In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
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17 “The letters and dispatches”: William Phillips to Dodd, Nov. 27, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.
18 On Sunday, Oct. 29: Dodd, Diary, 53.
Chapter 22: The Witness Wore Jackboots
1 “I walked in, my heart in my throat”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes, 59–60.
2 “a yawning abyss of boredom”: Tobias, 211.
Hans Gisevius, page 29, comments on the slow pace as well: “Slowly, like a heavy, viscous liquid, the stream of witnesses and experts flowed by.… The trial proved unexpectedly boring.…”
3 “looked wiry, tough, indifferent”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes, 58.
4 “the hind end of an elephant”: Bullitt, 233.
5 “Everyone jumped up as if electrified”: Tobias, 223.
6 “With one hand he gestured wildly”: Gisevius, 32.
7 “especially anxious to have me present”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes, 62.
8 “A botch,” Göring had acknowledged: Holborn, 143.
9 “thus preventing the apprehension”: Tobias, 226.
10 “a brilliant, attractive, dark man”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes, 60.
11 “For the world had been told”: Tobias, 228.
Chapter 23: Boris Dies Again
1 “Boris, stop it”: Martha Dodd, “Bright Journey into Darkness,” Box 14, Martha Dodd Papers. Martha tells the story of Boris and the roadside shrine in pages 15–16.
Chapter 24: Getting Out the Vote
1 “On an eleventh of November”: Shirer, Rise, 211.
2 “Show tomorrow your firm national unity”: Ibid., 211–12.
3 Every German could find a reason: Messersmith to Hull, “Some Observations on the election of Nov. 12, 1933,” p. 3, enclosed in Messersmith to Dodd, Nov. 18, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.
Ian Kershaw, in Hubris, quotes a portion of the ballot: “Do you, German man, and you, German woman, approve this policy of your Reich government, and are you ready to declare it to be the expression of your own view and your own will, and solemnly to give it your allegiance?” Kershaw, Hubris, 495.
4 One report held that patients: Messersmith to Hull, “Some Observations on the election of Nov. 12, 1933,” p. 5, enclosed in Messersmith to Dodd, Nov. 18, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.
5 “extravagant propaganda”: Klemperer, Witness, 41.
6 “In order to bring about clarity”: Messersmith to Hull, “Some Observations on the election of Nov. 12, 1933,” p. 7, enclosed in Messersmith to Dodd, Nov. 18, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.
7 Some 45.1 million Germans: Messersmith to Hull, “Some Observations on the election of Nov. 12, 1933,” p. 2, enclosed in Messersmith to Dodd, Nov. 18, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.
8 “historically unique acknowledgment”: Ibid., 2.
9 “The election here is a farce”: Dodd to Roosevelt, Oct. 28, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.
10 Nothing indicated this more clearly: Shirer, Rise, 212.
11 “I am glad you have been frank”: Roosevelt to Dodd, Nov. 13, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.
12 “that certain reactionary papers”: Dodd, Diary, 58.
Chapter 25: The Secret Boris
1 “I wanted to love him only lightly”: Martha Dodd, “Bright Journey into Darkness,” 23, Box 14, Martha Dodd Papers.
2 “You always see the bad things”: Ibid., 29.
3 “I love you.”: Ibid., 29.
4 “I could not bear to think of the future”: Ibid., 21.
5 “Martha!” he wrote: Boris to Martha, Spring 1934, Box 10, Martha Dodd Papers.
6 A bleak day: Details of this encounter between Martha and Boris come from her unpublished memoir, “Bright Journey into Darkness,” 21–26, Box 14, Martha Dodd Papers.
Chapter 26: The Little Press Ball
1 “It is always easier to pump a man”: Schultz, “Winter of 1933–1934,” 4, Personal Writings, Box 29, Schultz Papers.
2 “painfully crowded”: Schultz, “1934,” 2, Personal Writings, Box 34, Schultz Papers.
3 “without any display of orders”: Fromm, 137.
4 “Gravedigger of the Weimar Republic”: Ibid., 321.
5 “I have Hindenburg’s confidence”: Gellately, Gestapo, 1.
6 “Not until they had riveted”: Wheeler-Bennett, Nemesis, 293.
7 “When he arrived he was as suave”: Schultz, “1934,” 3, Personal Writings, Box 34, Schultz Papers.
