In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

Home > Nonfiction > In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin > Page 43
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin Page 43

by Erik Larson


  20 “Knowing his passion”: New York Times, Feb. 11, 1940.

  21 “the best ambassador”: Schultz, “Sigrid Schultz on Ambassador Dodd,” January 1956, Box 2, Schultz Papers.

  22 “Dodd was years ahead”: Wise, Challenging, 234.

  23 “I often think”: Messersmith, “Some Observations on the appointment of Dr. William Dodd, as Ambassador to Berlin,” 11, unpublished memoir, Messersmith Papers.

  24 “a renewed pride and faith”: Thomas Wolfe to Maxwell E. Perkins, May 23, 1935, Wolfe, Selected Letters, 228.

  25 “Above all, not too much zeal”: Brysac, 224.

  26 “Jewish controlled”: Stiller, 129; Weil, 60.

  27 “the man who pulled his people”: Stiller, 129.

  28 “idiotic things as a rule”: Weil, 60–61.

  Ultimately even Roosevelt was taken aback by Wilson’s attitude, as George Messersmith learned during a conversation he had with the president. By this time, Messersmith had been posted to Washington as assistant secretary of state. In a personal memorandum dated Feb. 1, 1938, Messersmith summarized the president’s remarks. “He”—Roosevelt—“said he was much surprised that Wilson had indicated that he thought we ought to lay less stress on the democracies and democratic principles.” To which Messersmith replied, “There were some things concerning human psychology, and particularly German, that were a strange country to Wilson.” The president, he noted, was “somewhat disturbed concerning Wilson’s ideas.” Messersmith, Memorandum, Feb. 1, 1938, Messersmith Papers.

  29 “I do think the chances”: William C. Bullitt to Roosevelt, Dec. 7, 1937, Bullitt, 242.

  30 “But history,” wrote Dodd’s friend: New York Times, March 2, 1941.

  EPILOGUE: THE QUEER BIRD IN EXILE

  1 “If there were any logic”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes, 228.

  2 “I told her that if she published my letters”: Messersmith, “Goering,” unpublished memoir, 7–8, Messersmith Papers.

  3 Martha at last created her own successful salon: Vanden Heuvel, 248.

  4 “growing effectiveness”: Martha Dodd, unpublished memoir, 4, Box 13, Martha Dodd Papers.

  At its peak, the network included an operator in Hitler’s wire room and a senior officer in the Luftwaffe; Arvid Harnack became an adviser to Hitler’s economics minister.

  5 By now, however, Martha knew: Falk Harnack, “Notes on the Execution of Dr. Arvid Harnack,” Box 13, Martha Dodd Papers; Axel von Harnack, “Arvid and Mildred Harnack,” translation of article in Die Gegenwart, Jan. 1947, 15–18, in Box 13, Martha Dodd Papers; Falk Harnack, “2nd visit to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt,” Box 13, Martha Dodd Papers. Also see Rürup, 163.

  The network got wind of Germany’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union and tried to notify Stalin. Upon receiving this information, Stalin told its bearer, “You can send your ‘source’ from the German air force staff to his much fucked mother! This is not a ‘source’ but a disinformer.” Brysac, 277.

  6 “And I have loved Germany so”: Falk Harnack to Martha, Dec. 29, 1947, Box 13, Martha Dodd Papers. Arvid, in a closing letter to “my beloved ones,” wrote, “I should have liked to have seen you all again, but that is unfortunately not possible.” n.d., Box 13, Martha Dodd Papers.

  7 “a gifted, clever and educated woman”: Weinstein and Vassiliev, 51, 62.

  8 “She considers herself a Communist”: Ibid., 62; Vassiliev, Notebooks, White Notebook #2, 61.

  9 Through Martha’s efforts: Haynes et al., 440; Weinstein and Vassiliev, 70–71; Alfred Stern to Max Delbrück, Nov. 23, 1970, Box 4, Martha Dodd Papers; Vanden Heuvel, 223, 252.

  When toilets broke the Sterns called the Czech foreign minister to effect repairs; they owned paintings by Cézanne, Monet, and Renoir. Vanden Heuvel, 252.

  10 They bought a new black Mercedes.: Martha to “David,” Feb. 28, 1958, Box 1, Martha Dodd Papers.

  11 Martha became “obsessed”: Alfred Stern to Max Delbrück, Nov. 23, 1970, Box 4, Martha Dodd Papers.

  12 “We can’t say we like it here”: Martha to Audrey Fuss, July 25, 1975, Box 5, Martha Dodd Papers.

