Erik Larson - In the Garden of Beasts

She expressed a deep and pervading sorrow. “The smell of peace is abroad, the air is cold, the skies are brittle, and the leaves have finally fallen. I wear a pony coat with skin like watered silk and muff of lamb. My fingers lie in depths of warmth. I have a jacket of silver sequins and heavy bracelets of rich corals. I wear about my neck a triple thread-like chain of lapis lazulis and pearls. On my face is softness and content like a veil of golden moonlight. And I have never in all my lives been so lonely.”

THOUGH MARTHA’S REFERENCE to “mazes of hate” was a bit strong, Dodd had indeed begun to sense that a campaign was gathering against him within the State Department and that its participants were the men of wealth and tradition. He suspected also that they were assisted by one or more people on his own staff providing intelligence in sotto voce fashion about him and the operation of the embassy. Dodd grew increasingly suspicious and guarded, so much so that he began writing his most sensitive letters in longhand because he did not trust the embassy stenographers to keep their contents confidential.

He had reason to be concerned. Messersmith continued his back-channel correspondence with Undersecretary Phillips. Raymond Geist, Messersmith’s number-two officer (another Harvard man) also kept watch on the affairs of Dodd and the embassy. During a stop in Washington, Geist had a long and secret conversation with Wilbur Carr, chief of consular services, during which Geist provided a wide range of intelligence, including details about unruly parties thrown by Martha and Bill that sometimes lasted until five in the morning. “On one occasion the hilarity was so great,” Geist told Carr, that it drew a written complaint to the consulate. This prompted Geist to call Bill into his office, where he warned him, “If there was a repetition of that conduct it would have to be reported officially.” Geist also offered a critique of Ambassador Dodd’s performance: “The Ambassador is mild mannered and unimpressive whereas the only kind of person who can deal successfully with the Nazi Government is a man of intelligence and force who is willing to assume a dictatorial attitude with the Government and insist upon his demands being met. Mr. Dodd is unable to do this.”

The arrival in Berlin of a new man, John C. White, to replace George Gordon as counselor of embassy could only have increased Dodd’s wariness. In addition to being wealthy and prone to hosting elaborate parties, White also happened to be married to the sister of Western European affairs chief Jay Pierrepont Moffat. The two brothers-in-law carried on a chummy correspondence, calling each other “Jack” and “Pierrepont.” Dodd would not have found the opening line of one of White’s first letters from Berlin to be terribly reassuring: “There appears to be a spare typewriter round here, so I can write you without other witnesses.” In one reply, Moffat called Dodd “a curious individual whom I find it almost impossible to diagnose.”

To make matters even more claustrophobic for Dodd, another new officer, Orme Wilson, who arrived at about the same time to become a secretary of embassy, was Undersecretary Phillips’s nephew.

When the Chicago Tribune printed an article about Dodd’s request for leave in the coming year, along with conjecture that he might quit his post, Dodd complained to Phillips that someone within the department must have revealed his leave request, intending harm. What especially galled Dodd was a comment in the article attributed to an unnamed State Department spokesman. The article stated: “Permanent retirement from the post of Ambassador to Germany is not contemplated by Professor Dodd, it was insisted here.” With the perverse logic of publicity, the denial actually raised the question of Dodd’s fate—would he retire or was he being forced from his post? The situation in Berlin was difficult enough without such speculation, Dodd told Phillips. “I believe von Neurath and his colleagues would be considerably displeased if this report were forwarded to them.”

Phillips replied, with his now-familiar textual smirk, “I cannot imagine who gave the Tribune information regarding your possible leave next Spring,” he wrote. “Certainly no one has asked the question of me…. One of the principal joys of the newspaper world is to start gossip about resignations. At times we all suffer from that phobia and do not take it seriously.”

In closing, Phillips noted that Messersmith, who was then in Washington on leave, had visited the department. “Messersmith has been with us for a few days and we have had some good talks on the various phases of the German situation.”

Dodd would have been right to read those last lines with a degree of anxiety. During one of these visits to Phillips’s office, Messersmith provided what Phillips described in his diary as “an inside glimpse of conditions in the Embassy in Berlin.” Here too the subject of Martha and Bill came up. “Apparently,” Phillips wrote, “the Ambassador’s son and daughter are not assisting the Embassy in any way and are too much inclined to running around to night clubs with certain Germans of not particularly good standing and with the press.”

Messersmith also met with Moffat and Moffat’s wife. The three spent an afternoon talking about Germany. “We went over it from all angles,” Moffat wrote in his diary. The next day he and Messersmith had lunch, and several weeks later they met again. During one conversation, according to Moffat’s diary, Messersmith claimed to be “much concerned at letters received from Dodd indicating that he was turning against his staff.”

Dodd’s recently departed counselor, George Gordon, happened to be on a lengthy leave in the United States at the same time as Messersmith. Though Gordon’s relationship with Dodd had begun badly, by now Dodd grudgingly had come to see Gordon as an asset. Gordon wrote to Dodd, “Our mutual friend G.S.M.”—meaning Messersmith—“has been staging a most active campaign in support of his candidacy for the Legation at Prague.” (Messersmith had long hoped to leave the Foreign Service behind and become a full-fledged diplomat; now, with the embassy in Prague available, he saw an opportunity.) Gordon noted that a torrent of letters and newspaper editorials testifying to Messersmith’s “sterling work” had begun flowing into the department. “A familiar touch was imparted to all this,” Gordon wrote, “when I heard that he had told one of the high officials that he really was a little embarrassed by all the press eulogies of himself because he did not like that kind of thing!!!!”

Gordon added, in longhand: “O sancta virginitas simplicitasque,” Latin for “Such pious maidenly innocence!”

ON DECEMBER 22, a Friday, Dodd got a visit from Louis Lochner, who brought troubling news. The visit itself was not unusual, for by now Dodd and the Associated Press bureau chief had become friends and met often to discuss events and exchange information. Lochner told Dodd that an official high in the Nazi hierarchy had informed him that the next morning the court in the Reichstag trial would declare its verdict, and that all but van der Lubbe would be acquitted. This was stunning news by itself and, if true, would constitute a serious blow to the prestige of Hitler’s government and in particular to Göring’s standing. It was precisely the “botch” Göring had feared. But Lochner’s informant also had learned that Göring, still incensed at Dimitrov’s impudence during their courtroom confrontation, now wanted Dimitrov dead. His death was to occur soon after the end of the trial. Lochner refused to identify his source but told Dodd that in conveying the information the source hoped to prevent further damage to Germany’s already poor international reputation. Dodd believed the informant to be Rudolf Diels.