, June 8, 1933, as William E. Dodd sat at his desk at the University of Chicago.
Now chairman of the history department, Dodd had been a professor at the university since 1909, recognized nationally for his work on the American South and for a biography of Woodrow Wilson. He was sixty-four years old, trim, five feet eight inches tall, with blue-gray eyes and light brown hair. Though his face at rest tended to impart severity, he in fact had a sense of humor that was lively, dry, and easily ignited. He had a wife, Martha, known universally as Mattie, and two children, both in their twenties. His daughter, also named Martha, was twenty-four years old; his son, William Jr.--Bill--was twenty-eight.
By all counts they were a happy family and a close one. Not rich by any means, but well off, despite the economic depression then gripping the nation. They lived in a large house at 5757 Blackstone Avenue in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, a few blocks from the university. Dodd also owned--and every summer tended--a small farm in Round Hill, Virginia, which, according to a county survey, had 386.6 acres, “more or less,” and was where Dodd, a Jeffersonian democrat of the first stripe, felt most at home, moving among his twenty-one Guernsey heifers; his four geldings, Bill, Coley, Mandy, and Prince; his Farmall tractor; and his horse-drawn Syracuse plows. He made coffee in a Maxwell House can atop his old wood-burning stove. His wife was not as fond of the place and was more than happy to let him spend time there by himself while the rest of the family remained behind in Chicago. Dodd named the farm Stoneleigh, because of all the rocks strewn across its expanse, and spoke of it the way other men spoke of first loves. “The fruit is so beautiful, almost flawless, red and luscious, as we look at it, the trees still bending under the weight of their burden,” he wrote one fine night during the apple harvest. “It all appeals to me.”
Though generally not given to cliche, Dodd described the telephone call as a “sudden surprise out of a clear sky.” This was, however, something of an exaggeration. Over the preceding several months there had been talk among his friends that one day a call like this might come. It was the precise nature of the call that startled Dodd, and troubled him.
For some time now, Dodd had been unhappy in his position at the university. Though he loved teaching history, he loved writing it more, and for years he had been working on what he expected would be the definitive recounting of early southern history, a four-volume series that he called The Rise and Fall of the Old South, but time and again he had found his progress stymied by the routine demands of his job. Only the first volume was near completion, and he was of an age when he feared he would be buried alongside the unfinished remainder. He had negotiated a reduced schedule with his department, but as is so often the case with such artificial ententes, it did not work in the manner he had hoped. Staff departures and financial pressures within the university associated with the Depression had left him working just as hard as ever, dealing with university officials, preparing lectures, and confronting the engulfing needs of graduate students. In a letter to the university’s Department of Buildings and Grounds dated October 31, 1932, he pleaded for heat in his office on Sundays so he could have at least one day to devote to uninterrupted writing. To a friend he described his position as “embarrassing.”
Adding to his dissatisfaction was his belief that he should have been farther along in his career than he was. What had kept him from advancing at a faster clip, he complained to his wife, was the fact that he had not grown up in a life of privilege and instead had been compelled to work hard for all that he achieved, unlike others in his field who had advanced more quickly. And indeed, he had reached his position in life the hard way. Born on October 21, 1869, at his parents’ home in the tiny hamlet of Clayton, North Carolina, Dodd entered the bottom stratum of white southern society, which still adhered to the class conventions of the antebellum era. His father, John D. Dodd, was a barely literate subsistence farmer; his mother, Evelyn Creech, was descended from a more exalted strain of North Carolina stock and deemed to have married down. The couple raised cotton on land given to them by Evelyn’s father and barely made a living. In the years after the Civil War, as cotton production soared and prices sank, the family fell steadily into debt to the town’s general store, owned by a relative of Evelyn’s who was one of Clayton’s three men of privilege--“hard men,” Dodd called them: “. . . traders and aristocratic masters of their dependents!”
Dodd was one of seven children and spent his youth working the family’s land. Although he saw the work as honorable, he did not wish to spend the rest of his life farming and recognized that the only way a man of his lowly background could avoid this fate was by gaining an education. He fought his way upward, at times focusing so closely on his studies that other students dubbed him “Monk Dodd.” In February 1891 he entered Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (later Virginia Tech). There too he was a sober, focused presence. Other students indulged in such pranks as painting the college president’s cow and staging fake duels so as to convince freshmen that they had killed their adversaries. Dodd only studied. He got his bachelor’s degree in 1895 and his master’s in 1897, when he was twenty-six years old.
At the encouragement of a revered faculty member, and with a loan from a kindly great-uncle, Dodd in June 1897 set off for Germany and the University of Leipzig to begin studies toward a doctorate. He brought his bicycle. He chose to focus his dissertation on Thomas Jefferson, despite the obvious difficulty of acquiring eighteenth-century American documents in Germany. Dodd did his necessary classwork and found archives of relevant materials in London and Berlin. He also did a lot of traveling, often on his bicycle, and time after time was struck by the atmosphere of militarism that pervaded Germany. At one point one of his favorite professors led a discussion on the question “How helpless would the United States be if invaded by a great German army?” All this Prussian bellicosity made Dodd uneasy. He wrote, “There was too much war spirit everywhere.”
Dodd returned to North Carolina in late autumn 1899 and after months of search at last got an instructor’s position at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. He also renewed a friendship with a young woman named Martha Johns, the daughter of a well-off landowner who lived near Dodd’s hometown. The friendship blossomed into romance and on Christmas Eve 1901, they married.
At Randolph-Macon, Dodd promptly got himself into hot water. In 1902 he published an article in the Nation in which he attacked a successful campaign by the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans to have Virginia ban a history textbook that the veterans deemed an affront to southern honor. Dodd charged that the veterans believed the only valid histories were those that held that the South “was altogether right in seceding from the Union.”
The backlash was immediate. An attorney prominent in the veterans’ movement launched a drive to have Dodd fired from Randolph-Macon. The school gave Dodd its full support. A year later he attacked the veterans again, this time in a speech before the American Historical Society in which he decried their efforts to “put out of the schools any and all books which do not come up to their standard of local patriotism.” He railed that “to remain silent is out of the question for a strong and honest man.”
