Erik Larson - In the Garden of Beasts

Eicke gave Röhm a Browning automatic and a fresh edition of the Völkischer Beobachter containing an account of what the paper called the “Röhm Putsch,” apparently to show Röhm that all was indeed lost.

Eicke left the room. Ten minutes passed with no gunfire. Eicke and Lippert returned to the cell, removed the Browning, then came back with their own weapons drawn. They found Röhm standing before them, shirtless.

Accounts vary as to exactly what happened next. Some report that Eicke and Lippert said nothing and began firing. One account holds that Eicke shouted, “Röhm, make yourself ready,” at which point Lippert fired two shots. Yet another account gives Röhm a moment of gallantry, during which he declared, “If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself.”

The first salvo did not kill Röhm. He lay on the floor moaning, “Mein Führer, mein Führer.” A final bullet was fired into his temple.

As a reward, Eicke received a promotion that placed him in charge of all Germany’s concentration camps. He exported the draconian regulations he had put in place at Dachau to all the other camps under his command.

That Sunday a grateful Reichswehr made another payment on the deal struck aboard the Deutschland . Defense Minister Blomberg in his order of the day for that Sunday, July 1, announced, “The Führer with soldierly decision and exemplary courage has himself attacked and crushed the traitors and murderers. The army, as the bearer of arms of the entire people, far removed from the conflicts of domestic politics, will show its gratitude through devotion and loyalty. The good relationship towards the new SA demanded by the Führer will be gladly fostered by the Army in the consciousness that the ideals of both are held in common. The state of emergency has come to an end everywhere.”

AS THE WEEKEND PROGRESSED, the Dodds learned that a new phrase was making the rounds in Berlin, to be deployed upon encountering a friend or acquaintance on the street, ideally with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow: “Lebst du noch?” Which meant, “Are you still among the living?”

Though rumors continued to sketch a blood purge of startling dimension, Ambassador Dodd and his wife chose not to cancel the embassy’s Fourth of July celebration, to which they had invited some three hundred guests. If anything, there was more reason now to hold the party, to provide a symbolic demonstration of American freedom and offer a respite from the terror outside. This was to be the first formal occasion since the weekend at which Americans and Germans would encounter each other face to face. The Dodds had invited a number of Martha’s friends as well, including Mildred Fish Harnack and her husband, Arvid. Boris apparently did not attend. One guest, Bella Fromm, noted an “electric tension” that pervaded the party. “The diplomats seemed jittery,” she wrote. “The Germans were on edge.”

Dodd and his wife stood at the entrance to the ballroom to greet each new arrival. Martha saw that outwardly her father was behaving as he always did at such affairs, hiding his boredom with ironic quips and sallies, his expression that of an amused skeptic seemingly on the verge of laughter. Her mother wore a long blue and white dress and greeted guests in her usual quiet manner—all southern grace, with silver hair and a gentle accent—but Martha detected an unusual flush to her mother’s cheeks and noted that the nearly black irises of her eyes, always striking, were especially so.

Tables throughout the ballroom and the garden were decorated with bouquets of red, white, and blue flowers and small American flags. An orchestra played American songs quietly. The weather was warm but cloudy. Guests wandered through the house and garden. All in all it was a peaceful and surreal scene, in powerful contrast to the bloodshed of the prior seventy-two hours. For Martha and her brother the juxtaposition was simply too glaring to go unacknowledged, so they made a point of greeting the younger German guests with the question “Lebst du noch?”

“We thought we were being sarcastic, revealing to the Germans some of the fury we felt,” she wrote. “No doubt many of them thought the remark bad taste. Some Nazis showed extreme irritation.”

Guests arrived bearing fresh news. Now and then a correspondent or embassy staffer pulled Dodd away for a few moments of conversation. One topic, surely, was a law enacted the day before by Hitler’s cabinet that made all the murders legal; it justified them as actions taken in “emergency defense of the state.” Guests arrived looking pale and shaken, fearing the worst for their friends throughout the city.

Fritz, the butler, brought Martha word that a visitor was waiting for her downstairs. “Der junge Herr von Papen,” Fritz said. The young Mr. Papen—the vice-chancellor’s son, Franz Jr. Martha was expecting him and had alerted her mother that if he appeared she might have to leave. She touched her mother’s arm and left the reception line.

Franz was tall, blond, and slender, with a sharply sculpted face and, Martha recalled, “a certain fine beauty—like that of blonde fox.” He was graceful as well. To dance with him, she wrote, “was like living in music itself.”

Franz took her arm and briskly led her away from the house. They crossed the street to the Tiergarten, where they strolled awhile, watching for signs of being followed. Finding none, they walked to an outdoor café, took a table, and ordered drinks.

The terror of the last few days showed on Franz’s face and in his manner. Anxiety muted his usual easygoing humor.

Though grateful for Ambassador Dodd’s appearance outside his family’s home, Franz understood that what had really saved his father was his relationship with President Hindenburg. Even that closeness, however, had not kept the SS from terrorizing Papen and his family, as Franz now revealed. On Saturday armed SS men had taken up positions within the family’s apartment and at the street entrance. They told the vice-chancellor that two of his staff had been shot and indicated the same end awaited him. The order, they said, would arrive at any moment. The family spent a lonely, terrifying weekend.

Franz and Martha talked awhile longer, then he escorted her back through the park. She returned to the party alone.

LATE ONE AFTERNOON DURING that week, Mrs. Cerruti, wife of the Italian ambassador, happened to look out a window of her residence, which stood across the street from Röhm’s house. At that moment, a large car pulled up. Two men got out and went into the house and emerged carrying armloads of Röhm’s suits and other clothing. They made several trips.

The scene brought home to her the events of the past weekend in a particularly vivid manner. “The sight of these clothes, now deprived of their owner, was nauseating,” she recalled in a memoir. “They were so obviously ‘the garments of the hanged’ that I had to turn away my head.”

She suffered “a regular fit of nerves.” She ran upstairs and vowed to take an immediate break from Berlin. She left the next day for Venice.

THE DODDS LEARNED THAT Wilhelm Regendanz, the wealthy banker who had hosted the fateful dinner for Captain Röhm and French ambassador François-Poncet at his Dahlem home, had managed to escape Berlin on the day of the purge and make his way safely to London. He feared now, however, that he could never return. Worse, his wife was still in Berlin and his adult son, Alex, who also had been present at the dinner, had been arrested by the Gestapo. On July 3 Regendanz wrote to Mrs. Dodd to ask if she would go to Dahlem to check on his wife and younger children and “to bring her my heartiest greetings.” He wrote, “It seems that I am suspect now, because so many diplomats have been in my house and because I was also a friend of General von Schleicher.”