Erik Larson - In the Garden of Beasts

5 “a short, squat, shaven-headed bully”: Kershaw, Hubris , 179.

6 Goebbels smiled: One problem with the Nazis’ adulation of Aryan perfection was that none of the regime’s most senior leaders fit the tall, blond, blue-eyed model. Hitler, when not ranting, looked to be a rather prosaic type, a middle manager of middle age with a strange mustache that evoked the American comic actor Charlie Chaplin. Göring was hugely overweight, and increasingly given to odd quirks of narcissistic display, such as painting his nails and changing his uniform several times a day. Himmler looked like a practitioner of the field in which he had been employed before being anointed by Hitler: chicken farming.

Goebbels’s appearance posed the greatest challenge, however. He was a shrunken figure with a crippled foot whose looks bore a startling resemblance to the grotesquely distorted caricatures that appeared regularly in Nazi hate literature. A bit of doggerel discreetly made the rounds in Berlin: “Dear God, make me blind / That I may Goebbels Aryan find.” Gallo, 29.

7 “The youth are bright faced”: Martha to Thornton Wilder, Dec. 14, 1933, Wilder Papers.

Many people held similar views, at least early on. I was struck in particular by the observations of Marsden Hartley, an American painter living in Berlin, who on Dec. 28, 1933, wrote, “It takes one’s breath really to see the young here all marching and marching of course as usual. One gets the feeling Germany is always marching—but O such health and vigor and physical rightness they possess.” Hartley, 11.

8 “I received a non-committal reply”: Dodd, Diary , 26.

9 “very pleasantly unconventional”: Ibid., 25.

1 “It was all over”: Dodd, Diary , 30–31.

2 “really doing wrong”: This quote and other details of the Kaltenborn episode come from Messersmith, “Attack on Kaltenborn,” unpublished memoir, Messersmith Papers; Kaltenborn’s correspondence in his archive at the Wisconsin Historical Society; and Kaltenborn’s memoir, Fifty Fabulous Years .

3 “This is no more to be expected”: Kaltenborn Papers.

4 “otherwise tried to prevent unfriendly demonstrations”: Dodd, Diary , 36.

5 “I was trying to find excuses”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 36.

6 “I felt there was something noble:” Ibid., 36–37.

7 “and that the press reports”: Ibid., 37.

8 “And when are you coming back”: Mowrer, Triumph , 226.

9 “And you too, Brutus”: Messersmith, “Some observations on my relations with the press,” unpublished memoir, 22, Messersmith Papers.

10 Mowrer “was for a time”: Dodd to Walter Lichtenstein, Oct. 26, 1933, Box 41, W. E. Dodd Papers.

11 “His experiences, however”: Ibid.

12 “Nowhere have I had such lovely friends”: Reynolds, Journalist’s Wife , 309.

13 “The protokoll arbiters”: Dodd to Hull, Oct. 19, 1933, Box 41, W. E. Dodd Papers.

14 “So today the show began”: Dodd, Diary , 33.

15 “Well, if at the last minute”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 236.

16 “You people in the Diplomatic Corps”: Dodd to Hull, Feb. 17, 1934 (unsent), Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers.

17 “We simply cannot stand the pace”: Ibid.

18 “Infectious and delightful”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 233.

19 “one of the few men”: Ibid., 233.

20 An extraordinary newspaper photograph: A copy of this image can be found in Dodd, Embassy Eyes , opposite page 118.

21 “certainly looked flirtatious”: Schultz, “Sigrid Schultz Transcript-Part I,” 10, Box 2, Schultz Papers.

22 “you felt you could be in the same room”: Schultz, Catalogue of Memoirs, transcript fragment, Box 2, Schultz Papers.

23 “I was always rather favorably impressed”: Reminiscences of John Campbell White, Oral History Collection, Columbia University, 87–88.

24 “three times the size”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 221.

25 “To illustrate,” he wrote: Dodd to Hull, Oct. 19, 1933, Box 41, W. E. Dodd Papers.

26 “But,” he vowed: Ibid.

27 The embassy’s cupboard: Berlin Embassy Post Report (Revision), p. 10, 124.62/162, State/Decimal.

28 “We shall not use silver platters”: Dodd to Hull, Oct. 19, 1933, Box. 41, W. E. Dodd Papers.

29 “I can never adapt myself”: Dodd to Carl Sandburg, Nov. 21, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers.

30 “with attacks of headaches”: Dr. Wilbur E. Post to Dodd, Aug. 30, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.

31 a Sonderzug: Metcalfe, 141.

32 Knight, Death and the Devil: Burden, 68.

1 “I suppose I practiced”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 41.

2 She had a brief affair with Putzi: Conradi, 122.

3 “like a butterfly”: Vanden Heuvel, 248.

4 “You are the only person”: Armand Berard to Martha, n.d., Box 4, Martha Dodd Papers.

5 “Of course I remember”: Max Delbrück to Martha, Nov. 15, 1978, Box 4, Martha Dodd Papers.

6 “I often felt like saying something”: Messersmith to Jay Pierrepont Moffat, June 13, 1934, Messersmith Papers.

7 “she had behaved so badly”: Messersmith, “Goering,” unpublished memoir, 5, Messersmith Papers.

8 “That was not a house”: Brysac, 157.

9 “created a nervousness”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 52.

10 “the most sinister, scar-torn face”: Ibid., 52.

11 “a cruel, broken beauty”: Ibid., 53.

12 “Involved affairs with women”: Gisevius, 39.

13 “I felt at ease”: Ludecke, 654–55.

14 “He took a vicious joy”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 52.

15 “remarkably small”: Gellately, Gestapo , 44–45.

16 “Most of them were neither crazed”: Ibid., 59.

17 “One can evade a danger”: Quoted in Gellately, Gestapo , 129.

Even within the Gestapo there was fear, according to Hans Gisevius, author of the Gestapo memoir To the Bitter End: “For we were living in a den of murderers in which we did not even dare step ten or twenty feet across the hall to wash our hands without telephoning a colleague beforehand and informing him of our intention to embark on so perilous an expedition.” His boss advised him always to stay close to the wall and away from the banister when walking up a stairway, on the theory that this made it harder for an assassin above to get a clear shot. “Not for a moment was anyone’s life secure.” Gisevius, 50–51.

18 “like a mass of inanimate clay”: Gallo, 25–26.

19 “They ordered me to take off my pants”: Rürup, 92.

20 “The value of the SA”: Metcalfe, 133.

21 “the golden death of the Tiergarten”: Martha to Thornton Wilder, Nov. 10, 1934, Wilder Papers.

22 a “most indiscreet” young lady: Quoted in Wilbur Carr, Memorandum, June 5, 1933, Box 12, Carr Papers.

23 “he was constantly facing the muzzle of a gun”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 56.

24 “There began to appear before my romantic eyes”: Ibid., 53.

1 “He had an unusual mouth”: Agnes Knickerbocker, in miscellaneous notes, Box 13, Folder 22, Martha Dodd Papers.

2 In a later unpublished account: Martha left a rich typescript account of her relationship with Boris that includes passages of dialogue and myriad observational details, such as who laughed at what remark, who frowned, and so forth. “Bright Journey into Darkness,” Box 14, Martha Dodd Papers.

3 “nigger-Jew jazz”: Kater, 15.

4 “seemed totally unintimidated”: Quoted in “Bright Journey into Darkness,” Box 14, Martha Dodd Papers.