Dodd’s stature as a historian grew, and so too did his family. His son was born in 1905, his daughter in 1908. Recognizing that an increase in salary would come in handy and that pressure from his southern foes was unlikely to abate, Dodd put his name in the running for an opening at the University of Chicago. He got the job, and in the frigid January of 1909, when he was thirty-nine years old, he and his family made their way to Chicago, where he would remain for the next quarter century. In October 1912, feeling the pull of his heritage and a need to establish his own credibility as a true Jeffersonian democrat, he bought his farm. The grueling work that had so worn on him during his boyhood now became for him both a soul-saving diversion and a romantic harking back to America’s past.
Dodd also discovered in himself an abiding interest in the political life, triggered in earnest when in August 1916 he found himself in the Oval Office of the White House for a meeting with President Woodrow Wilson. The encounter, according to one biographer, “profoundly altered his life.”
Dodd had grown deeply uneasy about signs that America was sliding toward intervention in the Great War then being fought in Europe. His experience in Leipzig had left him no doubt that Germany alone was responsible for starting the war, in satisfaction of the yearnings of Germany’s industrialists and aristocrats, the Junkers, whom he likened to the southern aristocracy before the Civil War. Now he saw the emergence of a similar hubris on the part of America’s own industrial and military elites. When an army general tried to include the University of Chicago in a national campaign to ready the nation for war, Dodd bridled and took his complaint directly to the commander in chief.
Dodd wanted only ten minutes of Wilson’s time but got far more and found himself as thoroughly charmed as if he’d been the recipient of a potion in a fairy tale. He came to believe that Wilson was correct in advocating U.S. intervention in the war. For Dodd, Wilson became the modern embodiment of Jefferson. Over the next seven years, he and Wilson became friends; Dodd wrote Wilson’s biography. Upon Wilson’s death on February 3, 1924, Dodd fell into deep mourning.
At length he came to see Franklin Roosevelt as Wilson’s equal and threw himself behind Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign, speaking and writing on his behalf whenever an opportunity arose. If he had hopes of becoming a member of Roosevelt’s inner circle, however, Dodd soon found himself disappointed, consigned to the increasingly dissatisfying duties of an academic chair.
Now he was sixty-four years old, and the way he would leave his mark on the world would be with his history of the old South, which also happened to be the one thing that every force in the universe seemed aligned to defeat, including the university’s policy of not heating buildings on Sundays.
More and more he considered leaving the university for some position that would allow him time to write, “before it is too late.” The idea occurred to him that an ideal job might be an undemanding post within the State Department, perhaps as an ambassador in Brussels or The Hague. He believed that he was sufficiently prominent to be considered for such a position, though he tended to see himself as far more influential in national affairs than in fact he was. He had written often to advise Roosevelt on economic and political matters, both before and immediately after Roosevelt’s victory. It surely galled Dodd that soon after the election he received from the White House a form letter stating that while the president wanted every letter to his office answered promptly, he could not himself reply to all of them in a timely manner and thus had asked his secretary to do so in his stead.
Dodd did, however, have several good friends who were close to Roosevelt, including the new secretary of commerce, Daniel Roper. Dodd’s son and daughter were to Roper like nephew and niece, sufficiently close that Dodd had no compunction about dispatching his son as intermediary to ask Roper whether the new administration might see fit to appoint Dodd as minister to Belgium or the Netherlands. “These are posts where the government must have somebody, yet the work is not heavy,” Dodd told his son. He confided that he was motivated mainly by his need to complete his Old South. “I am not desirous of any appointment from Roosevelt but I am very anxious not to be defeated in a life-long purpose.”
In short, Dodd wanted a sinecure, a job that was not too demanding yet that would provide stature and a living wage and, most important, leave him plenty of time to write--this despite his recognition that serving as a diplomat was not something to which his character was well suited. “As to high diplomacy (London, Paris, Berlin) I am not the kind,” he wrote to his wife early in 1933. “I am distressed that this is so on your account. I simply am not the sly, two-faced type so necessary to ‘lie abroad for the country.’ If I were, I might go to Berlin and bend the knee to Hitler--and relearn German.” But, he added, “why waste time writing about such a subject? Who would care to live in Berlin the next four years?”
Whether because of his son’s conversation with Roper or the play of other forces, Dodd’s name soon was in the wind. On March 15, 1933, during a sojourn at his Virginia farm, he went to Washington to meet with Roosevelt’s new secretary of state, Cordell Hull, whom he had met on a number of previous occasions. Hull was tall and silver haired, with a cleft chin and strong jaw. Outwardly, he seemed the physical embodiment of all that a secretary of state should be, but those who knew him better understood that when angered he had a most unstatesmanlike penchant for releasing torrents of profanity and that he suffered a speech impediment that turned his r’s to w’s in the manner of the cartoon character Elmer Fudd--a trait that Roosevelt now and then made fun of privately, as when he once spoke of Hull’s “twade tweaties.” Hull, as usual, had four or five red pencils in his shirt pocket, his favored tools of state. He raised the possibility of Dodd receiving an appointment to Holland or Belgium, exactly what Dodd had hoped for. But now, suddenly forced to imagine the day-to-day reality of what such a life would entail, Dodd balked. “After considerable study of the situation,” he wrote in his little pocket diary, “I told Hull I could not take such a position.”
But his name remained in circulation.
And now, on that Thursday in June, his telephone began to ring. As he held the receiver to his ear, he heard a voice he recognized immediately.
Product details
- Publisher : Crown; First Edition (May 10, 2011)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 464 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0307408841
- ISBN-13 : 978-0307408846
- Item Weight : 1.6 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.4 x 1.41 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #18,346 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #18 in German History (Books)
- #43 in Jewish Holocaust History
- #106 in Political Leader Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Erik Larson is the author of six previous national bestsellers—The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm—which have collectively sold more than twelve million copies. His books have been published in nearly forty countries.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book thought-provoking and entertaining. They appreciate the well-researched history and time period depicted in a humanistic way. The pacing is described as good, with the writing style being clear and easy to understand. Readers praise the skillful research and presentation of daily life in Germany. They also mention that the characters are interesting and well-developed.
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Customers find the book interesting and worth reading. They describe it as an insightful and enriching read. Readers praise the author's work as fair and accurate.
