In the Garden of Beasts

by Erik Larson

  That these listeners understood the true intent of Dodd’s speech was obvious. Afterward, Bella Fromm, the society columnist for the Vossische Zeitung, who was fast becoming a friend of the Dodd family, told him, “I enjoyed all these nicely disguised hints against Hitler and Hitlerism.”

  Dodd gave her an arch grin. “I had no delusions about Hitler when I was appointed to my post in Berlin,” he answered. “But I had at least hoped to find some decent people around Hitler. I am horrified to discover that the whole gang is nothing but a horde of criminals and cowards.”

  Fromm later chided the French ambassador to Germany, André François-Poncet, for missing the speech. His response encapsulated a fundamental quandary of traditional diplomacy. “The situation is very difficult,” he said, with a smile. “One is at once a diplomat and must hide one’s feelings. One must please one’s superiors at home and yet not be expelled from here but I too am glad that his Excellency Mr. Dodd cannot be subverted by flattery and high honor.”

  Dodd was heartened by the response from his audience. He told Roosevelt, “My interpretation of this is that all liberal Germany is with us—and more than half of Germany is at heart liberal.”

  The response elsewhere was decidedly less positive, as Dodd quickly found. Goebbels blocked publication of the speech, although three large newspapers published excerpts anyway. The next day, Friday, Dodd arrived at Foreign Minister Neurath’s office for a previously scheduled meeting, only to be told Neurath could not see him—a clear breach of diplomatic custom. In a cable to Washington that afternoon, Dodd told Secretary Hull that Neurath’s action seemed “to constitute a serious affront to our Government.” Dodd finally got to see Neurath at eight o’clock that night. Neurath claimed to have been too busy to see him during the day, but Dodd knew that the minister had been free enough from pressing obligations to have lunch with a minor diplomat. Dodd wrote in his diary that he suspected Hitler himself might have forced the postponement “as a sort of rebuke for my speech of yesterday.”

  To his greater surprise, he also sensed a groundswell of criticism from America and took steps to defend himself. He promptly sent Roosevelt a verbatim copy and told the president he was doing so because he feared “that some embarrassing interpretations may have been put out at home.” That same day he also sent a copy to Undersecretary Phillips, “in the hope that you, acquainted with all the precedents, may explain to Secretary Hull—i.e., if he or anybody else in the Department seems to think I have done our cause here any harm.”

  If he expected Phillips to rise to his defense, he was mistaken.

  Phillips and other senior men in the State Department, including Moffat, the Western European affairs chief, were becoming increasingly unhappy with the ambassador. These ranking members of Hugh Wilson’s “pretty good club” seized upon Dodd’s speech as further evidence that he was the wrong man for the post. Moffat in his diary likened Dodd’s performance to “the schoolmaster lecturing his pupils.” Phillips, master of the art of palace whisper, took delight in Dodd’s discomfort. He ignored several of Dodd’s letters, in which the ambassador sought official advice on whether to accept future public-speaking offers. At last Phillips did reply, with apologies, explaining “that I was in doubt whether any words from me could be of help or guidance to you who are living in a world so wholly different from that in which most ambassadors find themselves.”

  Though he congratulated Dodd on the “high art” he exhibited in crafting a speech that let him speak his mind yet avoid giving direct offense, Phillips also offered a quiet rebuke. “In brief, my feeling is that an Ambassador, who is a privileged guest of the country to which he is accredited, should be careful not to give public expression to anything in the nature of criticism of his adopted country, because in so doing, he loses ipso facto the confidence of those very public officials whose good-will is so important to him in the success of his mission.”

  Dodd still seemed unaware of it, but several members of the Pretty Good Club had begun stepping up their campaign against him, with the ultimate aim of ousting him from their ranks. In October his longtime friend Colonel House sent him a quiet, sidesaddle warning. First came the good news. House had just met with Roosevelt. “It was delightful to hear the President say that he was pleased beyond measure with the work you are doing in Berlin.”