At diplomatic functions, Papen would often sidle up to George Messersmith’s wife and try to pry from her bits and pieces of intelligence about political matters, such as American attitudes toward Germany. She learned to parry these probes by talking about her pastime of collecting porcelain. Papen “never made any progress,” Messersmith wrote, “because she always returned to porcelain.” Messersmith, “Conversations with Von Papen in Vienna,” unpublished memoir, 7, Messersmith Papers.
8 “The louder the motor”: Fromm, 136.
9 “Why should you worry?”: Ibid., 136–37.
10 Göring had claimed: Messersmith, “When I arrived in Berlin…,” unpublished memoir, 7, Messersmith Papers.
11 “sit and calmly tell you”: Messersmith to William Phillips, Sept. 29, 1933, (p. 6; see also, pp. 4–5), Messersmith Papers.
12 “I can tell you that”: Schultz, “Winter of 1933–1934,” 7, Personal Writings, Box 29, Schultz Papers; Schultz, “1934,” 4, Personal Writings, Box 34, Schultz Papers.
13 “brutal and ruthless”: Fromm, 137, 304.
14 Rumors of suicides were common: Goeschel, 100.
15 “I can’t live any more”: Fromm, 138.
16 “We all had a really good time”: Louis Lochner to Betty Lochner, Dec. 26, 1933, Round Robin Letters, Box 6, Lochner Papers.
17 “The dinner was a bore”: Dodd, Diary, 59.
18 “From that day on”: Schultz, “Winter of 1933–1934,” 7, Personal Writings, Box 29, Schultz Papers.
19 “Bellachen, we are all so shocked”: Fromm, 138–39.
Chapter 27: O Tannenbaum
1 “Berlin is a skeleton”: Isherwood, Berlin Stories, 186.
2 The SA monopolized the sale of Christmas trees: Gilbert L. MacMaster to Clarence E. Pickett, Feb. 12, 1934, vol. 2, p. 49, Archives of the Holocaust.
3 “persons who had a grudge against him”: Details on the Wollstein incident can be found in Raymond H. Geist to Hull, Dec. 15, 1933, GRC 362.1121 Wollstein, Erwin/1, State/Decimal.
4 Martha assigned herself the task: Martha describes this tree-trimming episode in her unpublished memoir, “Bright Journey into Darkness,” 14–17, Box 14, Martha Dodd Papers.
5 “Have you lost even your literary interest”: Martha to Thornton Wilder, Dec. 14, 1933, Wilder Papers.
6 “On one occasion the hilarity was so great”: Wilbur Carr took careful notes on his conversation with Raymond Geist, and reported them in a “Strictly Confidential” memorandum dated June 5, 1935, Box 12, Carr Papers.
7 “There appears to be a spare typewriter”: John Campbell White to Jay Pierrepont Moffat, Nov. 17, 1933, White Papers.
8 “a curious individual”: Jay Pierrepont Moffat to John Campbell White, March 31, 1934, White Papers.
9 “Permanent retirement from the post”: Dodd to William Phillips, Dec. 4, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.
10 “I cannot imagine who gave the Tribune”: William Phillips to Dodd, Dec. 22, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.
11 “an inside glimpse of conditions”: Phillips, Diary, Dec. 20, 1933.
12 “We went over it from all angles”: Moffat, Diary, Dec. 14, 1933.
13 “much concerned at letters”: Moffat, Diary, Feb. 13, 1934.
14 “Our mutual friend G.S.M.”: George Gordon to Dodd, Jan. 22, 1934, Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers.
15 Lochner told Dodd: Details of Lochner’s plot to save Dimitrov come from Metcalfe, 232–34; Dodd, Diary, 65–66; Conradi, 136–38.
16 “high treason, insurrectionary arson”: Tobias, 268.
17 “We were sitting together drinking our coffee”: Lochner, Dec
. 26, 1933, Round Robin Letters, Box 6, Lochner Papers.
18 Diels’s precise motives cannot be known: Wheaton, 430. Though he found the camps repellent, Diels was not being entirely altruistic. He recognized that an amnesty would have great political value, burnishing Hitler’s image both inside and outside Germany. But clearly he also knew that an amnesty would be an affront to Himmler, whose SS ran the camps, and that on that score alone the idea would appeal to Göring. Hitler and Göring approved the idea, but insisted that Dachau be exempted, and limited the number of prisoners to be included. They gave Diels authority to decide who would be freed. Göring announced the decree, and said that a total of five thousand prisoners would be released. In fact, the amnesty was not so wide-ranging as Göring’s announcement suggested. A number of camps outside Prussia also were exempted, and the overall total of prisoners released was lower than what Göring had promised. Moreover, plans existed to expand the capacity of the camps in Prussia alone by as many as eight thousand additional prisoners. Crankshaw, 45–47; Wheaton, 429–30.