"...She found them "extremely pleasant, handsome, courteous and uninteresting." What follows is a rather detailed list of her affairs...." Read more
"...among the reviewers of this book, but I found it to be extremely interesting, well researched, and an intriguing story that has been lost, somehow,..." Read more
"...The book was so good, I would have read another just like it that went from 1936 to 1938, and then `39. It's that good and it reads that fast." Read more
"...But she was a very unusual woman and it's worth reading the book just to get to know her. This is her obituary from:..." Read more
Customers find the book provides a good sense of history in a humanistic way. They say it's an interesting story and well-researched. The writing style and novelistic detail bring the circumstances to life for them. Readers describe the book as a readable domestic history about a man and his family's lives.
"...The family's favorite room was the library, with a great old fire-place and stained glass windows set high in one wall...." Read more
"...I found it to be extremely interesting, well researched, and an intriguing story that has been lost, somehow, in the glut of other stories about the..." Read more
"...and spent more time on is that this is one of the few books on the topic if Nazi Germany that made me forget about my quest...." Read more
"...There are compelling lessons to this tale. First and foremost is Larson's ability to capture the heady spirit of the times...." Read more
Customers find the book well-written and engaging. They appreciate the clear account of daily life in Germany and the thorough research by the author. The chronology is a key part of the story and a timely tale about the perils of unchecked power.
"...The Dodds would gain a fine residence, and a street presence sufficiently impressive to communicate America's power and prestige...." Read more
"...Larson did a tremendous job in writing, no matter how honed your vocabulary is, this book will make you look up a word here and there and I love..." Read more
"...Erik Larson is a talented writer and thorough researcher...." Read more
"...of research that allows him to write a true story in a way that reads like a novel...." Read more
Customers find the book well-researched and informative. They appreciate the skilled research, detailed sources, and thorough documentation. Readers also mention that the reporting is excellent.
"...of this book, but I found it to be extremely interesting, well researched, and an intriguing story that has been lost, somehow, in the glut of other..." Read more
"...on a crusade so willingly, this is it, a bible of answers...." Read more
"...Erik Larson is a talented writer and thorough researcher...." Read more
"...He does a tremendous amount of research that allows him to write a true story in a way that reads like a novel...." Read more
Customers find the book compelling and vivid. They appreciate the author's fair, accurate, and human portrayal of daily life in Berlin. The narrative is richly detailed and artful, with arresting images. Overall, readers describe the book as a captivating and original contribution.
"...-Semitic, selfish, vain, and annoying, Martha was also fascinating, artistic, clever, and a keen observer...." Read more
"...But it's a beautiful scene. Dodd is a tragic figure in the end. But he really could have done nothing differently...." Read more
"...Even more fascinating was Dodd's pretty, bright and charming daughter, Martha...." Read more
"...He managed to live in a gorgeous mansion that was owned by a Jewish family, paying only $150.00 a month to live there, not knowing they would come..." Read more
Customers enjoy the character development in the book. They find the characters interesting, remarkable, and described in human terms. The history is vivid with character dissection, making the story fascinating and captivating.
"...that combines some of the best aspects of scholarly research with human interest and narrative robustness...." Read more
"...the stories will enjoy this book because it covers the personalities of many in the German leadership and some of the issues involved with diplomacy...." Read more
"...Only knock is that there are so many lesser characters that you start to lose track of who is who when they pop up randomly each time." Read more
"...Martha was a fascinating character who socially mingled throughout Berlin's salon society and was personally involved..." Read more
Customers have different views on the book's engrossment. Some find it compelling and interesting, saying it keeps their interest throughout. Others feel the material is not as engaging as expected, with details of dinner parties being uninteresting and redundant.
"...of his, but I find this one to be even more well-documented and compelling because of its snapshot of an intersection of U.S. and German history in..." Read more
"...Much like Dodd's contemporaries, I found him to be boring, rigid and uninteresting...." Read more
"...It made me care about the Dodds, how they first sympathized with Germans and thought they did, in fact, "have a Jewish problem"...." Read more
"...To me, this somehow diminished the importance of the events...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the book's pacing. Some find it fast-paced and engaging, reading fairly quickly. Others feel the book drags a little with excessive romantic descriptions and slows down at times.
"...flaw is that after the Night of Long Knives, the book goes into rapid denouement mode, and sort of fizzles out...." Read more
"...It's that good and it reads that fast." Read more
"...Yes some sections drag, not much happens of earth shattering news, but that is how Larsen shows history being made...." Read more
"...consider this book at great 'bus book' because I could read chapters in short spurts of time while riding the bus to work...." Read more
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Nazi Germany - a Terrifying Garden of Beasts
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2012In the Garden of Beasts
Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
by ERIK LARSON
1. Introduction. This book is divided into ten parts, with a total of fifty five chapters. The writer of this review has a strong need for both an Index and a Table of Contents. Since the author of this book does not include the chapters in his Table of Contents, an expanded version is produced below. Note that Das Vorspiel is defined by such words as: prelude; prologue; preliminary match; foreplay and audition. Note also that the photo credits refer to the pictures on the book title pages that are part of the title page for each PART.
