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

by Erik Larson

DODD BELIEVED THAT one artifact of past excess—“another curious hangover,” he told Phillips—was that his embassy had too many personnel, in particular, too many who were Jewish. “We have six or eight members of the ‘chosen race’ here who serve in most useful but conspicuous positions,” he wrote. Several were his best workers, he acknowledged, but he feared that their presence on his staff impaired the embassy’s relationship with Hitler’s government and thus impeded the day-to-day operation of the embassy. “I would not for a moment consider transfer. However, the number is too great and one of them”—he meant Julia Swope Lewin, the embassy receptionist—“is so ardent and in evidence every day that I hear echoes from semi-official circles.” He also cited the example of the embassy’s bookkeeper, who, while “very competent,” was also “one of the ‘Chosen People’ and that puts him at some disadvantage with the Banks here.”

Dodd following Hitler's lead.