Okay, I know that I am behind. What can I say – I am at that point in the semester when you just start to get somewhat, but not desperately behind because there are a lot of weeks left. Work travel, fun travel – I slacked off. Dangerous – I have to read quite a bit this month to stay on target.
But I do have a new book to add – In the Garden of the Beasts – Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson, the description of the tenure of Ambassador William Dodd and his family in Berlin from 1933 to 1937. So here’s a little video to get us all in the mood.
I know a lot about Germany in the 1930s. When I arrived at Pitzer College in 1968- one of the more out there lefty colleges in the 1960s – it was one of the first colleges to experiment with freshman seminars. I was assigned to a seminar on Hitler – trust me, I didn’t request it. All of us who were assigned to this particular seminar were part of another experiment – they had us all room on the same floor of our dorm which became affectionately known as Hitler Hall. Our common room was adorned with posters about Nazi Germany. My friend Maureen who has commented on these posts so eloquently joined the college in the spring semester and was quite baffled by the decor on the first day.
Like so many Jews of my generation – the first to be born after the war – the story of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany was one of the major narratives of my childhood. Today, I doubt that Jewish families discuss genocide much with 1st graders but because the war was so recent and such a big part of our parents’ lives, we heard about it everywhere. We lived in an apartment in East Rogers Park in Chicago and I somehow had it in my mind that Hitler was alive and living in the gangway between our apartment and the one next door. (When I told this story to my shrink, she muttered something about Jewish girls and their fathers, but what she meant by that is still a mystery.) I described this to my friend Nancy when sleeping at her house when we were 15 and the fear so unnerved her she couldn’t fall asleep. It’s a sign of how much this history became a part of my consciousness that when I meet someone new, I still place them in one of two categories – would I be safe hiding in their attic or not?
So I have read and thought about this topic quite a bit. In the Garden of the Beasts is a wonderfully readable account of an accidental ambassador to Germany at the start of Hitler’s rise to power. William Dodd was a University of Chicago civil war historian who only wanted to finish his major work – a history of the “Old South” – who, because of the unpopularity of the Berlin post (Roosevelt offered it to at least ten others first) and the fact that he had some influential friends and spoke German fluently, ended up as the U.S. ambassador to Germany. He is the exact antithesis of the usual wealthy and elitist State Department types and is generally reviled by them as he drives around Berlin in an old Chevrolet he ships from home. His daughter, the other major character in the family, uses much of her time in Berlin to sleep with a really astonishing range of characters, that includes the author Thomas Wolfe, the head of the Gestapo, and a Soviet intelligence agent. In a match that eHarmony would hopefully never make, someone even tries to fix her up with Hitler but it just doesn’t take off.
The really fascinating part of this book is the description of Germany as it slips into terror and the response of Germans, the diplomatic corps, and the appalling U.S. State Department to the Storm Troopers, the Night of the Long Knives, the increasing restrictions on Jews, and the clear military build up of Germany. Dodd’s development from a low-key observer to a ferocious critic of the Nazis parallels the descent of Germany into psychotic fascism. This book is not an academic exploration of how Hitler rose to power, or how a society adapts to daily terror. It doesn’t answer how or why not only Germans but other Western governments could not see what was right in front of them. But by telling the story of those years through the eyes of a decent and scholarly man In the Garden of the Beasts provides a fascinating description of what the day-to-day life felt like – a juxtaposition of the “normal” with horror and repression.
100b00ks 
I love your reviews, Roberta. Your writing is delightful. And this book is going on my To Read list.
I read this book several months ago and was totally engrossed in Ambassador Dodd’s transformation. One of the threads I picked up on was the hold American bankers had on the subdued American response to Hitler’s rise. They didn’t want to jeopardise repayment of war repartions and loans to Germany and thus greatly influenced the US State Department’s response to what was happening in Germany. It is a lesson for today’s economic crisis, as well. The Wall Street protestors have been long overdue!
I’d forgotten about the experiment of Hitler Hall. Who in their right mind? Another friend, Maia’s generation, just read this, too. Thank you, Bert, for these reviews.
Hi Roberta,
I read about this book and immediately wanted to read it! Your review makes me want to rejigger my reading list and move this book into the No. 1 spot! My husband read it and really liked it also. He said it is much better than Larson’s earlier book, “Devil in the White City.”
I think we were younger than 15 when you told me that story, Roberta! And I think I was sleeping at YOUR house, so of course Hitler might have been on a tree trunk outside your bedroom window. It is bizarre how the story of the Holocaust permeated our childhoods, isn ‘t it?
I’m loving your blog entries and I will definitely be reading this book…you are giving so many of us so many wonderful referrals for excellent reads. Thank you so much for doing this 1
Loved the review, Roberta, but I’d say that Dodd was really only a half-decent man. He was far too narrow in his outlook — I mean really Europe is crumbling around him and he’s concerned about the cost of paperclips? I was also put off by the pervasive anti-semitism, which he seemed to share, at least passively. And speaking of passive — a truly decent man/parent would have shipped that awful daughter home on the first boat.
I agree with you. Dodd’s anti-semitism, while relatively passive, was disturbing though I thought he went through some transformation. And on the daughter you are absolutely correct. What would a 24 hour news cycle have done with her?
Transformation? more likely things got so bad became so bad that he finally had to react. There were real heroes in Berlin at the time — he wasn’t one of them. That Larson really wanted him to be a hero weakens the book