Opening Quotation xi
Das Vorspiel xiii
1933
The Man Behind the Curtain 3
PART I: Into the Wood
Chapter 1: Means of Escape 9
Chapter 2: That Vacancy in Berlin 16
Chapter 3: The Choice 23
Chapter 4: Dread 27
Chapter 5: First Night 40
PART II: House Hunting in the Third Reich
Chapter 6: Seduction 53
Chapter 7: Hidden Conflict 61
Chapter 8: Meeting Putzi 70
Chapter 9: Death is Death 74
Chapter 10: Tiergartenstrasse 27a 83
PART III: Lucifer in the Garden
Chapter 11: Strange Beings 93
Chapter 12: Brutus 103
Chapter 13: My Dark Secret 113
Chapter 14: The Death of Boris 120
Chapter 15: The "Jewish Problem" 128
Chapter 16: A Secret Request 132
Chapter 17: Lucifer's Run 138
Chapter 18: Warning from a Friend 145
Chapter 19: Matchmaker 154
PART IV: How the Skeleton Aches
Chapter 20: The Führeur's Kiss 157
Chapter 21: The Trouble with George 163
Chapter 22: The witness Wore Jackboots 169
Chapter 23: Boris Dies Again 174
Chapter 24: Getting Out the Vote 175
Chapter 25: The Secret Boris 179
Chapter 26: The Little Press Ball 184
Chapter 27: O `Tannenbaum 194
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PART V: Disquiet
Chapter 28: January 1934 209
Chapter 29: Sniping 216
Chapter 30: Premonition 218
Chapter 31: Night Terrors 223
Chapter 32: Storm warning 229
Chapter 33: "Memorandum of a Conservation with Hitler: 231
Chapter 34: Diels, Afraid 242
Chapter 35: Confronting the Club 245
Chapter 36: Saving Diels 249
Chapter 37: Watchers 254
Chapter 38: Humbugged 255
PART VI: Berlin at Dusk
Chapter 39: Dangerous Dining 263
Chapter 40: A Writer's Retreat 268
Chapter 41: Trouble at the Neighbors 277
Chapter 42: Hermann's Toys 278
Chapter 43: A Pygmy Speaks 283
Chapter 44: The Message in the Bathroom 290
Chapter 45: Mrs. Cerruti's Distress 292
Chapter 46: Friday Night 297
PART VII: When everything changed
Chapter 47: "Shoot, Shoot" 304
Chapter 48: Guns in the Park 309
Chapter 49: The Dead 313
Chapter 50: Among the Living 319
Chapter 51: Sympathy's End 323
Chapter 52: Only the Horses 330
Chapter 53: Juliet #2 336
Chapter 54: A Dream of Love 340
Chapter 55: As Darkness Fell 349
EPILOGUE: The queen bird in Exile 359
CODA: "Table Talk" 365
Sources and Acknowledgments 367
Notes 377
Bibliography 423
Photo Credits 435
INDEX 437
End Quotation 449
There are also very interesting maps inside the front and back covers. The back cover map is entitled: "Pharus Plan Berlin." It has a highlighted section for the Tiergarten Area. The front cover map is for this area in 1933. Ten locations are flagged, including 27a Tiergartenstrasse; Soviet, French and British embassies; the U.S. Embassy Chancery, and the U.S. Consulate; and the German Foreign Office, the Reichstag Building and the Gestapo Headquarters.
2. Major Inputs . This is a large book with 60 segments, 55 chapters plus five other components.. Many of these will be reviewed. A picture of the "American Family" is shown on the PART I cover.
Chapter 0. The Man Behind the Curtain. Perhaps the worst exhibition of Nazi brutality against Americans occurred on Thursday, 06/29/1933. An expatriate, a Joseph Schachno, 31 year old physician from New York, came to the consulate, but in terrible condition. The skin had been literally whipped off his body. "From the neck down to his heels he was a mass of raw flesh." George S. Messersmith (GSM)--the America's consul general for Germany since 1930, was visiting the consulate that night and learned his wounds were nine days old. Messersmith ordered him taken to a hospital and issued him a new U.S. passport. He soon fled to Sweden and then to America.
There had been beatings of Americans before, but not as brutal. For GSM this new beating was another indicator that life under Hitler had changed Germany in a fundamental way. He understood it, but was convinced that few others in America did, including the State Department. Messersmith was sure that Hitler was secretly leading Germany to another war of conquest. However, Germany still did not have a U.S. ambassador in residence. The former ambassador had left in March at the end of FDR's inauguration. The new appointee was not expected for another three weeks. GSM did not know him, but he knew that "the new ambassador would be entering a cauldron of brutality, corruption, and zealotry and would need to be a man of forceful character, capable of projecting American interest and power, as power was all that Hitler and his men understood."
However, the new man was said to be most unassuming, and had vowed to live a modest life in Berlin. He was even shipping his beat up old Chevy to Berlin, to "a city where Hitler's men drove about town in giant black touring cars each nearly the size of a city bus."
Chapter 1: Means of Escape. The American Family in this story were the Dodds. William E. Dodd (WED) was a professor of History at the University of Chicago, and a summertime farmer in Virginia. He loved his farm with a passion. His wife, Martha, known to one and all as Mattie, did not enjoy it nearly as much. They had two children: William, Jr. and Martha Dodd (MD), both in their 20s in 1933, when this story began.
While Dodd loved teaching history, the routine demands of his job bothered him. Although he had worked out a reduced schedule with his department, staff departures and pressures coupled with the Depression had left him working as hard as ever. He was also very concerned that he should have been along further in his career, but the above demands left him little time for writing in rather uncomfortable conditions, such as a very cold office.
On 03/15/1933, Dodd went to DC to meet FDR's new Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. They talked of a possible assignment to Holland or Belgium. Suddenly, "forced to imagine the day-to-day reality of what such a life would entail" Dodd backed off. He told Hull he could not accept such a position. "But his name remained in circulation. "And now, on that Thursday in June, his telephone began to ring."
Chapter 2: That Vacancy in Berlin. No one seemed to want this job. FDR offered it to several other and better qualified individuals than Dodd, but they all declined. FDR also had far more important items on his agenda: the depression; serious unemployment; the drought; an unusually hot Washington springtime; an "all consuming fight to pass his National Industrial Recovery Act, a centerpiece of his New Deal," and a congress eager to close down for their summer vacation. On Wednesday, 06/07/1933, FDR met with several close advisors. One of them in attendance was Commerce Secretary Roper. After considerable discussion Roper threw out a fresh name of a longtime friend. "How about William E. Dodd?" FDR reacted that this was not a bad idea and he would consider it.
Now Dodd did not have the usual credentials for such a post. He was not wealthy or politically influential. He was not one of FDR's friends. But he did speak German, and was said to know Germany well. He was also a historian of sober temperament. FDR took Secretary Roper's recommendation seriously. On 06/08/1933, he called Chicago and told Dodd: "I want to know if you will render the government a distinct service. "I want you to go to Germany as an ambassador." He added, "I want an American liberal in Germany as a standing example." Dodd told FDR he needed time. FDR gave him two hours.
The university officials urged him to accept. After an intensive, but brisk discussion with his wife, they agreed he should accept. Dodd called the White House, a half hour late, and informed FDR's secretary he would accept the job. Two days later his appointment was placed before the Senate, and was confirmed the same day. Next, he invited his two grown children to join them in Berlin, promising them the experience of a lifetime.
