30 Mar In the Garden of Beasts
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
(2011) In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson is a true story about William Dodd, the American Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937.
I was immediately drawn to this book because of its author. Erik Larson wrote one of my favorite historical books, The Devil in the White City: Murder Magic, and Madness in the Fair That Changed America. It’s all about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and a serial killer who was out and about at the time.
Back to William Dodd and his family. Much of the book is about his daughter Martha. Infamous would be a good word for her. She had affairs with Germans, Russians and who knows who else. Eventually (once she had divorced her first husband) she married Alfred Stern, a wealthy New Yorker, and the two of them were known to be Soviet spies during the Cold War. They settled in Prague and never came back to the United States.
That’s way too much about Martha. The best part of the book was reading about the growth of Hitler’s Nazi Party in those pre-war years and how Ambassador Dodd reacted to them. It seemed that few in Washington took him seriously. Before we were at war with Germany, no one wanted to make Hitler mad.
The Dodds were closely involved with so many of the notorious Germans that were rising in the ranks … Göring, Röhm, Diels. They were at the same banquets, the same happy hours. I enjoyed learning about the city Berlin, and I dreaded reading about the gradual regulations against the Jews. Too many of them thought that “this too shall pass.”
One of Martha’s good friends was Mildred Fish-Harnack, the only American sentenced to death by Hitler. In 1943 she was beheaded. Of course, by 1943 anyone in Germany who spoke out against the Reich was in mortal danger. I remember watching an excellent documentary about Mildred Fish-Harnack.
An excellent historical read, made interesting because of the author’s access to so many letters written by the parties.
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin at amazon.com
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