Erik Larson - In the Garden of Beasts

On Tuesday, August 22, Dodd cabled the State Department to ask for advice. “I received a non-committal reply,” he wrote in his diary. The department promised to support whatever decision he made. “I at once made up my mind not to go, even if all the other ambassadors went.” The following Saturday he notified the German foreign office that he would not be attending. “I declined it on the grounds of pressure of work, though the main reason was my disapproval of a government invitation to a Party convention,” he wrote. “I was also sure the behavior of the dominant group would be embarrassing.”

An idea occurred to Dodd: if he could persuade his fellow ambassadors from Britain, Spain, and France also to rebuff the invitation, their mutual action would send a potent yet suitably indirect message of unity and disapproval.

Dodd first met with the Spanish ambassador, a session that Dodd described as “very pleasantly unconventional” because the Spaniard likewise had not yet been accredited. Even so, both approached the issue with caution. “I implied that I would not go,” Dodd wrote. He provided the Spanish ambassador with a couple of historical precedents for snubbing such an invitation. The Spanish ambassador agreed that the rally was a party affair and not a state event but did not reveal what he planned to do.

Dodd learned, however, that he did at last send his regrets, as did the ambassadors from France and Britain, each citing an inescapable commitment of one kind or another.

Officially the State Department endorsed Dodd’s demurral; unofficially, his decision rankled a number of senior officers, including Undersecretary Phillips and Western European affairs chief Jay Pierrepont Moffat. They viewed Dodd’s decision as needlessly provocative, further proof that his appointment as ambassador had been a mistake. Forces opposed to Dodd began to coalesce.

In late August, President Hindenburg at last returned to Berlin from his convalescence at his country estate. And so, on Wednesday, August 30, 1933, Dodd put on a formal grasshopper cutaway and top hat and drove to the presidential palace to present his credentials.

The president was tall and broad, with a huge gray-white mustache that curled into two feathery wings. The collar of his uniform was high and stiff, his tunic riveted with medals, several of which were gleaming starbursts the size of Christmas-tree ornaments. Overall, he conveyed a sense of strength and virility that belied his eighty-five years. Hitler was absent, as were Goebbels and Göring, all presumably engaged in preparing for the party rally to begin two days later.

Dodd read a brief statement that emphasized his sympathy for the people of Germany and the nation’s history and culture. He omitted any reference to the government and in so doing hoped to telegraph that he had no such sympathy for the Hitler regime. For the next fifteen minutes he and the Old Gentleman sat together on the “preferred couch” and conversed on an array of topics, ranging from Dodd’s university experience in Leipzig to the dangers of economic nationalism. Hindenburg, Dodd noted later in his diary, “stressed the subject of international relations so pointedly that I thought he meant indirect criticism of the Nazi extremists.” Dodd introduced his key embassy officers, and then all marched from the building to find soldiers of the regular army, the Reichswehr, lining both sides of the street.

This time Dodd did not walk home. As the embassy cars drove off, the soldiers stood at attention. “It was all over,” Dodd wrote, “and I was at last a duly accepted representative of the United States in Berlin.” Two days later, he found himself confronting his first official crisis.

ON THE MORNING of September 1, 1933, a Friday, H. V. Kaltenborn, the American radio commentator, telephoned Consul General Messersmith to express regret that he could not stop by for one more visit, as he and his family had finished their European tour and were preparing to head back home. The train to their ship was scheduled to depart at midnight.

He told Messersmith that he still had seen nothing to verify the consul’s criticisms of Germany and accused him of “really doing wrong in not presenting the picture in Germany as it really was.”

Soon after making the call, Kaltenborn and his family—wife, son, and daughter—left their hotel, the Adlon, to do a little last-minute shopping. The son, Rolf, was sixteen at the time. Mrs. Kaltenborn particularly wanted to visit the jewelry stores and silver shops on Unter den Linden, but their venture also took them seven blocks farther south to Leipziger Strasse, a busy east-west boulevard jammed with cars and trams and lined with handsome buildings and myriad small shops selling bronzes, Dresden china, silks, leather goods, and just about anything else one could desire. Here too was the famous Wertheim’s Emporium, an enormous department store—a Warenhaus —in which throngs of customers traveled from floor to floor aboard eighty-three elevators.

As the family emerged from a shop, they saw that a formation of Storm Troopers was parading along the boulevard in their direction. The time was 9:20 a.m.

Pedestrians crowded to the edge of the sidewalk and offered the Hitler salute. Despite his sympathetic outlook, Kaltenborn did not wish to join in and knew that one of Hitler’s top deputies, Rudolf Hess, had made a public announcement that foreigners were not obligated to do so. “This is no more to be expected,” Hess had declared, “than that a Protestant cross himself when he enters a Catholic Church.” Nonetheless, Kaltenborn instructed his family to turn toward a shop window as if inspecting the goods on display.

Several troopers marched up to the Kaltenborns and demanded to know why they had their backs to the parade and why they did not salute. Kaltenborn in flawless German answered that he was an American and that he and his family were on their way back to their hotel.

The crowd began insulting Kaltenborn and became threatening, to the point where the commentator called out to two policemen standing ten feet away. The officers did not respond.

Kaltenborn and his family began walking back toward their hotel. A young man came from behind and without a word grabbed Kaltenborn’s son and struck him in the face hard enough to knock him to the sidewalk. Still the police did nothing. One officer smiled.

Furious now, Kaltenborn grabbed the young assailant by the arm and marched him toward the policemen. The crowd grew more menacing. Kaltenborn realized that if he persisted in trying to get justice, he risked further attack.

At last an onlooker interceded and persuaded the crowd to leave the Kaltenborns alone, as they clearly were American. The parade moved on.

After reaching the safety of the Adlon, Kaltenborn called Messersmith. He was upset and nearly incoherent. He asked Messersmith to come to the Adlon right away.

For Messersmith, it was a troubling but darkly sublime moment. He told Kaltenborn he could not come to the hotel. “It just so happened that I had to be at my desk for the next hour or so,” he recalled. He did, however, dispatch to the Adlon Vice Consul Raymond Geist, who arranged that the Kaltenborns would be escorted to the station that night.

“It was ironical that this was just one of the things which Kaltenborn said could not happen,” Messersmith wrote later, with clear satisfaction. “One of the things that he specifically said I was incorrectly reporting on was that the police did not do anything to protect people against attacks.” Messersmith acknowledged that the incident must have been a wrenching experience for the Kaltenborns, especially their son. “It was on the whole, however, a good thing that this happened because if it hadn’t been for this incident, Kaltenborn would have gone back and told his radio audience how fine everything was in Germany and how badly the American officials were reporting to our government and how incorrectly the correspondents in Berlin were picturing developments in the country.”