Chapter 3: The Choice. With the Depression well underway, Dodd's children were lucky to have jobs. Bill was a teacher of history, but far more interested in automobiles. In contrast, Martha was an assistant literary editor at the Chicago Tribune. Sne had fared much better, than her brother, in her work. Martha was her father's great pride, but her life style was of great concern to him. The rest of this chapter is very like Hedy's Folly, when Hedy was between 16 to 19. MD had many flirtations, many engagements, at least one affair and her first marriage in 01/1932. However, they even kept this marriage secret and spent most of the first year apart. She soon began flirting again, and had begun an affair with Carl Sandburg, a longtime friend of her parents. Later her marriage failed, in part, because she couldn't bear the idea of leaving her parents, particularly her father. Hence, when her father invited her to join their trip to Berlin, it was irresistible.
Chapter 4: Dread. On 06/16/1933 Dodd met FDR at the White House. They talked about several issues of importance to the new ambassador. Repayment, Jewish concerns, Dodd's salary and entertainment needs.
He left the White House and headed to the State Department, where he wanted to study the Messersmith reports. They depicted Germany descending from a democratic republic to a brutal dictatorship. Many of the reports were long, as GSM was known as "Forty page George." One of the memos however, suggested that the higher echelons of the Nazi Party were becoming more positive and more co-operative. Very shortly after that memo, another memo on June 26, rescinded it. However Messersmith did not see this. It concluded that Germany was quietly readying itself to become "the most capable instrument for war that ever existed."
His departure to Germany included stops in North Carolina, Virginia, New York and Boston. He met with his father, many friends and many politicians, bankers, bureaucrats, reporters and photographers. Some inputs included that Germany's Jews were at least partly responsible for their own troubles. One input expressed great admiration for Hitler, and advised Dodd to "Let Hitler have his way." Aboard ship the reporters pressed Dodd to pose as if waving good-bye. He did so, but the resulting picture caused a minor outcry as it appeared to capture Dodd in a mid Heil. By now Dodd's misgivings flared and he began to dread leaving his old life in Chicago. His daughter wept.
Chapter 5: First Night. MD continued to cry over the next two days. She was crying--not from a concern on where they were going, she had no idea on what life in Hitler's Germany would be like--for what she was leaving: her friends, her job, the comforts of their house and her affair with Carl Sandburg. As days passed the voyage was grand, with bright days and calm seas. And she got to know FDR's son, who was also aboard. They danced and drank champagne and danced some more. Now Sandburg instructed her to keep notes on everything. Above all he urged her, "find out what this man Hitler is made of, what makes his brain go around, what his bones and blood are made of." While MD had thought of Hitler as "a clown who looked like Charley Chaplin," clearly, Sandberg was far more concerned. Another friend advised MD to avoid writing for newspapers as such work would destroy the concentration she would need for serious writing. He also told her to keep a diary of "what things looked like--the rumors and opinions of people during a political time." Later such a diary would be of great interest to you.
Jewish events and issues occurred on this week long voyage. On the second day Dodd met Rabbi Wise, who he had met three days earlier in NY. They spoke repeatedly about Germany. Dodd also spoke at length about American history. At one point he told the Rabbi that: "one cannot write the whole truth about Jefferson and Washington--people are not ready and must be prepared for it." Wise was disturbed by this statement. He noted that if people must be prepared for the truth about Jefferson and Washington what will Dodd "do about the truth when he learns it about Hitler." As the voyage ended Dodd realized that his role was no longer one of a mere observer and reporter. He believed he might even moderate Hitler's views. The best approach was to be sympathetic and try to understand Germany's perception that it had been wronged by the world.
The Dodds landed at Hamburg on 07/13/1933. Dodd had assumed, erroneously, that arrangements had been made on the "Flying Hamburger" which would make the trip to Berlin in a bit over two hours.
Chapter 10: Tiergartenstrasse 27a. This address is the first location flagged on the front cover map. It's only immediate neighbor is the U. S. Chancery. However, other important locations,are not far off. The matter of an official residence for the U.S. Ambassador had long been an embarrassment. Fire had destroyed one plan near the British and French embassies. Dodd was not unhappy, as he liked the idea of a home outside of the embassy. Hence MD and her mother toured Berlin's grand residential areas. On this walk they discovered such items as:
(1) many parks and gardens, with planters and flowers on every balcony;
(2) on the outskirts, tiny farms, perfect for MD's father;
(3) squads of uniformed young people, marching and singing;
(4) much more threatening formations of Storm Trooper recruits and
(5) "the leaner, better-tailored men of the SS, in night black, accented with red," like some blackbirds.
One area they particularly liked, had a property available. It was owned by a wealthy Jewish banker, an Alfred Panosky (AP). Now there were many Jews--some 16,000 or nine percent of Berlin's Jews--who lived in this area. Although many Jews were being evicted, AP was not one of them. This house was a four story mansion. It was across the street from a park But Dodd learned that AP was leasing only the first three floors. The fourth floor would be occupied by himself and his mother. He really did not need the income from this lease, but since Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, no Jew was safe from persecution. He offered this house specifically to Dodd, with the intention of gaining an increased level of protection. He felt that Storm Troopers would not attack a house shared by the American ambassador.
The Dodds would gain a fine residence, and a street presence sufficiently impressive to communicate America's power and prestige. The interior was sufficiently grand to allow the entertainment of government and diplomatic guests without embarrassment. He wrote to FDR: "We have one of the best residences in Berlin at $150/month--due to the fact that the owner is a wealthy Jew, most willing to let us have it." Dodd loved the quiet, the trees, the garden and the prospect of walking to work each morning. He probably also loved the high steel fence and gates. On 08/05/1933 the Dodd family moved into their new home. Dodd noted later if he had known AP's motives for this lease, he would never have accepted it.
On entering the house, the Dodds walked "first into a large vestibule, flanked on both sides by cloakrooms and then up an elaborate staircase to the main floor. It was here here that the grandness of this house became apparent. At the front there was a ballroom with an oval dance floor and a grand piano. Next was a reception room, then a vast dining room, with walls covered with a red tapestry. Though the house struck Dodd as far too luxurious, he loved the Wintergarten at the south end of the main floor, a glassed-in chamber that opened onto a tiled terrace overlooking the garden. The family's favorite room was the library, with a great old fire-place and stained glass windows set high in one wall.
This house became known as a place where people could speak without fear. "Martha and her father fell into an easy camaraderie. "They traded jokes and wry observations." They laughed at the Nazi's. MD noted that her mother was in good health, but a bit nervous. On balance she was enjoying it all. Her father was also doing well, she reported he was "flourishing incredibly," and seemed "slightly pro-German." MD added, "We sort of don't like the Jews anyway."
