All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler

by Rebecca Donner

Kristallnacht marks the end of one thing and the beginning of something else. What it is the beginning of, no one at the U.S. embassy in Berlin can fathom. Consuls and diplomats pass each other in the halls, tongue-tied and shaken to the core. Ambassador Hugh Wilson is “recalled for consultations to Washington,” as the official line goes, which everyone at the embassy knows is a euphemism for got the hell out. He never returns. Scrambling to fill the void, the State Department gives Consul Prentiss Gilbert a hasty promotion to chargé d’affaires, a notch below ambassador. Gilbert dies of heart failure five months later.