  13 After two years in Cologne: Metcalfe, 288.

  14 “It was,” she wrote, “one of the ugliest”: Martha Dodd, “Chapter 30, August 1968,” unpublished memoir, 5, Box 12, Martha Dodd Papers.

  15 “Max, my love”: Martha to Delbrück, April 27, 1979, Box 4, Martha Dodd Papers; Delbrück to Martha, Nov. 15, 1978, Box 4, Martha Dodd Papers.

  16 “that ass”: Martha to Sigrid Schultz, April 25, 1970, Box 13, Martha Dodd Papers.

  17 “a real buffoon”: Martha to Philip Metcalfe, April 16, 1982, Box 7, Martha Dodd Papers.

  18 Bassett confessed he had destroyed: George Bassett Roberts to Martha, Nov. 23, 1971, Box 8, Martha Dodd Papers.

  19 “Such love letters!”: Martha to George Bassett Roberts, Feb. 19, 1976, Box 8, Martha Dodd Papers.

  20 “One thing is sure”: Martha to George Bassett Roberts, Nov. 1, “more or less,” 1971, Box 8, Martha Dodd Papers.

  21 In 1979 a federal court: New York Times, March 23 and March 26, 1979.

  22 Bill Jr. had died: New York Times, Oct. 19, 1952, and April 22, 1943.

  23 “Bill was a very swell guy”: Martha to Audrey Fuss, Oct. 31, 1952, Box 1, Martha Dodd Papers.

  24 “Where do you think we should die”: Martha to Letitia Ratner, March 9, 1984, Box 8, Martha Dodd Papers.

  25 “Nowhere could be as lonely”: Martha to Van and Jennie Kaufman, March 6, 1989, Martha Dodd Papers.

  26 He had forsaken the magnificent copper beech: New York Times, Sept. 4, 1996.

  CODA: “TABLE TALK”

  1 Years after the war, a cache of documents: Hitler, 102. Hitler’s off-the-cuff remarks, though passed along with inevitable modifications, provide a chilling and compelling glimpse into his mind.

  Epigraph

  1 Isherwood, Visit, 308.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ARCHIVAL SOURCES

  Carr, Wilbur J. Papers. Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Washington, D.C.

  Dodd, Martha. Papers. Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Washington, D.C.

  Dodd, William E. Papers. Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Washington, D.C.

  Harnack, Mildred Fish. Papers. University of Wisconsin Library. Madison, Wisc.

  Hull, Cordell. Papers. Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Washington, D.C.

  Kaltenborn, H. V. Papers. Wisconsin Historical Society. Madison, Wisc.

  Lochner, Louis P. Papers. Wisconsin Historical Society. Madison, Wisc.

  Messersmith, George S. Papers. Special Collections, University of Delaware. Newark, Del.

  Moffat, Jay Pierrepont. Diaries. Houghton Library. Harvard University. Cambridge, Mass.

  Phillips, William. Diaries. Houghton Library. Harvard University. Cambridge, Mass.

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. William E. Dodd Correspondence. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library. Hyde Park, N.Y. Correspondence online. (Roosevelt Correspondence)

  Schultz, Sigrid. Papers. Wisconsin Historical Society. Madison, Wisc.

  U.S. Department of State Decimal Files. National Archives and Records Administration. College Park, Md. (State/Decimal)

  U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1933 and 1934. Digital Collection. University of Wisconsin. (State/Foreign)

  Vassiliev, Alexander. The Vassiliev Notebooks. Cold War International History Project. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Washington, D.C.

  Venona Intercepts. National Security Agency.

  White, John C. Papers. Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Washington, D.C.

  Wilder, Thornton. Papers. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University. New Haven, Conn.

  BOOKS AND PERIODICALS

  Adlon, Hedda. Hotel Adlon: The Life and Death of a Great Hotel. London: Barrie Books, 1958.

  American Jewish Congress. Hitlerism and the American Jewish Congress. New York: American Jewish Congress, 1934.


  Andersen, Hartvig. The Dark City. London: Cresset Press, 1954.

  Andreas-Friedrich, Ruth. Berlin Underground: 1938–1945. Translated by Barrows Mussey. New York: Paragon House, 1989.

  “Angora: Pictorial Records of an SS Experiment.” Wisconsin Magazine of History 50, no. 4 (Summer 1967): 392–413.