  But then House had visited the State Department. “In the strictest confidence, they did not speak of you with the same enthusiasm as the President,” he wrote. “I insisted on something concrete and all that I could get was that you did not keep them well informed. I am telling you this so you may be guided in the future.”

  ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, two days after his Columbus Day address, Dodd was in the middle of a dinner party he was hosting for military and naval attachés when he received startling news. Hitler had just announced his decision to withdraw Germany from the League of Nations and from a major disarmament conference that had been under way in Geneva, off and on, since February 1932.

  Dodd found a radio and immediately heard the coarse voice of the chancellor, though he was struck by the absence of Hitler’s usual histrionics. Dodd listened intently as Hitler portrayed Germany as a well-meaning, peace-seeking nation whose modest desire for equality of armaments was being opposed by other nations. “It was not the address of a thinker,” Dodd wrote in his diary, “but of an emotionalist claiming that Germany had in no way been responsible for the World War and that she was the victim of wicked enemies.”

  It was a stunning development. In one stroke, Dodd realized, Hitler had emasculated the League and virtually nullified the Treaty of Versailles, clearly declaring his intention to rearm Germany. He announced as well that he was dissolving the Reichstag and would hold new elections on November 12. The ballot also would invite the public to pass judgment upon his foreign policy through a yes-or-no plebiscite. Secretly Hitler also gave orders to General Werner von Blomberg, his minister of defense, to prepare for possible military action by League members seeking to enforce the Treaty of Versailles—although Blomberg knew full well that Germany’s small army could not hope to prevail against a combined action by France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. “That the allies at this time could easily have overwhelmed Germany is as certain as it is that such an action would have brought the end of the Third Reich in the very year of its birth,” wrote William Shirer in his classic work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but Hitler “knew the mettle of his foreign adversaries as expertly and as uncannily as he had sized up that of his opponents at home.”

  Though Dodd continued to nurture the hope that the German government would grow more civil, he recognized that Hitler’s two decisions signaled an ominous shift away from moderation. The time had come, he knew, to meet with Hitler face-to-face.

  Dodd went to bed that night deeply troubled.

  SHORTLY BEFORE NOON ON TUESDAY, October 17, 1933, Roosevelt’s “standing liberal” set out in top hat and tails for his first meeting with Adolf Hitler.

  CHAPTER 19

  Matchmaker

  Putzi Hanfstaengl knew of Martha’s various romantic relationships, but by the fall of 1933 he had begun to imagine for her a new partner.

  Having come to feel that Hitler would be a much more reasonable leader if only he fell in love, Hanfstaengl appointed himself matchmaker. He knew this would not be easy. As one of Hitler’s closest associates, he recognized that the history of Hitler’s relationships with women was an odd one, marred by tragedy and persistent rumors of unsavory behavior. Hitler liked women, but more as stage decoration than as sources of intimacy and love. There had been talk of numerous liaisons, typically with women much younger than he—in one case a sixteen-year-old named Maria Reiter. One woman, Eva Braun, was twenty-three years his junior and had been an intermittent companion since 1929. So far, however, Hitler’s only all-consuming affair had been with his young niece, Geli Raubal. She was found shot to death in Hitler’s apartment, his revolver nearby. The most likely explanation was su
icide, her means of escaping Hitler’s jealous and oppressive affection—his “clammy possessiveness,” as historian Ian Kershaw put it. Hanfstaengl suspected that Hitler once had been attracted to his own wife, Helena, but she assured him there was no cause for jealousy. “Believe me,” she said, “he’s an absolute neuter, not a man.”

  Hanfstaengl telephoned Martha at home.

  “Hitler needs a woman,” he said. “Hitler should have an American woman—a lovely woman could change the whole destiny of Europe.”

  He got to the point: “Martha,” he said, “you are the woman!”

