In the Garden of Beasts

The other night my wife, Noell, and I attended a book discussion hosted by the UNCG libraries of Erik Larsen's In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. The book was an excellent read, and follows the exploits of William E. Dodd, the first American ambassador to a Germany ruled by Adolf Hitler, and his family. From Amazon.com:

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 surprisingly honorable 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 climatic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition

We were lucky enough to have Dr. Karl Schleunes, a professor emeritus of history at UNCG and an expert on early 20th century Germany, lead the discussion. As Dr. Schleunes summarized it, Dodd (who was FDR's third or fourth choice) was sent to do two things: (1) to negotiate the payment of U.S. loans to Germany (American banks had made huge loans to help bail out the German economy in the aftermath of World War I), and (2) to steer Hitler along a more moderate path. He then summarized the historical context that preceded Dodd's appointment.

Perhaps the two most important events were the German experience in World War I and the onset of depression in 1929. Germany ended the war having defeated one enemy in the East (Tsarist Russia) and, in the west, with her armies situated on foreign soil. The German people had to reconcile this with the fact that their government signed an armistice and then negotiated a treaty in 1919 that laid much of the blame for the war on Germany (a not unrealistic interpretation of events) and forced it to concede complete defeat. Germany was thus on the lookout for scapegoats. Dr. Schleunes also pointed out that in 1928, when the German economy was relatively strong, the Nazi party received a paltry 2.7% of the vote. However, in the years after 1929 (the onset of the depression in the U.S. and elsewhere), the Nazis secured ever larger percentages, eventually capturing 40% by the 1930s. Germans appeared, in other words, to be looking for a political party that could restore Germany to her rightful (as many saw it) place among the world powers while, at the same time, providing an explanation for the humiliating defeat in World War I.

This is the situation that Dodd, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, stepped into when he arrived as ambassador in 1933. The consensus among the discussion group was that, despite his best intentions and efforts, Dodd was mostly a failure as ambassador. Hitler obviously did not steer a moderate course, and Dodd resigned his post in 1934. There was quite a bit of discussion on why exactly he was unsuccessful. I think Noell has it mostly right when she argued that Dodd simply was not interested playing political games: in order for an ambassador to succeed, they need people to like them, they need to compromise, and they need to tell people what they want to hear. Dodd really didn't have any of these qualities (depending on how you feel, this could be to his credit or discredit). During his BookTV talk, Larsen was asked his thoughts on Dodd's performance. He gave Dodd a B+ grade, stating further that no one was likely to have succeeded in such a position (a point that the discussion group touched on as well).

One of the more eye-opening things about the book (at least for me) was the level of anti-Semitism within the U.S. State Department. Everyone talked about the so-called "Jewish Problem." One of the audience members, when referring to a particular individual in the book that committed suicide because of her Jewish ancestry, asked how one could tell whether or not someone was actually Jewish. This question became particularly important after the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which encroached on, or even eliminated in many cases, the rights of Jews in Germany. Apparently, one had to track down, and keep, the baptismal certificates of your grandparents (there is no equivalent in Judaism) to demonstrate that they were not Jewish. If one had two, three, or four Jewish grandparents, was part of a religious community (i.e., they went to Synagogue), or married to someone of Jewish ancestry, then they were considered Jewish. If one only had a single Jewish grandparent (and in possession of baptismal certificates for the other three), then they were not considered Jewish. (All of this, of course, rested on false assumption that there was some fixed, identifiable thing called the "Jewish race.") 

A couple of interesting tidbits that I learned during the discussion, thanks largely to Dr. Schleunes :

• Hitler did not actually become a German citizen until 1932, the year before he was named chancellor (he was Austrian)
• The Nazi government defended laws that outlawed marriage between Jews and non-Jewish Germans by citing American miscegenation legislation, which prohibited breeding between whites and blacks

Anyway, I highly recommend the book...