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

by Erik Larson

Dodd charged that the veterans believed the only valid histories were those that held that the South “was altogether right in seceding from the Union.”

a sentiment pervasive in America, that Germany’s Jews were at least partly responsible for their own troubles.

Dodd partly embraced Crane’s notion that the Jews shared responsibility for their plight.

he did think the Germans had a valid grievance.

“The sun shines,” wrote Christopher Isherwood in his Berlin Stories, “and Hitler is the master of this city.

“I catch sight of my face in the mirror of a shop, and am shocked to see that I am smiling,” Isherwood wrote.

the German government had begun a campaign “to influence Americans coming to Germany in forming a favorable opinion concerning happenings in the country.”

how impossible it was for casual visitors to understand what was really happening in this new Germany.

The Dodds found many properties to choose from, though at first they failed to ask themselves why so many grand old mansions were available for lease so fully and luxuriously furnished,

Until this moment the fact that her parents’ ancestors had owned slaves had always seemed merely an interesting element of their personal history that testified to their deep roots in America.

the State Department’s main concern about Germany remained its huge debt to American creditors.

“I think for the moment he genuinely desires peace but it is a peace of his own kind and with an armed force constantly becoming more effective in reserve, in order to impose their will when it may become essential.”

After experiencing life in Nazi Germany, Thomas Wolfe wrote, “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.”

Rather, 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.”

Hitler wanted peace only to prepare for war.