  PART IV

  How the Skeleton Aches

  The Tiergarten, January 1934 (photo credit p4.1)

  CHAPTER 20

  The Führer’s Kiss

  Dodd walked up a broad stairway toward Hitler’s office, at each bend encountering SS men with their arms raised “Caesar style,” as Dodd put it. He bowed in response and at last entered Hitler’s waiting room. After a few moments the black, tall door to Hitler’s office opened. Foreign Minister Neurath stepped out to welcome Dodd and to bring him to Hitler. The office was an immense room, by Dodd’s estimate fifty feet by fifty feet, with ornately decorated walls and ceiling. Hitler, “neat and erect,” wore an ordinary business suit. Dodd noted that he looked better than newspaper photographs indicated.

  Even so, Hitler did not cut a particularly striking figure. He rarely did. Early in his rise it was easy for those who met him for the first time to dismiss him as a nonentity. He came from plebeian roots and had failed to distinguish himself in any way, not in war, not in work, not in art, though in this last domain he believed himself to have great talent. He was said to be indolent. He rose late, worked little, and surrounded himself with the lesser lights of the party with whom he felt most comfortable, an entourage of middlebrow souls that Putzi Hanfstaengl derisively nicknamed the “Chauffeureska,” consisting of bodyguards, adjutants, and a chauffeur. He loved movies—King Kong was a favorite—and he adored the music of Richard Wagner. He dressed badly. Apart from his mustache and his eyes, the features of his face were indistinct and unimpressive, as if begun in clay but never fired. Recalling his first impression of Hitler, Hanfstaengl wrote, “Hitler looked like a suburban hairdresser on his day off.”

  Nonetheless the man had a remarkable ability to transform himself into something far more compelling, especially when speaking in public or during private meetings when some topic enraged him. He had a knack as well for projecting an aura of sincerity that blinded onlookers to his true motives and beliefs, though Dodd had not yet come to a full appreciation of this aspect of his character.

  First Dodd raised the subject of the many attacks against Americans. Hitler was cordial and apologetic and assured Dodd that the perpetrators of all such attacks would be “punished to the limit.” He promised as well to publicize widely his prior decrees exempting foreigners from giving the Hitler salute. After some bland conversation about Germany’s debts to American creditors, Dodd moved to the topic most on his mind, the “all-pervasive question of the German thunderbolt of last Saturday”—Hitler’s decision to withdraw from the League of Nations.

  When Dodd asked him why he had pulled Germany from the League, Hitler grew visibly angry. He attacked the Treaty of Versailles and France’s drive to maintain superiority in arms over Germany. He railed against the “indignity” of keeping Germany in an unequal state, unable to defend herself against her neighbors.

  Hitler’s sudden rage startled Dodd. He tried to appear unfazed, less a diplomat now than a professor dealing with an overwrought student. He told Hitler, “There is evident injustice in the French attitude; but defeat in war is always followed by injustice.” He raised the example of the aftermath of the American Civil War and the North’s “terrible” treatment of the South.

  Hitler stared at him. After a brief period of silence, the conversation resumed, and for a few moments the two men engaged in what Dodd described as “an exchange of niceties.” But now Dodd asked whether “an incident on the Polish, Austrian or French border which drew an enemy into the Reich” would be enough for Hitler to launch a war.

  “No, no,” Hitler insisted.

  Dodd probed further. Suppose, he asked, such an incident were to involve the Ruhr Valley, an industrial region about which Germans were particularly sensitive. France had occupied the Ruhr from 1923 to 1925, causing great economic and political turmoil within Germany. In the event of another such incursion, Dodd asked, would Germany respond militarily on its own or call for an international meeting to resolve the matter?

  “That would be my purpose,” Hitler said, “but we might not be able to restrain the German people.”

  Dodd said, “If you would wait and call a conference, Germany would regain her popularity outside.”

  Soon the meeting came to an end. It had lasted forty-five minutes. Though the session had been difficult and strange, Dodd nonetheless left the chancellery feeling convinced that Hitler was sincere about wanting peace. He was concerned, however, that he might again have violated the laws of diplomacy. “Perhaps I was too frank,” he wrote later to Roosevelt, “but I had to be honest.”

