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

by Erik Larson

In traveling about the city that day, Dodd was struck anew by the “extraordinary” German penchant for Christmas display. He saw Christmas trees everywhere, in every public square and every window. “One might think,” he wrote, “the Germans believed in Jesus or practiced his teachings!”

The German people, he said, would follow Hitler with absolute loyalty “provided they are allowed to have a share in the making and carrying out of decisions, provided every word of criticism is not immediately interpreted as malicious, and provided that despairing patriots are not branded as traitors.” The time had come, he proclaimed, “to silence doctrinaire fanatics.”