Erik Larson - In the Garden of Beasts

Lochner had come up with a plan to scuttle the assassination by publicizing it but wanted first to run the idea past Dodd, in case Dodd felt the diplomatic repercussions would be too great. Dodd approved but in turn consulted Sir Eric Phipps, the British ambassador, who also agreed that Lochner should go ahead.

Lochner weighed precisely how to execute his plan. Oddly enough, the initial idea of publicizing the impending assassination had been brought to him by Göring’s own press adjutant, Martin Sommerfeldt, who also had learned of the imminent murder. His source, according to one account, was Putzi Hanfstaengl, though it is entirely possible that Hanfstaengl learned of it from Diels. Sommerfeldt told Lochner that he knew from experience that “there is one way of dissuading the general. When the foreign press claims one thing about him, he stubbornly does the opposite.” Sommerfeldt proposed that Lochner attribute the story to an “unimpeachable source” and stress that the murder would have “far reaching international consequences.” Lochner faced a quandary, however. If he published so inflammatory a report through the Associated Press, he risked enraging Göring to the point where Göring might shut down the AP’s Berlin bureau. It was far better, Lochner reasoned, to have the story break in a British newspaper. He, Sommerfeldt, and Hanfstaengl revised their plan.

Lochner knew that a very green reporter had just joined the Berlin bureau of Reuters. He invited him out for drinks at the Adlon Hotel, where Hanfstaengl and Sommerfeldt soon joined them. The new reporter savored his luck at this apparently chance convergence of senior officials.

After a few moments, Lochner mentioned to Sommerfeldt the rumor of a threat against Dimitrov. Sommerfeldt, as per plan, feigned surprise—surely Lochner had gotten it wrong, for Göring was a man of honor and Germany was a civilized land.

The Reuters reporter knew this was a big story and asked Sommerfeldt for permission to quote his denial. With a great show of reluctance, Sommerfeldt agreed.

The Reuters man raced off to file his story.

Late that afternoon, the report made the papers in Britain, Lochner told Dodd. Lochner also showed Dodd a telegram to the foreign press from Goebbels, in which Goebbels, acting as spokesman for the government, denied the existence of any plot to murder Dimitrov. Göring issued his own denial, dismissing the allegation as a “horrid rumor.”

On December 23, as Lochner had forecast, the presiding judge in the Reichstag trial announced the court’s verdict, acquitting Dimitrov, Torgler, Popov, and Tanev but finding van der Lubbe guilty of “high treason, insurrectionary arson and attempted common arson.” The court condemned him to death, while also stating—despite masses of testimony to the contrary—“that van der Lubbe’s accomplices must be sought in the ranks of the Communist Party, that communism is therefore guilty of the Reichstag fire, that the German people stood in the early part of the year 1933 on the brink of chaos into which the Communists sought to lead them, and that the German people were saved at the last moment.”

Dimitrov’s ultimate fate, however, remained unclear.

AT LAST CAME CHRISTMAS DAY. Hitler was in Munich; Göring, Neurath, and other senior officials likewise had left Berlin. The city was quiet, truly at peace. Streetcars evoked toys under a tree.

At midday all the Dodds set out in the family Chevrolet and paid a surprise visit to the Lochners. Louis Lochner wrote in a round-robin letter to his daughter in America, “We were sitting together drinking our coffee, when suddenly the whole Dodd family—the Ambassador, Mrs. Dodd, Martha, and young Mr. Dodd—snowed in on us just to wish us Merry Christmas. That was awfully nice of them, wasn’t it? I like Mr. Dodd the more I work with him; he’s a man of profound culture and endowed with one of the keenest minds I have come in contact with.” Lochner described Mrs. Dodd as “a sweet, womanly woman who… like her husband far rather visits with a family of friends than go through all the diplomatic shallow stuff. The Dodds don’t pretend to be social lions, and I admire them for it.”

Dodd spent a few moments admiring the Lochners’ tree and other decorations, then took Lochner aside and asked for the latest news of the Dimitrov affair.

Dimitrov thus far appeared to have escaped harm, Lochner said. He also reported that his highly placed source—whose identity he still would not reveal to Dodd—had thanked him for handling the matter so deftly.

Dodd feared further repercussions, however. He remained convinced that Diels had played a key role in revealing the plot. Dodd continued to be surprised by Diels. He knew his reputation as a cynic and opportunist of the first order, but he found him time and again to be a man of integrity and worthy of respect. It was Diels, indeed, who earlier in the month had persuaded Göring and Hitler to decree a Christmas amnesty for inmates of concentration camps who were not hardened criminals or clearly dangerous to state security. Diels’s precise motives cannot be known, but he considered that time, as he went from camp to camp selecting prisoners to be freed, one of the best moments of his career.

Dodd feared that Diels might have gone too far. In his diary entry for Christmas Day, Dodd wrote, “The Secret Police Chief did a most dangerous thing and I shall not be surprised later to hear that he has been sent to prison.”

In traveling about the city that day, Dodd was struck anew by the “extraordinary” German penchant for Christmas display. He saw Christmas trees everywhere, in every public square and every window.

“One might think,” he wrote, “the Germans believed in Jesus or practiced his teachings!”

On January 9 the primary defendant in the Reichstag trial, Marinus van der Lubbe, received word from the public prosecutor that he was to be beheaded the next day.

“Thank you for telling me,” van der Lubbe said. “I shall see you tomorrow.”

The executioner wore top hat and tails and, in a particularly fastidious touch, white gloves. He used a guillotine.

Van der Lubbe’s execution provided a clear if gory punctuation point to the Reichstag fire saga and thereby quelled a source of turbulence that had roiled Germany since the preceding February. Now anyone who felt the need for an ending could point to an official act of state: van der Lubbe had set the fire, and now van der Lubbe was dead. Dimitrov, still alive, was to be flown to Moscow. The way was clear for the restoration of Germany.

As the year opened, Germany did seem on a superficial level to have grown more stable, much to the disappointment of foreign observers and diplomats who still nurtured the belief that economic pressures would cause the collapse of the Hitler regime. At the end of his first year as chancellor, Hitler seemed more rational, almost conciliatory, and went so far as to hint that he might support some form of nonaggression pact with France and Britain. Anthony Eden, Britain’s Lord Privy Seal, traveled to Germany to meet with him and, like Dodd, came away impressed with Hitler’s sincerity in wanting peace. Sir Eric Phipps, Britain’s ambassador to Germany, wrote in his diary, “Herr Hitler seemed to feel a genuine sympathy for Mr. Eden, who certainly succeeded in bringing to the surface of that strange being certain human qualities which for me had hitherto remained obstinately dormant.” In a letter to Thornton Wilder, Martha wrote: “Hitler is improving definitely.”