TRAITOR’S ODYSSEY by Brendan McNally

Martha Dodd was good at embarrassing people. So much so, that even this wealthy socialite-turned-Communist could not persuade the Powers-That-Be in Moscow that they should actually hire her to do a little spy craft.

Martha Eccles Dodd (1908-1990) is best known for being the only daughter of US Ambassador William E. Dodd (1869-1940), who was sent to the “quiet enclave” of Germany in 1933, where he would have plenty of time to finish his tome on the History of the South.

It is not clear why Presdent Roosevelt hired William Dodd for this position. Dodd was a well-regarded academic who specialized in the American South. Somewhat improbably, he received his doctorate from the University of Leipzig in 1900, based on a thesis (in German) concerning Thomas Jefferson’s 1796 return to politics following a three-year hiatus. So he could speak German, although by 1933, one imagines that it might have been a bit rusty. But like many academics, Dodd lived in a bubble that allowed him to carry out his research and teaching duties at various universities around he country, including Randlolph-Macon college in Virginia, The University of Chicago, and American University in Washington DC. Protected by his position as University professor, he never had to learn to handle people, and he had a tendency to be naïve.

Anyone reading this who knows what was happening in Germany in 1933, can only shake their heads in wonder at this spectacularly poor choice for US Ambassador to Germany. For, in January 1933, Adolf Hitler ascended to power, and became the driving force in German politics for the next twelve years. Author Brendan McNally, who wrote this biography of Martha Dodd titled TRAITOR’S ODYSSEY, speculates that one of Roosevelt’s flunkies picked the wrong Dodd. The Dodd they should have had for US Ambassador to Berlin was Walter F. Dodd, a professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. I have no way of knowing whether this story is true, but it does tell us that at least some people thought that William E. Dodd was clueless when it came to managing the American Embassy in Berlin.

When William E. Dodd arrived in Berlin in August 1933, he brought his family with him. This included his quiet and retiring wife Mattie, his son Bill Jr. and daughter Martha. Of the four, Martha seems to have had the most colorful personality. Reading between the lines, we can see that she was the apple of her father’s eye. More startling is the fact that Ambassador Dodd apparently had no problem at all in letting his daughter read out classified information that regularly arrived in his inbox. And that is how Martha started spying, by spreading American secrets amongst her enormous coterie of friends in Berlin. 

But what really troubled so many in the American Embassy was Martha’s numerous affairs. True, she was only twenty-five years old when she arrived in Berlin in 1933. But the zest with which she pursued every available bachelor surprised me. Somehow, she managed not to get pregnant, which was just as well because birth control in the 1930s certainly wasn’t fail-safe. Of course, Martha showed appalling judgement by hanging out with Nazis of every stripe, including officers in the SS. But something seems to have happened to her during her first year in Berlin, which turned her from a full-throated fan of Adolf Hitler into a Communist spy.

Of course she was recruited by one of her numerous lovers, Boris Vinagradov. Martha, naturally curious, decided that it would be a marvelous idea for her to visit the Soviet Union and see things for herself. Exactly one week after the Night of Long Knives, Martha flew alone to Moscow, having booked a vacation package with Intourist. Martha’s stated reason for going was “to see if there was any truth in the ridiculous stories circulating in Berlin about famines in the Soviet Union which caused Russians to eat babies.” Her real reason for going was to introduce herself to the top brass in Moscow.

And this is how she managed to embarrass her potential Russian handlers, for they were not at all pleased that this splashy woman had gone off-piste, and ~ against their instructions ~ had booked her own trip, suddenly appearing in Moscow without any warning. The view they took was that this woman was difficult to control, and therefore not good spy material. Martha’s jaunt to Moscow didn’t please the Nazis either, who were now wondereing exactly where her loyalties lay. None of this, of course, helped the cause of America in Berlin. 

Eventually, William Dodd’s tour of duty came to and end, and in December 1937, the Dodd family returned to the United States. Somehow, Martha very quickly found a wealthy husband in the shape of Alfred K Stern, and they married in the summer of 1938. War erupted in Europe in September 1939, but the United States did not join until after Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

So, what did Martha do during the Second World War? The answer is not much. Slhe seems to have spent the entire war waiting for Moscow to contact her and give her various spying jobs. But that never happened. Even the wealth of her husband, who so generously contributed to the Communist cause, didn’t sway her handlers in Moscow. It seems that the higher-ups just decided that Martha was more trouble than she was worth. And even worse, her actions might jeopardise the spy networks that the Russians had so painstakingly set up in the Untied States over many years.

And so Martha led the privileged life of wealthy socialite during the Second World War. After the war, in typical Martha fashion, she scuppered the presidential aspirations of Henry Wallace, Roosevelt’s last vice-president, who was running as a third party candidate. Wallace’s team decided that he should go on an extensive tour of the Middle East and Europe in the spring of 1948. Somehow, Martha got herself involved in organizing the French leg of the tour. Even though instructed on how important it was to have a hosting delegation that represented many different viewpoints and voices, Martha saw to it that the French hosts who met Wallace, were actually Communist sympathizers. Wallace never regained his reputation or control of his candidacy, and his political aspirations fizzled. Reading this, one has to applaud the shrewdness of the Russians who believed Martha to be too hot to handle way back in 1938.

The book then takes us through Martha’s escape from the United States in 1957, with wealthy husband in tow. First, they went to Mexico, then when that became too hot (with the FBI bearing down on the Mexican Federales), they escaped to Prague. Both Alfred and Martha were never allowed to come back to the United States. Both died in Prague, he in 1986 just before the wall came down, she in 1990, just afterwards. 

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