In the Garden of Beasts/Erik Larson
This is the true story of the American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, appointed at the time of Adolf Hitler’s ascendancy to total power in 1933-44.
Erik Larson (author)
William Dodd was a mild-mannered history professor from Chicago who studied in Leipzig.
He described himself as a Jefferson democrat and wanted to finish his work on the Confederacy called the Old South.
He was an unlikely choice as ambassador not least because he adopted a frugal life style at odds with the high living life style of wealthier ambassadors.
Yet he is an acute observer of the rise of Nazism although his perceptions were largely ignored by the State Department.
They were more interested and concerned whether Germany will repay its bond debt to the USA creditors.
His lively daughter Martha is more enamoured of the Nazis whom she regards as virile revivers of Germany.
She has an affaire with Gestapo chief Rudilf Diels but her great love is Boris a Russian diplomat working for their intelligence services.
Dodd witnesses and records in his diary the night of the long knives when Hitler had his perceived rival Eric Rohm killed and countless others.
After the death of President Hindenburg there were no constraints on Hitler.
Yet the paranoia of Hitler that he would be toppled internally was to be his undoing as it led to interference in matters where others knew best.
Dodd’s observation of the growing anti-semitism was chilling though the USA was reluctant to commit to another war and increasing pro-German feeling fuelled by aviator Charles Lindbergh and others meant it fell on deaf ears.
Indeed Dodd increasingly became persona non grata not just in Germany but in the State Dept. By 1938 he was replaced by someone more sympathetic to the Nazis.
The account is immensely readable and well-informed. It’s also interesting on the ambassador’s role.
He/she should be someone who reports accurately on what is happening not just a social organiser.