19 “The Secret Police Chief did”: Dodd, Diary, 67.
20 “One might think,” he wrote: Ibid., 66.
PART V: DISQUIET
Chapter 28: January 1934
1 “Thank you for telling me”: Tobias, 284.
2 “Herr Hitler seemed to feel a genuine sympathy”: Phipps, 40.
3 “Hitler is improving definitely”: Martha to Thornton Wilder, Dec. 14, 1933, Wilder Papers.
4 The official tally of unemployed workers: Fritzsche, 57; Miller, 66–67, 136.
5 Within the Reich Ministry of the Interior: Krausnick et al., 419.
One more sign of normalcy was the way the government dealt with an attack against an American that occurred on Jan. 15, 1934. On that cold, rain-soaked Monday a U.S. citizen named Max Schussler, working in Berlin as a landlord, stumbled into the consulate on Bellevuestrasse “bleeding profusely,” according to an account by Raymond Geist, who was serving as acting consul general while Messersmith was in America. Schussler was Jewish. The next morning, after consultation with Dodd, Geist went to Gestapo headquarters and lodged a protest directly with Rudolf Diels. Within forty-eight hours the assailant was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to seven months in prison. What’s more, news of the arrest and punishment received broad play over radio and in newspapers. Geist reported to Washington, “It is very gratifying to see how promptly the German authorities acted.… I believe that these attacks will now definitely cease.” He was wrong, as time would show, but for the moment at least there seemed to be a new effort by the government to win America’s goodwill.
There was an unwholesome element to Geist’s final conversation with Diels. The Gestapo chief complained that Schussler and certain other abused Americans were “not altogether a desirable lot,” as Geist recalled Diels’s remarks. The innuendo was clear, and Geist’s temper spiked. “I told him,” he wrote, “that we would never consider any other fact than that a man was an American citizen, and that the question of race or origin was entirely beside the point, and that any American citizen was entitled to the full protection of the American Government.” Geist to Hull, Jan. 16, 1934, FP 362.1113 Schussler, Max/1, State/Decimal; Geist to Hull, Jan. 18, 1934, 362.1113 Schussler, Max/8 GC, State/Decimal.
6 “More atrocity reports”: Gilbert L. MacMaster to Clarence E. Pickett, Feb. 12, 1934, vol. 2, pp. 58–59, Archives of the Holocaust.
Deschner, in his biography of Reinhard Heydrich, writes that in these early days, “Jews were not imprisoned in Dachau by virture of their being Jews but because of their having been politically active opponents of National Socialism, or communists, or journalists hostile to NS or ‘reactionaries.’ ” Deschner, 79.
7 “Tolerance means weakness”: Noakes and Pridham, 284–86.
8 “Any pity whatsoever for ‘enemies of the State’ ”: Krausnick et al., 433.
9 “Outwardly Berlin presented”: Memorandum, David Schweitzer to Bernhard Kahn, March 5, 1934, vol. 10, pp. 20–30, Archives of the Holocaust.
10 Some ten thousand Jews: Dippel, 114; Breitman and Kraut, 25.
11 “Before the end of 1933”: Testimony of Raymond Geist, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 4, Document No. 1759-PS, Avalon Project, Yale University Law School.
Germany’s supposedly secret effort to rearm itself in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles was, to Berliners, no secret at all, as became evident in the rise of a popular joke. It went like this:
A man complains to a friend that he doesn’t have the money to buy a carriage for his new baby. The friend happens to work in a carriage factory and offers to sneak out enough parts to allow the new father to build one on his own. When the two men see each other again, the new father is still carrying his baby.
His friend the factory worker is perplexed, and asks the new father why he’s not using his newly built baby carriage.
“Well, you see,” the father replies, “I know I’m very dense and don’t understand much about mechanics, but I’ve put that thing together three times and each time it turns out to be a machine gun!” Wheeler-Bennett, Nemesis, 336.
12 “Any one motoring out in the country”: John Campbell White to Jay Pierrepont Moffat, Nov. 27, 1933, Carr Papers.
13 “You must know that I am grateful”: Gallo, 7–8; Gisevius, 171. Gallo and Gisevius present two slightly different translations of Hitler’s greeting. I chose Gallo’s, but for no particular reason.
