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

by Erik Larson

Now here was the nation’s vice-chancellor claiming not to understand why the United States had entered the world war against Germany.

Dodd looked at Papen. “I can tell you that,” he said, his voice just as level and even as before. “It was through the sheer, consummate stupidity of German diplomats.”

“Berlin is a skeleton which aches in the cold,”

“In those days,” she wrote, “it was heresy to think of electric lights for a tree.” She and her helpers kept pails of water nearby.

She alluded to her father’s sense that a conspiracy was mounting against him from within the State Department. “Mazes of hate and intrigue in our Embassy have as yet failed to trap us,” she wrote.

THOUGH MARTHA’S REFERENCE to “mazes of hate” was a bit strong, Dodd had indeed begun to sense that a campaign was gathering against him within the State Department and that its participants were the men of wealth and tradition. He suspected also that they were assisted by one or more people on his own staff providing intelligence in sotto voce fashion about him and the operation of the embassy. Dodd grew increasingly suspicious and guarded, so much so that he began writing his most sensitive letters in longhand because he did not trust the embassy stenographers to keep their contents confidential.

He had reason to be concerned. Messersmith continued his back-channel correspondence with Undersecretary Phillips. Raymond Geist, Messersmith’s number-two officer (another Harvard man) also kept watch on the affairs of Dodd

Geist provided a wide range of intelligence, including details about unruly parties thrown by Martha and Bill that sometimes lasted until five in the morning. “On one occasion the hilarity was so great,” Geist told Carr, that it drew a written complaint to the consulate.

“The Ambassador is mild mannered and unimpressive whereas the only kind of person who can deal successfully with the Nazi Government is a man of intelligence and force who is willing to assume a dictatorial attitude with the Government and insist upon his demands being met. Mr. Dodd is unable to do this.”

During one of these visits to Phillips’s office, Messersmith provided what Phillips described in his diary as “an inside glimpse of conditions in the Embassy in Berlin.” Here too the subject of Martha and Bill came up. “Apparently,” Phillips wrote, “the Ambassador’s son and daughter are not assisting the Embassy in any way and are too much inclined to running around to night clubs with certain Germans of not particularly good standing and with the press.”

The way was clear for the restoration of Germany. As the year opened, Germany did seem on a superficial level to have grown more stable, much to the disappointment of foreign observers and diplomats who still nurtured the belief that economic pressures would cause the collapse of the Hitler regime.

HITLER’S CONTINUED PROTESTATIONS of peace constituted the most blatant official deception. Anyone who made an effort to travel the countryside outside Berlin knew it at once.

“Before the end of 1933, during my frequent excursions, I discovered outside of Berlin on nearly every road leaving from the city new large military establishments, including training fields, airports, barracks, proving grounds, anti-aircraft stations and the like.”

On New Year’s Eve he sent Röhm a warm greeting, published in the press, in which he praised his longtime ally for building so effective a legion. “You must know that I am grateful to destiny, which has allowed me to call such a man as you my friend and brother-in-arms.” Soon afterward, however, Hitler ordered Rudolf Diels to compile a report on the outrages committed by the SA and on the homosexual practices of Röhm and his circle. Diels later claimed that Hitler also asked him to kill Röhm and certain other “traitors” but that he refused.

Dodd acknowledged Congress’s reluctance to become entangled abroad but added, “I do, however, think facts count; even if we hate them.”

Although Phillips and Moffat were disenchanted with Dodd, they recognized that they had limited power over him because of his relationship with Roosevelt, which allowed Dodd to skirt the State Department and communicate directly with the president whenever he wished.

“As usual,” Moffat wrote in his diary, “he is dissatisfied with everything.” In one letter Dodd had described two of his embassy officers as “competent but unqualified”—prom...

Dodd wrote a letter to Roosevelt that he deemed so sensitive he not only wrote it in longhand but also sent it first to his friend Colonel House, so that House could give it to the president in person. Dodd urged that Phillips be removed from his position as undersecretary and given a different sort of posting, perhaps as an ambassador somewhere. He suggested Paris and added that Phillips’s departure from Washington “would limit a little the favoritisms that prevail there.” He wrote, “Do not think I have any personal axe to grind or any personal grievances about anything. I hope”—hope—“it is the public service alone that motivates [this] letter.”

The restaurant endured, however, as if unmindful that anything had changed in the world outside.

The lives of the Dodds underwent a subtle change. Where once they had felt free to say anything they wished within their own home, now they experienced a new and unfamiliar constraint.

“Here was an entire nation … infested with the contagion of an ever-present fear. It was a kind of creeping paralysis which twisted and blighted all human relations.”

most Germans experienced a kind of echo of normality. There arose among them a recognition that their ability to lead normal lives “depended on their acceptance of the Nazi regime and their keeping their heads down and not acting conspicuously.” If they fell into line, allowed themselves to be “coordinated,” they would be safe—though the survey also found a surprising tendency among non-Jewish Berliners to occasionally step out of line.

It was Rudolf Diels who first conveyed to Martha the unfunny reality of Germany’s emerging culture of surveillance. One day he invited her to his office and with evident pride showed her an array of equipment used for recording telephone conversations. He led her to believe that eavesdropping apparatus had indeed been installed in the chancery of the U.S. embassy and in her home.

He filled a cardboard box with cotton, Martha recalled, and used it to cover his own telephone whenever a conversation in the library shifted to confidential territory.

Berliners came to practice what became known as “the German glance”—der deutsche Blick—a quick look in all directions when encountering a friend or acquaintance on the street.

The Dodds’ home life became less and less spontaneous. They grew especially to distrust their butler, Fritz, who had a knack for moving soundlessly.

“There is no way on earth one can describe in the coldness of words on paper what this espionage can do to the human being,” Martha wrote.

Martha eventually found herself deploying rudimentary codes in communications with friends, an increasingly common practice throughout Germany. Her friend Mildred used a code for letters home in which she crafted sentences that meant the opposite of what the words themselves indicated.

Dodd realized that the best way to have a truly private conversation with anyone was to meet in the Tiergarten for a walk,

WHETHER LISTENING DEVICES TRULY laced the embassy and the Dodds’ home cannot be known, but the salient fact was that the Dodds came to see Nazi surveillance as omnipresent.

Now, to no one in particular, Röhm said, “That was a new Versailles Treaty.” A few moments later, he added, “Hitler? If only we could get rid of that limp rag.” The SA men lingered a while longer, trading angry reactions to Hitler’s speech—all this witnessed by a senior SA officer named Viktor Lutze, who found it deeply troubling. A few days later, Lutze reported the episode to Rudolf Hess, at this point one of Hitler’s closest aides, who urged Lutze to see Hitler in person and tell him everything. Upon hearing Lutze’s account, Hitler replied, “We’ll have to let the thing ripen.”