The Dodds soon discovered they had a high level and much-feared Nazi as a nearby neighbor. He was a Captain Rohm, commander of the Storm Troopers. Every morning he would ride a large black horse in the Tiergarten area. However Dodd continued to walk to work, alone and unguarded.
Soon the Dodds--and a new friend of MD, correspondent Quentin Reynolds (QR)--set out to see more of Germany. They headed south to Leipzig where they split up, with MD and friend and brother continuing south towards Austria. Their trip was laden with an incident that would provide the first challenge of MD's rosy view of the new Germany.
Chapter 11: Strange Beings. QR, MD and her brother decided to head to Nuremberg first. They encountered groups of the SA parading and singing and carrying their Nazi banners aloft. Often, onlookers would turn to them and shout "Heil Hitler." The excitement of the people was contagious, and MD "Heiled" as vigorously as any Nazi. While both her brother and her new friend were dismayed by her behavior, MD confessed: "I felt like a child, ebullient and careless, the intoxication of the new regime working like wine in me."
They found their hotel. QR had been here before, but recalled it as a quiet town. However, tonight they found the town full of revelers. He asked the clerk if there was going to be a parade. The clerk answered that it was going to be kind of a parade. "They are going to teach someone a lesson." Although the noise was loud outside, they could tell it was even louder, three blocks away. The "parade" finally came into view. First a column of SA troopers, in brown uniforms, carrying torches and banners. Next came two huge troopers, "half supporting, half dragging" the figure along the street. As they got closer they could see the figure was a young women. Now the genial Nurembergers became transformed and teased and insulted this women. The troopers then lifted her high so that the sign around her neck became visible. It stated: "I have offered myself to a Jew."
When the procession moved on MD stated "I wanted to follow." She had been shaken by this incident, but she would not let it dampen her view of the country and the new spirit brought forth by the Nazis. They headed to the bar. QR vowed to get drunk. QR, as a correspondent, knew this event was far more important. Other correspondents had reported on such abuses before, but their stories had all been based on after-the- fact investigations. Here the act had been witnessed first hand by a correspondent, namely QR, with important supporting witnesses. His editor advised QR to send it by mail and to keep the ambassadors name out of the dispatch. When he returned to Berlin he was summoned immediately by the German foreign-press chief. He charged there was no proof at all in QR's story. When told that QR had two witnesses, and found out who they were, he was speechless. The U.S. made no formal protest, and an official of the German foreign office apologized, but dismissed this incident as isolated. MD accepted this view and remained seduced by the life in the new Germany. However the State Department was not satisfied that Dodd was handling this incident and others appropriately. "Forces opposed to Dodd began to coalesce."
Chapter 12: Brutus. On 08/30/1933 Dodd drove to the palace to present his credentials. Hindenburg conveyed a sense of strength and virility that belied his 85 years. Hitler, Goebbels and Goring were not there. Dodd and the "Old Gentleman" conversed on topics from Dodd's university experience in Leipzig to the dangers of economic nationalism. Dodd and the embassy officials soon left the building to find soldiers of the regular army lining both sides of the street. It was over and Dodd was now "a duly accepted representative of the United States in Berlin." Two days later Dodd found himself confronting his first critical crisis.
On 09/01/1933, H. V. Kaltenborn (HVK), an American corresponent, called GSM, the consul general to give his regrets that he could not stop by for one final visit, as he and his family were heading back home. Their train left at midnight. He told GSM that he still had seen no evidence to verify the Consul's criticism of Germany. He accused him of doing Germany wrong in not presenting Germany as it really was.
They decided to do a last bit of shopping at a huge department store. As they left this store a formation of Storm Troopers were parading down the boulevard in their direction. HVK instructed his family to face the windows, and not salute. Several troopers accosted him, and the crowd began insulting him and his family. They began walking back to their hotel when a young man grabbed their 16 year old son and struck him in the face, hard enough to knock him down. HVK grabbed the assailant and marched him to a nearby policeman, but the crowd got more agitated. Finally an onlooker interceded, and the parade moved on. From his hotel HVK called Messersmith and reported the incident. In turn he arranged for them to be escorted to the train. However, he saw this as a positive event as HVK could no longer go back and tell his radio audiences that the American officials were misrepresenting the situation.
GSM asked Dodd if it was not time to issue a warning against travel in Germany. Officially Dodd was against this, and managed to keep several attacks out of the newspapers. At home, over dinner, he condemned the attack, but "if he hoped for a sympathetic expression of outrage from his daughter, he failed to get it." MD continued to think the best of Germany. Her father would call her "a young Nazi."
Another correspondent, Pulitzer Prize winner, Edgar Mowrer, was also leaving, but to Japan. He had wanted to stay in Berlin, but GSM declined to support him. At the station GSM embraced him. As he boarded the train he turned to Messersmith and said: "And you too, Brutus."
In addition to managing various situations such as above, Dodd had to get started on the demands of protocol that came with the job of being the American Ambassador. This meant going to parties at other embassies and giving parties at the American Embassy. Dodd and his wife were not major party goers, or heavy wine drinkers. And they very much preferred early retirements. Fortunately it was not all drudgery. Goebbels was known for his wit. MD, for a time considered him charming. Her mother, Mattie, enjoyed being seated next to him. Goring, in contrast, was hard to take seriously. "He was like an immense, if exceedingly dangerous little boy." His huge size and his love of new, Goring designed, uniforms made him the brunt of many jokes. The final demand of protocol was the installation of Hitler as official head of Germany. A 14 car Sondurzug was planned to take all the ambassadors to Nuremberg, but this was cut back to nine as regrets came in from all the major embassies. Attendees included representatives from Haiti, Siam and Persia.
Chapter 13: My Dark Secret. MD soon found herself sought after by men of all ranks, ages and nationalities. Her divorce from her first husband was still pending, but she considered herself free to disclose or not disclose her status as she wished. "Outwardly she looked the part of a young American virgin, but she knew sex and liked it - - -." Their house was always full of students, embassy secretaries, correspondents and men from the SA, SS and Reichswehr. These later officers carried themselves with aristocratic élan. She found them "extremely pleasant, handsome, courteous and uninteresting."