14 Soon afterward, however, Hitler ordered: Diels, 385–89; Diels, Affidavit, in Stackelberg and Winkle, 133–34; Wheaton, 439; Metcalfe, 235–36.
15 “I am confident,” he wrote: Kershaw, Myth, 63.
16 Röhm, the Hausherr, or host: Seating chart, Feb. 23, 1934, “Invitations,” Box 1, Martha Dodd Papers.
Chapter 29: Sniping
1 “to read a whole series of letters”: Moffat, Diary, Dec. 26, 1933.
2 the number of Jews on his staff: Dodd to William Phillips, Dec. 14, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers. Dodd wrote this letter longhand, and added a note at the top, “For you alone.”
3 “righteous aloofness”: Dodd to William Phillips, Dec. 14, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers. This letter, with the same date as the letter in the preceding citation, is nonetheless markedly different in content and form. It is typed, and marked “Personal and Confidential.”
4 “As usual,” Moffat wrote: Moffat, Diary, Dec. 26, 1933.
5 “I hope it will not be difficult for you”: William Phillips to Dodd, Jan. 3, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers.
6 “I confess I am at a loss”: Ibid.
7 “would limit a little the favoritisms”: Dodd to Roosevelt, Jan. 3, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers.
Chapter 30: Premonition
1 Early in January, Boris arranged a date: Once again I have relied heavily on Martha’s unpublished recollections about Boris, “Bright Journey into Darkness.” And once again, this memoir provides invaluable detail. When I say Boris smiled as he opened the door to his room at the embassy, it is because Martha says he smiled at that moment. Whether her recollections are truly accurate, who can say? But she was there, and I am more than happy to rely on her testimony. Box 14, Martha Dodd Papers.
2 if your goal was seduction: MacDonogh, 31.
Chapter 31: Night Terrors
1 “How is Uncle Adolf?”: Memorandum, David Schweitzer to Bernhard Kahn, March 5, 1934, vol. 10, pp. 20–30, Archives of the Holocaust. See also Grunberger, 27.
2 One German dreamed that an SA man: Peukert, 237.
3 “Here was an entire nation”: Brysac, 186.
4 “constant fear of arrest”: Johnson and Reuband, 288, 355, 360.
5 Some 32 percent recalled telling anti-Nazi jokes: Ibid., 357.
6 “whisper almost inaudibly”: 277. Martha does not refer to Mildred by name in this passage—in fact she never does so in her memoir, for fear of exposing Mildred and her nascent resistance group to danger—but many of Martha’s references in Through Embassy Eyes, whe
n triangulated with other material from her papers in the Library of Congress, clearly are to Mildred. Dodd, Embassy Eyes, 277.
7 One day he invited her to his office: Ibid., 53.
8 “a sinister smile crossed his lips”: Ibid., 55.
9 He filled a cardboard box with cotton: Ibid., 55.
10 “the German glance”: Evans, Power, 105; Grunberger, 338.
11 Whenever he appeared: Dodd, Embassy Eyes, 56, 145, 147, 274, 278.
Also, see “Bright Journey into Darkness,” Box 14, Martha Dodd Papers.
12 “There is no way on earth”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes, 277.
13 “As time went on, and the horror increased”: Ibid., 368.
14 rudimentary codes: Ibid., 276.
15 Her friend Mildred used a code for letters home: Brysac, 130.
Another example: In Beyond Tears, Irmgard Litten writes of the tribulations of her son, Hans, at the hands of the Gestapo, and tells how she deployed a code in which “the first letter of the fourth word of each sentence would serve as a key to the message.” Litten, 60.
16 “It seems absolutely unbelievable”: Peter Olden to Dodd, Jan. 30, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers.
17 “to find out the contents of confidential reports”: Raymond Geist to Hull, March 8, 1934, 125.1953/655, State/Decimal.
18 “I shall be walking at 11:30”: Dodd, Diary, 63.
19 “Could we meet tomorrow morning”: Sir Eric Phipps to Dodd, May 25, 1935, Box 47, W. E. Dodd Papers.
20 Despite the toll: Nonetheless, Messersmith claimed in his unpublished memoir that “on two occasions I was almost run over by a Gestapo car or an SS or SA car.” Both incidents occurred as he tried crossing the street to the Esplanade Hotel; both involved powerful cars speeding from a narrow alley. He believed the drivers had been waiting for him. Messersmith, “Additional paragraph to memorandum on attempts on my life,” unpublished memoir, Messersmith Papers.