some 140,000 Storm Troopers had flooded the town for one of the SA’s frequent orgies of marching, drilling, and, inevitably, drinking. That Sunday afternoon a massive parade began surging through the heart of the city, under Nazi banners of red, white, and black that fluttered seemingly from every building. At one thirty a company of these SA men broke off from the main formation and veered into an intersecting avenue, Nikolaistrasse, where the Zuckermans happened to be walking.
As the SA detachment moved past, a group of men at the rear of the column decided the Zuckermans and kin had to be Jews and without warning surrounded them, knocked them to the ground, and launched upon them a cyclone of furious kicks and punches. Eventually the Storm Troopers moved on.
Zuckerman and his wife were severely injured, enough so that both had to be hospitalized, first in Leipzig and then again in Berlin, where the U.S. consulate got involved. “It is not unlikely that [Zuckerman] has suffered serious internal injuries from which he may never altogether recover,” Consul General Messersmith wrote in a dispatch to Washington about the attack. He warned that the United States might be compelled to seek monetary damages for Zuckerman but pointed out that nothing could be done officially on his wife’s behalf because she was not an American. Messersmith added, “It is interesting to note that she was obliged, as the result of the attack made on her at the same time, to go to a hospital where her baby of some months had to be removed.” As a result of the operation, he wrote, Mrs. Zuckerman would never be able to bear another child.
Attacks of this nature were supposed to have come to an end; government decrees had urged restraint. The Storm Troopers appeared not to have paid attention.
In another dispatch on the case, Messersmith wrote, “It has been a favorite pastime of the SA men to attack the Jews and one cannot avoid the plain language of stating that they do not like to be deprived of their prey.”
It was his insider’s understanding of this and other phenomena of the new Germany that made him so frustrated with the failure of visitors to grasp the true character of Hitler’s regime. Many American tourists returned home perplexed by the dissonance between the horrors they had read about in their hometown newspapers—the beatings and arrests of the preceding spring, the book pyres and concentration camps—and the pleasant times they actually experienced while touring Germany. One such visitor was a radio commentator named H. V. Kaltenborn— born Hans von Kaltenborn in Milwaukee—who soon after Dodd’s arrival passed through Berlin with his wife, daughter, and son. Known as the “dean of commentators,” Kaltenborn reported for the Columbia Broadcasting Service and had become famous throughout America, so famous that in later years he would have cameo roles as himself in
Messersmith was shocked. He had no doubt that Kaltenborn was sincere but attributed the commentator’s view to the fact that he “was a German by origin and he couldn’t believe that Germans could carry on and do things that were happening every day and every hour in Berlin and all over the country.”
It was a problem Messersmith had noticed time and again. Those who lived in Germany and who paid attention understood that something fundamental had changed and that a darkness had settled over the landscape. Visitors failed to see it. In part, Messersmith wrote in a dispatch, this was because the German government had begun a campaign “to influence Americans coming to Germany in forming a favorable opinion concerning happenings in the country.” He saw evidence of this in the curious behavior of Samuel Bossard, an American attacked on August 31 by members of the Hitler Youth. Bossard had promptly filed an affidavit with the U.S. consulate and had spoken angrily about the incident to a number of correspondents in Berlin. Then, suddenly, he stopped speaking. Messersmith called him just before his return to America to ask how he was doing and found him unwilling to discuss the incident. Suspicious, Messersmith made inquiries and learned that the Ministry of Propaganda had toured Bossard through Berlin and Potsdam and otherwise showered him with courtesy and attention. The effort appeared to have paid off, Messersmith noted. Upon Bossard’s arrival in New York, according to a news report, Bossard declared “that if Americans in Germany are subject to any kind of attacks, it can only be due to misunderstandings.… Many Americans do not seem to understand the changes which have taken place in Germany and through their awkwardness [have] acted in such a way as to invite attacks.” He vowed to return to Germany the following year.
Messersmith sensed an especially deft hand behind the government’s decision to cancel a ban on Rotary Clubs in Germany. Not only could the clubs continue; more remarkably, they were allowed to retain their Jewish members. Messersmith himself belonged to the Berlin Rotary. “The fact that Jews are permitted to continue membership in Rotary is being used as propaganda among the Rotary clubs throughout the world,” he wrote. The underlying reality was that many of those Jewish members had lost their jobs or were finding their ability to practice within their professions severely limited. In his dispatches Messersmith reprised one theme again and again: how impossible it was for casual visitors to understand what was really happening in this new Germany. “The Americans coming to Germany will find themselves surrounded by influences of the Government and their time so taken up by pleasant entertainment, that they will have little opportunity to learn what the real situation is.”
Messersmith urged Kaltenborn to get in touch with some of the American correspondents in Berlin, who would provide ample confirmation of his dispatches.
Kaltenborn dismissed the idea. He knew a lot of these correspondents. They were prejudiced, he claimed, and so was Messersmith.
He continued his journey, though in short order he would be forced in a most compelling way to reevaluate his views.
CHAPTER 8
Meeting Putzi
With the help of Sigrid Schultz and Quentin Reynolds, Martha inserted herself readily into the social fabric of Berlin. Smart, flirtatious, and good-looking, she became a favorite among the younger officers of the foreign diplomatic corps and a sought-after guest at the informal parties, the so-called bean parties and beer evenings, held after the obligatory functions of the day had concluded. She also became a regular at a nightly gathering of twenty or so correspondents who convened in an Italian restaurant, Die Taverne, owned by a German and his Belgian wife. The restaurant always set aside a big, round table in a corner for the group—a
In this new world, the calling card was the crucial currency. The character of an individual’s card reflected the character of the individual, his perception of himself, or how he wanted the world to perceive him. The Nazi leadership invariably had the largest cards with the most imposing titles, usually printed in some bold Teutonic font. Prince Louis Ferdinand, son of Germany’s crown prince, a sweet-tempered young man who had worked in a Ford assembly plant in America, had the tiniest of cards, with only his name and title. His father, on the other hand, had a large card with a photograph of himself on one side, in full princely regalia, the other side blank. Cards were versatile. Notes scrawled on cards served as invitations to dinner or cocktails or more compelling assignations. By simply crossing out the last name, a man or woman conveyed friendship, interest, even intimacy.
Martha accumulated dozens of cards, and saved them. Cards from Prince Louis, soon to become a suitor and friend; from Sigrid Schultz, of course; and from Mildred Fish Harnack, who had been present on the station platform