What follows is a rather detailed list of her affairs. Some of these affairs were actually conducted in their house, taking advantage of the fact that her parents retired early. This amount of detail is in order to help complete a character sketch of MD, perhaps the most dominant person in this book. One German she found most interesting was Ernst Udet, a flying ace from WWI. Since then he had become famous as an aerial adventurer and stunt pilot. MD went falcon hunting with Udet and his fellow ace, Goring, at his vast estate. What follows is a brief listing of other affairs that MD had during this period.
' Putzi Hanfstaengl (PH), according to his son.
' Thomas Wolfe, when he visited Berlin. Wolfe described her "like a butterfly hovering around my penis."
' Armand Berard, 3rd secretary of the French embassy, 6½ and "incredibly handsome." He treated her at first as a "sexual ingenue." She had great power over him and even her most casual act could drive him to despair.
' In their estranged periods she would see other men, and make sure he knew it. You are the only one who can break me, "but how well you know it and how you seem to rejoice in doing so." Next was a
' Max Delbrück, biophysicist. "He was slender, had a cleanly sculpted chin and masses of dark, neatly combed hair, for a look that evoked a young Gregory Peck. His accomplishments included a Nobel Prize.
Family correspondence is surprisingly free of any criticism of her behavior. Others noticed and disapproved including the Consul General, GSM. Specifically he knew of the Udet affair, and believed that MD had been involved in other affairs with top Nazis, including Putzi Hanfstaengl. GSM assessed these as mostly harmless except for that with Hanfstaengl. Her "seeming lack of discretion caused diplomats and other informants to be more reticent about what they told MD, fearing that their confidences would make there way back to Hanfstaengl." GSM wrote in a memo that "she had behaved so badly in so many ways, especially in view of the position held by her father." Their butler framed his criticism more bluntly: "This was not a house, but a house of ill repute."
MD's love life took a dark turn when she met a Rudolf Diels, the young chief of the Gestapo. Diels moved with ease and confidence, yet he entered a room unobtrusively, "seeping in like a malevolent fog." When he arrived at a party he "created a nervousness and tension that no other man possibly could." MD described his face as "the most sinister, scar-torn face I have ever seen." On balance his appearance was striking, like "that of a damaged Ray Milland." However, MD was drawn to him immediately, his "lovely lips, his jet-black luxuriant hair, and his penetrating eyes."
Diels was said to have much charm. He was said to be sexually talented and experienced. "Involved affairs with women were a regular thing with him." Another thing that MD found compelling about him was that everyone else was afraid of him. He was noted as the "Prince of Darkness." MD's father liked Diels. He found this Gestapo chief to be a helpful intermediary in several areas such as extracting foreign nationals from concentrations camps.
I was convinced we were about to see a classic case of what happens when an irresistible force (MD) meets an immovable object (Diels). However, exactly the opposite happened. They had a rather tender afair. They took long walks together in the Tiergarten area.. They drove for hours in the country and they went to movies and nightclubs. MD loved being known as the women who slept with the devil. Her father did not know of this. GSM suspected it. The more MD got to know Diels the more she could see he too was afraid. He told her that Goring and Goebels loathed each other and spied on each other and both spied on Diels.
However, it was through Diels that she began to temper her view on the Nazi revolution. She began to see "a vast network of espionage, terror, sadism and hate, from which no one" could escape. Not even Diels.
Chapter 14: The Death of Boris. MD still had another affair, the most important in a very long list. It was with a doomed Russian. She first caught a glimpse of him at one of the many parties Sigmund Schultz held at her apartment. She lived their with her mother and her two dogs. At a party in mid-September 1933 MD glanced across the room and saw this tall good looking man. He was very attractive, around 30, with short blond-brown hair, strikingly luminous eyes, and an easy fluid manner. One of MD's friends--Agnes Knickerbocker, wife of correspondent H. R. "Knick" Knickerbocker--described his movements as those of one who could go from sternness to laughter in a split second. They exchanged glances for only a few seconds, but still an important event.
Several weeks later the Knickerbockers invited MD to join them for drinks and dancing at a popular nightclub. Knick introduced MD to the "tall man" from across the room. His name was Boris Winogradov. He asked her to dance. She quickly learned that his natural grace did not extend to the dance floor. He told her "I don't know how to dance." They both laughed. He also told her he was with the Soviet Embassy. And he confessed he had noticed her several times before, and asked if he could call on her. They met at her home. He brought her a gift, a disc entitled: "The Death of Boris." It was about a death scene in an opera, sung by a famous Russian singer. After that MD gave Boris a tour of her house, and they very gradually started to become acquainted. What did she do in Chicago? What were her parents like? This period was a bit more awkward due to their language differences. Their common language was German, but both were amateurs in this language. However, they became regular companions. They left diplomatic receptions early. They met for secret meals at fine restaurants. And they would often go dancing at the club where they first met. And like Diels, he would often take her for long rides in the country, sometimes staying out until daybreak.
Now and then reality intruded into this emerging romance. He was especially dismayed at how readily the world accepted Hitler's protestations of peace, while he was clearly guiding Germany towards war, with the USSR the likely target. His embassy also disapproved of this relationship. In turn MD's father was concerned that they might get married. At this point Martha seemed to have no hint as to what might be his official role:, namely an operative of the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB.
Conclusion to this partial review.
As noted at the start this is only a partial review. While the intent initially was to review maybe 10 chapters, this turned out impossible to do, as each subsequent chapter "begged to be included." For example while this presentation stops at Chapter 14, it includes 11 chapters. I will try to add to this later.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2011There are some serious detractors among the reviewers of this book, but I found it to be extremely interesting, well researched, and an intriguing story that has been lost, somehow, in the glut of other stories about the rise of Hitler. Author Erik Larson has, I believe, carved out a strong niche genre for himself that combines some of the best aspects of scholarly research with human interest and narrative robustness. Some have preferred earlier works of his, but I find this one to be even more well-documented and compelling because of its snapshot of an intersection of U.S. and German history in a short but pivotal period: 1933 to 1934.