  At 6:00 p.m. that day he sent a two-page cable to Secretary Hull summarizing the meeting and closed by telling Hull, “The total effect of the interview was more favorable from the point of view of the maintenance of world peace than I had expected.”

  Dodd also conveyed these impressions to Consul General Messersmith, who then sent Undersecretary Phillips a letter—at eighteen pages, a characteristically long one—in which he seemed intent on undermining Dodd’s credibility. He challenged the ambassador’s appraisal of Hitler. “The Chancellor’s assurances were so satisfying and so unexpected that I think they are on the whole too good to be true,” Messersmith wrote. “We must keep in mind, I believe, that when Hitler says anything he for the moment convinces himself that it is true. He is basically sincere; but he is at the same time a fanatic.”

  Messersmith urged skepticism regarding Hitler’s protestations. “I think for the moment he genuinely desires peace but it is a peace of his own kind and with an armed force constantly becoming more effective in reserve, in order to impose their will when it may become essential.” He reiterated his belief that Hitler’s government could not be viewed as a rational entity. “There are so many pathological cases involved that it would be impossible to tell from day to day what will happen any more than the keeper of a madhouse is able to tell what his inmates will do in the next hour or during the next day.”

  He urged caution, in effect warning Phillips to be skeptical of Dodd’s conviction that Hitler wanted peace. “I think for the present moment… we must guard against any undue optimism which may be aroused by the apparently satisfying declarations of the Chancellor.”

  ON THE MORNING of the rendezvous that Putzi Hanfstaengl had arranged for Martha with Hitler, she dressed carefully, seeing as she had been “appointed to change the history of Europe.” To her it seemed a lark of the first order. She was curious to meet this man she once had dismissed as a clown but whom she now was convinced was “a glamorous and brilliant personality who must have great power and charm.” She decided to wear her “most demure and intriguing best,” nothing too striking or revealing, for the Nazi ideal was a woman who wore little makeup, tended her man, and bore as many children as possible. German men, she wrote, “want their women to be seen and not heard, and then seen only as appendages of the splendid male they accompany.” She considered wearing a veil.

  Hanfstaengl picked her up in his huge car and drove to the Kaiserhof, seven blocks away on Wilhelmplatz, just off the southeast corner of the Tiergarten. A grand hotel with a cavernous lobby and arched entrance portico, the Kaiserhof had been Hitler’s home until his ascension to chancellor. Now Hitler often had lunch or tea in the hotel surrounded by his Chauffeureska.

  Hanfstaengl had arranged that he and Martha would be joined for lunch by another party, a Polish tenor, Jan Kiepura
, thirty-one years old. Hanfstaengl, well known and unmistakable, was treated with deference by the restaurant’s staff. Once seated, Martha and the two men chatted over tea and waited. In time a commotion arose at the entrance to the dining room, and soon came the inevitable rumble of chairs shoved back and shouts of “Heil Hitler.”

  Hitler and his party—including, indeed, his chauffeur—took seats at an adjacent table. First, Kiepura was ushered to Hitler’s side. The two spoke about music. Hitler seemed unaware that Kiepura under Nazi law was classified as Jewish, by maternal heritage. A few moments later Hanfstaengl came over and bent low to Hitler’s ear. He barreled back to Martha with the news that Hitler would now see her.

  She walked to Hitler’s table and stood there a moment as Hitler rose to greet her. He took her hand and kissed it and spoke a few quiet words in German. She got a close look at him now: “a weak, soft face, with pouches under the eyes, full lips and very little bony facial structure.” At this vantage, she wrote, the mustache “didn’t seem as ridiculous as it appeared in pictures—in fact, I scarcely noticed it.” What she did notice were his eyes. She had heard elsewhere that there was something piercing and intense about his gaze, and now, immediately, she understood. “Hitler’s eyes,” she wrote, “were startling and unforgettable—they seemed pale blue in color, were intense, unwavering, hypnotic.”