Martha hoped to stake a place in Berlin’s cultural landscape all her own, not just by dint of her friendship with the Harnacks, and she wanted that place to be a prominent one. She brought Salomon to one staid U.S. embassy function, clearly hoping to cause a stir. She succeeded. In a letter to Wilder she exulted in the crowd’s reaction as Salomon appeared: “the astonishment (there was a little hushed gasping and whispering behind hands from the oh so proper gathering) … Ernst von Salomon! accomplice in the Rathenau murder …”
She coveted attention and got it. Salomon described the guests gathered at one U.S. embassy party— possibly the same one—as “the capital’s jeunesse doree, smart young men with perfect manners … smiling attractively or laughing gaily at Martha Dodd’s witty sallies.”
She grew bolder. The time had come, she knew, to start throwing some parties of her own.
MEANWHILE DIELS, STILL ABROAD and living well at a swank hotel in Carlsbad, began putting out feelers to gauge the mood back in Berlin, whether it was safe yet for him to return; for that matter, whether it would ever be safe.
CHAPTER 18
Warning from a Friend
Martha grew increasingly confident about her social appeal, enough so that she organized her own afternoon salon, modeled on the teas and evening discussion groups of her friend Mildred Fish Harnack. She also threw herself a birthday party. Both events unfolded in ways markedly different from what she had hoped for.
In selecting guests for her salon she used her own contacts as well as Mildred’s. She invited several dozen poets, writers, and editors, for the ostensible purpose of meeting a visiting American publisher. Martha hoped “to hear amusing conversation, some exchange of stimulating views, at least conversation on a higher plane than one is accustomed to in diplomatic society.” But the guests brought an unexpected companion.
Instead of forming a lively and vibrant company with her at its center, the crowd became atomized, small groups here and there. A poet sat in the library with several guests clustered near. Others gathered tightly around the guest of honor, exhibiting what Martha termed “a pathetic eagerness to know what was happening in America.” Her Jewish guests looked especially ill at ease. The talk lagged; the consumption of food and alcohol surged. “The rest of the guests were standing around drinking heavily and devouring plates of food,” Martha wrote. “Probably many of them were poor and actually ill-fed, and the others were nervous and anxious to conceal it.”
In all, Martha wrote, “it was a dull and, at the same time, tense afternoon.” The uninvited guest was fear, and it haunted the gathering. The crowd, she wrote, was “so full of frustration and misery … of tension, broken spirits, doomed courage or tragic and hated cowardice, that I vowed never to have such a group again in my house.”
Instead she resigned herself to helping the Harnacks with their regular soirees and teas. They did have a gift for gathering loyal and compelling friends and holding them close. The idea that one day it would kill them would have seemed at the time, to Martha, utterly laughable.
THE GUEST LIST for her birthday party, set for October 8, her actual birth date, included a princess, a prince, several of her correspondent friends, and various officers of the SA and SS, “young, heel-clicking, courteous almost to the point of absurdity.” Whether Boris Winogradov attended is unclear, though by now Martha was seeing him “regularly.” It’s possible, even likely, that she didn’t invite him, for the United States still had not recognized the Soviet Union.
Two prominent Nazi officials made appearances at the party. One was Putzi Hanfstaengl, the other Hans Thomsen, a young man who served as liaison between the Foreign Ministry and Hitler’s chancellery. He had never exhibited the overheated swoon so evident in other Nazi zealots, and as a consequence he was well liked by members of the diplomatic corps and a frequent visitor to the Dodds’ home. Martha’s father often spoke with him in terms more blunt than diplomatic protocol allowed, confident that Thomsen would relay his views to senior Nazi officials, possibly even to Hitler himself. At times Martha had the impression that Thomsen might harbor personal reservations about Hitler. She and Dodd called him “Tommy.”
Hanfstaengl arrived late, as was his custom. He craved attention, and by dint of his immense height and energy always got it, no matter how crowded the room. He had become immersed in conversation with a musically knowledgeable guest about the merits of Schubert’s
Hanfstaengl seemed to enjoy the music. Hans Thomsen clearly did not. He stood abruptly, then marched to the record player and switched it off.
In her most innocent manner, Martha asked him why he didn’t like the music.
Thomsen glared, his face hard. “That is not the sort of music to be played for mixed gatherings and in a flippant manner,” he scolded. “I won’t have you play our anthem, with its significance, at a social party.”
Martha was stunned. This was her house, her party, and, moreover, American ground. She could do as she pleased.
Hanfstaengl looked at Thomsen with what Martha described as “a vivid look of amusement tinged with contempt.” He shrugged his shoulders, then sat down at the piano and began hammering away with his usual boisterous elan.
Later, Hanfstaengl took Martha aside. “Yes,” he said, “there are some people like that among us. People who have blind spots and are humorless—one must be careful not to offend their sensitive souls.”
For Martha, however, Thomsen’s display had a lingering effect of surprising power, for it eroded—albeit slightly—her enthusiasm for the new Germany, in the way a single ugly phrase can tilt a marriage toward decline.
“Accustomed all my life to the free exchange of views,” she wrote, “the atmosphere of this evening shocked me and struck me as a sort of violation of the decencies of human relationship.”
DODD TOO WAS FAST GAINING an appreciation of the prickly sensitivities of the day. No event provided a better measure of these than a speech he gave before the Berlin branch of the American Chamber of Commerce on Columbus Day, October 12, 1933. His talk managed to stir a furor not only in Germany but also, as Dodd was dismayed to learn, within the State Department and among the many Americans who favored keeping the nation from entangling itself in European affairs.
Dodd believed that an important part of his mission was to exert quiet pressure toward moderation or, as he wrote in a letter to the Chicago lawyer Leo Wormser, “to continue to persuade and entreat men here not to be their own worst enemies.” The invitation to speak seemed to present an ideal opportunity.
His plan was to use history to telegraph criticism of the Nazi regime, but obliquely, so that only those in the audience with a good grasp of ancient and modern history would understand the underlying message. In America a speech of this nature would have seemed anything but heroic; amid the mounting oppression of Nazi rule, it was positively daring. Dodd explained his motivation in a letter to Jane Addams. “It was because I had seen so much of injustice and domineering little groups, as well as heard the complaints of so many of the best people of the country, that I ventured as far as my position would allow and by historical analogy warned men as solemnly as possible against half-educated leaders being permitted to lead nations into war.”
He gave the talk the innocuous title “Economic Nationalism.” By citing the rise and fall of Caesar and episodes from French, English, and U.S. history, Dodd sought to warn of the dangers “of arbitrary and minority” government without ever actually mentioning contemporary Germany. It was not the kind of thing a traditional diplomat might have undertaken, but Dodd saw it as simply fulfilling Roosevelt’s original mandate. In defending himself later, Dodd wrote, “The President told me pointedly that he wanted me to be a standing representative and spokesman (on occasion) of American ideals and Philosophy.”
He spoke in a banquet room at the Adlon Hotel before a large audience that included a number of senior government officials, including Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht and two men from Goebbels’s ministry of propaganda. Dodd knew he was about to step upon very sensitive terrain. He understood as well, given the many