It depicts the 1933 appointment by Franklin Roosevelt, newly elected as president, of an unlikely college professor -- William E. Dodd -- to the position of America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany. It chronicles the experiences of Dodd and his colorful family as they arrive in Berlin in the summer of 1933 and are courted by the Nazi regime but later become increasingly aware of the dark side, the disappearances, the murders, the political intrigue, and exactly a year after their arrival, "The Night of the Long Knives." Dodd's spiraling awareness of the atrocities already being perpetrated, the intoxicating influence that Hitler commanded over the people of Germany, and his powerlessness to convince the American State Department of its significance, comprise the main drama of the book. Interesting side stories that add to the readability include the promiscuous antics of Dodd's attractive daughter Martha, her flirtation with Communism, and her social links with a wide swath of society in Berlin.
I had not appreciated, before reading this book, how early in Hitler's regime the power-grabbing and Jewish persecutions had begun. The "Night of the Long Knives," a three-day purge of political assassinations and centralization of Nazi power, took place in the summer of 1934 and was, for Dodd and many who experienced it, the loudest warning bell to date of the horrors to come. "For Dodd, diplomat by accident, not demeanor, the whole thing was utterly appalling. He was a scholar and Jeffersonian democrat, a farmer who loved history and the old Germany in which he had studied as a young man. Now there was official murder on a terrifying scale."
The back story of Dodd's appointment was interesting in itself -- he was not the first choice for the ambassadorship and was not supported by many in the State Department at the time, including Secretary Cordell Hull. It was not a job that many wanted, but Dodd had been stalled in the eddies of a lackluster career and dreamed of being recognized as well as being afforded the time to write his career masterpiece about the history of the Old South. When it was offered to him, he felt it was an important life and career move, as well as a chance for his family, including his grown son and daughter, to be together on a sort of adventure. He was deemed weak by many at the State Department, and his warnings about what was happening in Germany, including the beatings and incarceration of American Jews and non-whites, were essentially ignored. Ironically, in spite of his inability to get America to act, Dodd used the influence of his position and took grave personal risks to interrupt or intervene in several instances of Nazi violence in Berlin.
Larson ends the book with an interesting reflection on the legacy of Ambassador William E. Dodd. He feels it depends on whether the evaluator was in Europe or America. "To the isolationists, he was needlessly provocative; to his opponents in the State Department, he was a maverick who complained too much and failed to uphold the stands of [the Department elite]. Roosevelt...was maddeningly noncommittal." He later states, "In the end, Dodd proved to be exactly what Roosevelt had wanted, a lone beacon of American freedom and hope in a land of gathering darkness."
I feel greatly richer for knowing more about this man and the important role he played in world history.
Top reviews from other countries
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Arturo Caracas UribeReviewed in Mexico on January 21, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinario
No puede uno dejar de leerlo. Una óptica diferente, las vivencias de un embajador y su familia enmedio de un creciente caos.
- RajeevReviewed in India on August 17, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Cautionary tale
So many similarities with what has been happening of late in India it's not funny. Required reading for all those interested in history, politics and even sociology.
- G. RobinsonReviewed in the United Kingdom on June 26, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars First hand account of the rise of Nazism
In the 1930's an American diplomat entered Berlin to start a new job. Little did he or his family know what was about to happen to the country and to them.
This story is of course shocking, the rise of National Socialism (there was nothing socialist about it) Hitler and his gang of acolytes, the hate, the suffering, the rise and fall of Nazism, the death of democracy and the subjugation of an entire nation to the will of one man to dominate those around him. We have all read about what happened to Germany, an educated, civilised and cultured modern state turned into a living hell.
However for me this story is even more shocking than the writ large essays by leading historians who have covered this period endlessly. This story is about how all this affected a small and decent family from a far off land. How they saw at first hand how the Jewish community were being persecuted, how an orderly law abiding society was slowly changing into a thugs paradise. How the rule of law was perverted or more often then not just ignored, and how new laws were passed purely to allow certain members of society to be treated like criminals based purely on their religion. How these actions by a vindictive new force affected the family is just as interesting as what they eventually did to a nation.
The author has been honest with the reader and made it clear that these changes took place slowly over time, a new rule here, a new decree there, a beating in the street, a hanging in the park, communities put under siege, forced to move, forced to leave their jobs. All these incremental moves eventually added up and, as we all know, culminated in the Holocaust and the systematic murder of millions. The families struggles with what was happening all around them and how it affected each of them individually is illuminating and perhaps answers the often asked question as to how a cultured society was turned into a ferocious beast in a few short years.
Turning a blind eye, looking the other way, perhaps having little sympathy for the victims and holding Anti Semitic views, believing the crude lies of the propogandists, too little questioning of those in power, little or no oversight, or perhaps just too scared to stand out from the crowd and say something. People who did often lost their jobs or were turfed out of their homes or just disappeared one dark night after a knock at the door.
This is the truly shocking part of this story, how a civilised, cultured, educated and law abiding democracy in only a few short years became a terrifying beast through the normal democratic process. Germany wasn't invaded or taken over by a foreign power, there was no invasion, no coup or civil uprising, no revolution. The ordinary people voted for these changes and because of political unwillingness, cowardice or any kind of foresight by the ruling elite, the beasts were allowed to gain a small political foothold which was enough, over time, for them to rise to power and draw the whole world into a conflict like non ever seen before. Democracy was dismantled and slowly destroyed from within by the very people who used their democratic rights to remove those same rights from so many. A clear warning if ever there was one, that democracy is fragile and needs to be protected from those who would attempt to remove it.
Seen through the eyes of the family, the looming conflict of political isolation and possible world war is brought much closer, made more intimate. Stalin said "one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic" and it's the writers ability to describe many small or even trivial despicable actions that make the big picture more understandable. The daughter seems to have struggled the most with how to deal with the new regime and it's loathsome views and policies, perhaps her youth, inexperience of politics and maybe a willingness to look away from the ugly side of this new world played a part in her getting confused as to what was right and wrong. Perhaps many German people were conflicted the same way and decided to say nothing or look the other way. When your very life and the lives of others you know are at stake it's is understandable that you would feel powerless to do anything.
In the end this is a book about an American family and how they tried to deal with extraordinary times, but I suspect their story is not very different from millions of similar German families also caught up in a conflict perhaps just too big to manage.
Superior writing about a very dark episode in Europe's history.
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V. MarkReviewed in Italy on April 10, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars Ottimo !
Testo arrivato velocemente e in ottimo stato come descritto !
- Mary Beth AndrewsReviewed in Spain on August 6, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!
Excellent!