Erik Larson - In the Garden of Beasts

25 “tone of asperity”: Hull to John Campbell White, March 30, 1934, State/Foreign.

26 “to communicate to the Government of the German Reich”: Quoted in Spear, 216.

27 “in an embarrassing position”: R. Walton Moore, Memorandum, Jan. 19, 1934, State/Foreign.

28 “exerted his influence”: Spear, 216.

1 “on all sides of the fence at once”: Metcalfe, 201.

2 “We didn’t take too seriously what he said”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 134.

3 “You are sick?”: Diels, 283. Also quoted in Metcalfe, 236.

4 Once again Diels left the country: Metcalfe, 237; Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 134.

5 “a pathetic passive-looking creature”: Dodd, Embassy Eyes , 134.

6 “I was young and reckless enough”: Ibid., 136.

7 “like a frightened rabbit”: Ibid., 135.

8 “In some ways the danger”: Ibid., 135–36.

1 “on a short leave”: New York Times , March 24, 1934; Dodd to “family,” April 5, 1934, Box 61, W. E. Dodd Papers.

2 “handsome limousine”: Dodd, Diary , 93.

3 “duty, readiness for sacrifice”: Hitler to Roosevelt, reproduced in Hull to John Campbell White, March 28, 1934, State/Foreign.

4 “strange message”: Phillips, Diary, March 27, 1934.

5 “to prevent our falling into the Hitler trap”: Moffat, Diary, March 24–25, 1934.

6 “who have freely and gladly made heroic efforts”: Roosevelt to Hitler, reproduced in Hull to John Campbell White, March 28, 1934, State/Foreign.

7 “We sought to sidestep the impression”: Phillips, Diary, March 27, 1934.

8 “there might easily be a little civil war”: Dodd to Mrs. Dodd, March 28, 1934, Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers.

9 “to quiet things if possible”: Ibid. Also, see Dodd, Diary , 95; Dallek, 228.

10 “Louis XIV and Victoria style”: Dodd, Diary , 94; Dallek, 231.

11 “house with a hundred rooms”: It was this mansion that became the new location of the Cosmos Club, after Welles sold it to the club in 1953. Gellman, 106–7, 395.

12 Indeed, his lecture: R. Walton Moore to Dodd, May 23, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers.

Moore compliments Dodd on his presentation to the group, known as the Personnel Board, but adds, with a good deal of understatement, “I am not at all certain that some of the members of the Board were pleased to hear it.”

13 had begun to express real hostility: For example, see Moffat, Diary, Dec. 16, 1933; Phillips, Diary, June 25, 1934.

14 “He is… by no means a clear thinker.”: Moffat, Diary, March 17, 1934.

15 “Their chief protector”: Dodd to Mrs. Dodd, March 28, 1934, Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers.

1 “obviously in a greatly perturbed situation”: Messersmith, “Goering,” unpublished memoir, 3–8, Messersmith Papers.

2 A photograph of the moment: This photograph is one of many in a unique exhibit in Berlin that tracks the growth of the Gestapo and of Nazi terror in a block-long outdoor, and partly subterranean, display erected along the excavated wall of what once was the basement and so-called house prison of Gestapo headquarters. Certain locations in the world seem to concentrate darkness: the same wall once served as the foundation for a segment of the Berlin Wall.

3 “The infliction of physical punishment”: Quoted in Richie, 997; Metcalfe, 240.

4 In mid-April, Hitler flew to the naval port: Evans, Power , 29; Shirer, Rise , 214–15; Wheeler-Bennett, Nemesis , 311–13.

5 “Look at those people over there”: Gallo, 35.

6 “Reactionaries, bourgeois conformists”: Ibid., 37.

7 Two days later, however, a government announcement: Ibid., 88–89; Kershaw, Hubris , 509.

8 “the Man with the Iron Heart”: Deschner, 61, 62, 65, 66; Evans, Power , 53–54; Fest, 98–101.

9 “I could very well venture combat”: Gisevius, 137.

10 Toward the end of April the government: Kershaw, Hubris , 743; Wheeler-Bennett, 312. Wheeler-Bennett cites a government “communique” issued April 27, 1934, but Kershaw notes that he provides no source to substantiate its existence.

1 “Tell Boris Winogradov”: Haynes et al, 432; Weinstein and Vassiliev, 51. Both books present the NKVD message, though the translations vary slightly. I use the Haynes version, which is also the version that can be found online at Vassiliev, Notebooks, White Notebook #2, p. 13, March 28, 1934.

1 A troubling incident: Dodd to Hull, April 17, 1934, Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers.

2 “It is my opinion,” Dodd wrote: Ibid.

3 Dodd only learned of its existence: Dodd to R. Walton Moore, June 8, 1934, Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers.

4 Entitled “Their Excellencies”: “Their Excellencies,” 115–16.

5 “reveals a strange and even unpatriotic attitude”: Dodd to William Phillips, June 4, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers.

6 “With regard to that article in Fortune”: William Phillips to Dodd, July 6, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers.

7 “Once there,” he wrote to Martha: Dodd to Martha, April 24, 1934, Box 62, W. E. Dodd Papers. He opens the letter, “Dear ‘Little’ Martha.”

8 “how they and their friends had calmed their fellows”: Dodd, Diary , 95.

9 “THEREFORE HOPE YOU CAN BRING NEW CAR”: Mrs. Dodd to Dodd, via John Campbell White, April 19, 1934, Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers.

10 “I fear Mueller was driving carelessly”: Dodd to Martha, April 25, 1934, Box 62, W. E. Dodd Papers.

11 “ridiculously simple for an Ambassador”: Dodd, Diary , 108.

12 “This was a beautiful day”: Ibid., 98.

13 “the syphilis of all European peoples”: Dodd to Roosevelt, Aug. 15, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers.

14 “all the animosities of the preceding winter”: Ibid.

Dodd expresses a similar dismay at being embarrassed in a letter to Edward M. House, May 23, 1934, Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers. He writes: “You recall what we did to ease off the excitement in Chicago, and you remember perhaps my advice to leading Jews that it would be well to let up a little in the boycott if the Germans gave evidence of a conciliatory attitude.” He closes, “I am frank to say that it has embarrassed me a good deal.”

15 “I was delighted to be home”: Dodd, Diary , 100.

1 The post of ambassador to Austria: Phillips, Diary, March 16, 1934; Stiller, 54–55.

2 While Dodd was in America: Louis Lochner to Betty Lochner, May 29, 1934, Round Robin Letters, Box 6, Lochner Papers; “List of Persons Invited,” Box 59, W. E. Dodd Papers.

3 “I wonder why we were asked today”: Fromm, 162–64.

4 The host was a wealthy banker: I pieced together the story of the Regendanz dinner from the following accounts: Evans, Power , 26; François-Poncet, 139–40; Phipps, 66–67; Wilhelm Regendanz to Attorney General Brendel of Gestapo, July 2, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers.

Herman Ullstein, of the great German publishing dynasty, tells a darkly amusing story about another meal, this at a fancy restaurant in Potsdam. A man was dining in a group that included an attractive, dark-haired woman. A Nazi from a neighboring table, having concluded the woman was Jewish, asked the group to leave the restaurant. The seated man smiled and asked, “Do you mind if we finish our dinner first?”