Andrew Nagorski - Hitlerland

The sweeping nature of the killings and the disparate backgrounds of the victims indicated that Hitler and the SS, whose leaders hated Röhm and the SA, had decided to eliminate anyone they regarded as a past or potential opponent. The body of Gustav von Kahr, the Bavarian leader who had presided over the suppression of the Beer Hall Putsch before retiring from politics, was found hacked to pieces. Other victims included the secretary and several associates of Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen, the scheming former chancellor who had helped undermine Schleicher and give Hitler his shot at total power.

Papen was the politician who had assured the AP’s Lochner that “we have hired Hitler” and that he and other veteran politicians would keep him under control. He was personally spared, although roughed up and briefly placed under house arrest until he was dispatched as Hitler’s envoy to Vienna. On July 25, 1934, less than a month after the Night of the Long Knives, Austrian Nazis assassinated Chancellor Engelbert Doll-fuss, who had amassed dictatorial powers but opposed Hitler’s movement. Still, Papen didn’t hesitate to accept his new assignment, which would involve preparing the way for Austria’s Anschluss (unification) with Germany in 1938.

His willingness to continue serving the regime he had helped maneuver into power earned him broad contempt from those foreigners and Germans who were alarmed by what they saw happening. At the American Embassy’s Fourth of July Party at the Dodds’ residence, the Jewish journalist Bella Fromm noted that everyone was on edge, but there was agreement on one thing: “There was general regret that Schleicher was the one to lose his life while Papen only paid with a couple of teeth.”

On July 1, Dodd and his daughter Martha had made the point of driving by Papen’s residence. Martha spotted the young son of the vice chancellor standing behind the curtains, and he later told the Dodds that his family was grateful for this sign of solidarity at a time when no other diplomats dared to venture near their house. Ambassador Dodd also sent his card with a message: “I hope we may call on you soon.” According to Martha, her father had no sympathy for Papen, whom he viewed as “black with cowardice, devious with espionage and betrayal.” But this was his way of expressing his displeasure with the brutal methods of Germany’s new rulers.

At the Fourth of July party, the Dodd residence was festooned with red, white and blue flowers that artfully decorated the tables, along with small American flags. While the orchestra played American music, the American expats, both diplomats and journalists, mingled with the German guests. Martha and her brother Bill sardonically greeted the German arrivals with what had become the most frequently asked question since the Night of the Long Knives: “Lebst du noch?” Translation: “Are you still alive?” Some of the Nazis were visibly irritated.

At one point, the butler told Martha that Papen’s son, the one they had seen in the window three days earlier, had arrived. Visibly nervous, he talked with Ambassador Dodd, protesting how ludicrous were the charges that his father was somehow involved in a conspiracy with Röhm, Schleicher and the others against Hitler. A few days later, once his father was freed and out of immediate danger, the two Papens openly came to visit Dodd, prompting the American journalists to rush over for information about the politician who was still formally in Hitler’s government but had come so close to becoming one of his early victims. Despite Dodd’s personal misgivings about Papen, it was a way for the vice chancellor to demonstrate that he had American support. As Martha put it, this indicated “that the Germans were still respectful, and a bit awed by American public opinion at this time.”

Her father was reaching a different conclusion, even if he had contributed to Papen’s salvation so that he could go on serving his new masters. That same week a professor from the University of Berlin came to see him, ostensibly to discuss a lecture Dodd was supposed to give to the History Department on July 13. Given the tense situation, they agreed to call off the lecture. The German was despondent about the savagery the Nazis were arousing among his countrymen, stunned that they were capable of such barbaric behavior. He made a point of praising an editorial in London’s Times that described the Night of the Long Knives as a return to medieval practices. “Poor Germany, she cannot recover in decades to come. If I could go to any other of the greater countries, I would leave the university at once,” he declared.

In his diary entry of July 8, Dodd admitted to feeling a similar deepening pessimism. He hosted a visiting American delegation, but they had asked that no press be allowed to cover the event because they didn’t want to be attacked at home for their presence in Germany. Hitler’s killing spree had hardened hostility to the country in the United States and elsewhere. As for Germany itself, Dodd noted, “I can think of no country where the psychology is so abnormal as that which prevails here now.”

The ambassador was increasingly questioning the sense of his own mission. “My task here is to work for peace and better relations,” he wrote. “I do not see how anything can be done so long as Hitler, Goering and Goebbels are the directing heads of the country. Never have I heard or read of three more unfit men in high place.” Reading the diary at this point, you can almost hear Dodd sigh as he concluded, “Ought I to resign?”

On February 23, 1934, William Shirer, who was living with his Austrian wife, Tess, in Paris, turned thirty—but he wasn’t exactly thrilled by his situation. Back in 1925, he had left Cedar Rapids, Iowa, right after college and pursued the adventurous life of a young reporter eager to explore the world. He worked for the Chicago Tribune out of Paris, where he got to meet the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Isadora Duncan; he also snagged assignments that allowed him to wander all around Europe and as far afield as Afghanistan and India, where he befriended Mahatma Gandhi and contracted malaria and dysentery. In 1932, as the Depression worsened, he lost his job and he had a skiing accident that caused him to lose sight in one eye. He and Tess then tried to live off his savings in Spain while he worked on a novel and an early memoir, failing to publish either. When they returned to Paris, he got a job offer from the Paris edition of the New York Herald in January 1934. But as he noted in his diary on his birthday the following month, it was “the worst job I’ve ever had.”

The big stories seemed to be happening elsewhere—in Germany, Russia, Italy, where strong leaders were all in command. France was buffeted by strikes and unrest, but looked rudderless by comparison. “The Paris that I came to in 1925 at the tender age of twenty-one and loved, as you love a woman, is no longer the Paris that I will find day after tomorrow,” he wrote right before his return in January 1934.

On June 30, he excitedly recorded in his diary that the phone lines to Berlin were down for several hours. “And what a story!” he exclaimed. He cited the reports of the arrest of Röhm by Hitler in person, and the shooting of several SA leaders. “The French are pleased. They think this is the beginning of the end of the Nazis,” he continued.

While Shirer didn’t record any judgment of his own, he realized that the biggest story of his life was unfolding nearby. “Wish I could get a post in Berlin,” he concluded. “It’s a story I’d like to cover.” Two weeks later, after more details about the breadth and brutality of the purge had come to light, Shirer added: “One had almost forgotten how strong sadism and masochism are in the German people.”