  Anhalt, Diana. A Gathering of Fugitives: American Political Expatriates in Mexico 1948–1965. Santa Maria, Calif.: Archer Books, 2001.

  Anthes, Louis. “Publicly Deliberative Drama: The 1934 Mock Trial of Adolf Hitler for ‘Crimes Against Civilization.’ ” American Journal of Legal History 42, no. 4 (October 1998): 391–410.

  Archives of the Holocaust. Vol. 1: American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia, part 1, 1932–1939. Edited by Jack Sutters. New York: Garland Publishing, 1990.

  _____. Vol. 2: Berlin Document Center, part 1. Edited by Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton. New York: Garland Publishing, 1992.

  _____. Vol. 2: Berlin Document Center, part 2. Edited by Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton. New York: Garland Publishing, 1992.

  _____. Vol. 3: Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, 1933–1939. Edited by Francis R. Nicosia. New York: Garland Publishing, 1990.

  _____. Vol. 7: Columbia University Library, New York: The James G. McDonald Papers. Edited by Karen J. Greenberg. New York: Garland Publishing, 1990.

  _____. Vol. 10: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, New York, part 1. Edited by Sybil Milton and Frederick D. Bogin. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995.

  _____. Vol. 17: American Jewish Committee, New York. Edited by Frederick D. Bogin. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993.

  Augustine, Dolores L. “The Business Elites of Hamburg and Berlin.” Central European History 24, no. 2 (1991): 132–46.

  Baedeker, Karl. Berlin and Its Environs. Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1910.

  _____. Northern Germany. Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1925.

  Bailey, Fred Arthur. William Edward Dodd: The South’s Yeoman Scholar. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997.

  Baird, Jay W. “Horst Wessel, and the Myth of Resurrection and Return.” Journal of Contemporary History 17, no. 4 (October 1982): 633–50.

  Bankier, David. The Germans and the Final Solution. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1992.

  Bendiner, Robert. The Riddle of the State Department. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942.

  Benson, Robert L. “The Venona Story.” Center for Cryptologic History. Washington, D.C.: National Security Agency, n.d.

  Berard, Armand. Un Ambassadeur se Souvient: Au Temps du Danger Allemand. Paris: Plon, 1976.

  Bielenberg, Christabel. The Past Is Myself. London: Chatto & Windus, 1968.

  Birchall, Frederick T. The Storm Breaks: A Panorama of Europe and the Forces That Have Wrecked Its Peace. New York: Viking, 1940.

  Bredohl, Thomas M. “Some Thoughts on the Political Opinions of Hans Fallada: A Response to Ellis Shookman.” German Studies Review 15, no. 3 (October 1992): 525–45.

  Breitman, Richard, and Alan M. Kraut. American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

  Brenner, David. “Out of the Ghetto and into the Tiergarten: Redefining the Jewish Parvenu and His Origins in Ost und West.” German Quarterly 66, no. 2 (Spring, 1993): 176–94.

  Brownell, Will, and Richard N. Billings. So Close to Greatness: A Biography of William C. Bullitt. New York: Macmillan, 1987.

  Brysac, Shareen Blair. Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

  Bullitt, William C. For the President: Personal and Secret. Edited by Orville H. Bullitt. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.

  Bullock, Alan. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. 1962. New York: HarperCollins, 1991 (reprint).

  Burden, Hamilton T. The Nuremberg Party Rallies: 1923–39. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967.

  Burke, Bernard V. Ambassador Frederic Sackett and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic, 1930–1933. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

  Casey, Steven. “Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl and the ‘S-Project,’ June 1942–June 1944.” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 3 (2000): 339–59.

  Cerruti, Elisabetta. Ambassador’s Wife. New York: Macmillan, 1953.

  Chapman, Cynthia C. “Psychobiographical Study of the Life of Sigrid Schultz.”

  Ph.D. diss., Florida Institute of Technology, 1991. (In Schultz Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.)

  Chernow, Ron. The Warburgs. New York: Random House, 1993.

  Clyman, Rhea. “The Story That Stopped Hitler.” In How I Got That Story. Edited by David Brown and W. Richard Bruner. Overseas Press Club of America. New York: Dutton, 1967.

  Cockburn, Claud. In Time of Trouble. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956.

  Conradi, Peter. Hitler’s Piano Player: The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hanfstaengl, Confidant of Hitler, Ally of FDR. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2004.

  Craig, Gordon A., and Felix Gilbert, eds. The Diplomats, 1919–1939. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953.

  Crankshaw, Edward. Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny. New York: Viking, 1956.

  Dallek, Robert. Democrat and Diplomat: The Life of William E. Dodd. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

  Dalley, Jan. Diana Mosley. New York: Knopf, 2000.

  Dallin, David J. Soviet Espionage. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1955.

  Daum, Andreas W., and Christof Mauch, eds. Berlin-Washington, 1800–2000: Capital Cities, Cultural Representation, and National Identities. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

  “Death of Auntie Voss.” Time, April 9, 1934.

  de Jonge, Alex. The Weimar Chronicle: Prelude to Hitler. New York: Paddington, 1978.

  Deschner, Gunther. Heydrich: The Pursuit of Total Power. 1977. London: Orbis, 1981 (reprint).

  Diels, Rudolf. Lucifer Ante Portas. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1950.

  Dimitroff, Georgi. Dimitroff’s Letters from Prison. London: Victor Gollancz, 1935.

  Dippel, John V. H. Bound Upon a Wheel of Fire: Why So Many German Jews Made the Tragic Decision to Remain in Nazi Germany. New York: Basic Books, 1996.

  Divine, Robert. “Franklin D. Roosevelt and Collective Security, 1933.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 48, no. 1 (June 1961): 42–59.

  Dodd, Christopher J., and Lary Bloom. Letters from Nuremberg: My Father’s Narrative of a Quest for Justice. New York: Crown Publishing, 2007.

  Dodd, Martha. Through Embassy Eyes. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939.

  _____. Sowing the Wind. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1945.

  Dodd, William E. Ambassador Dodd’s Diary. Edited by William E. Dodd Jr. and Martha Dodd. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941.

  Engelmann, Bernt. In Hitler’s Germany: Daily Life in the Third Reich. Translated by Krishna Winston. New York: Pantheon, 1986.

  Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power 1933–1939. New York: Penguin, 2005.

  _____. The Third Reich at War 1939–1945. London: Allen Lane / Penguin, 2008.

  Feingold, Henry L. The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938–1945. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1970.

  Ferdinand, Prince Louis. The Rebel Prince: Memoirs of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952.

  Fest, Joachim C. The Face of the Third Reich. New York: Pantheon, 1970.

  Flynn, Edward J. You’re the Boss. New York: Viking Press, 1947.

  François-Poncet, Andre. The Fateful Years: Memoirs of a French Ambassador in Berlin, 1931–38. Translated by Jacques Le Clercq. London: Victor Gollancz, 1949.

  Friedlander, Henry. “Step by Step: The Expansion of Murder, 1939–1941.” German Studies Review 17, no. 3 (October 1994): 495–507.

  Friedrich, Otto. Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920’s. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

  Fritzsche, Peter. Life and Death in the Third Reich. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Universi
ty Press/Belknap Press, 2008.

  Fromm, Bella. Blood and Banquets: A Berlin Social Diary. New York: Harper, 1942.

  Fuller, Helga. Don’t Lose Your Head: Coming of Age in Berlin, Germany 1933–1945. Seattle: Peanut Butter Publishing, 2002.

  Gallo, Max. The Night of Long Knives. Translated by Lily Emmet. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.

  Gay, Peter. My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998.

  Gellately, Robert. “The Gestapo and German Society: Political Denunciation in the Gestapo Case Files.” Journal of Modern History 60, no. 4 (December 1988): 654–94.

  _____. The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–1945. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1990.

  Gellman, Irwin F. Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

  “Germany: Head into Basket.” Time, January 22, 1934.

  Gilbert, G. M. Nuremberg Diary. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1947.

  Gill, Anton. A Dance Between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars. London: John Murray, 1993.

  Gisevius, Hans Bernd. To the Bitter End. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1947.

  Glass, Derek, Dietmar Rosler, and John J. White. Berlin: Literary Images of a City. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1989.

  Goebel, Rolf J. “Berlin’s Architectural Citations: Reconstruction, Simulation, and the Problem of Historical Authenticity.” PMLA 118, no. 5 (October 2003): 1268–89.

  Goeschel, Christian. Suicide in Nazi Germany. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2009.

  Goldensohn, Leon. The Nuremberg Interviews. Edited by Robert Gellately. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

  Goran, Morris. The Story of Fritz Haber. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967.

  Gordon, Mel. Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin. Los Angeles: Feral House, 2006.

  Graebner, Norman A. An Uncertain Tradition: American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961.

 

‹ Prev