In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

sized up that of his opponents at home.”

Though Dodd continued to nurture the hope that the German government would grow more civil, he recognized that Hitler’s two decisions signaled an ominous shift away from moderation. The time had come, he knew, to meet with Hitler face-to-face.

Dodd went to bed that night deeply troubled.

SHORTLY BEFORE NOON ON TUESDAY, October 17, 1933, Roosevelt’s “standing liberal” set out in top hat and tails for his first meeting with Adolf Hitler.

CHAPTER 19

Matchmaker

Putzi Hanfstaengl knew of Martha’s various romantic relationships, but by the fall of 1933 he had begun to imagine for her a new partner.

Having come to feel that Hitler would be a much more reasonable leader if only he fell in love, Hanfstaengl appointed himself matchmaker. He knew this would not be easy. As one of Hitler’s closest associates, he recognized that the history of Hitler’s relationships with women was an odd one, marred by tragedy and persistent rumors of unsavory behavior. Hitler liked women, but more as stage decoration than as sources of intimacy and love. There had been talk of numerous liaisons, typically with women much younger than he—in one case a sixteen-year-old named Maria Reiter. One woman, Eva Braun, was twenty-three years his junior and had been an intermittent companion since 1929. So far, however, Hitler’s only all-consuming affair had been with his young niece, Geli Raubal. She was found shot to death in Hitler’s apartment, his revolver nearby. The most likely explanation was suicide, her means of escaping Hitler’s jealous and oppressive affection—his “clammy possessiveness,” as historian Ian Kershaw put it. Hanfstaengl suspected that Hitler once had been attracted to his own wife, Helena, but she assured him there was no cause for jealousy. “Believe me,” she said, “he’s an absolute neuter, not a man.”

Hanfstaengl telephoned Martha at home.

“Hitler needs a woman,” he said. “Hitler should have an American woman—a lovely woman could change the whole destiny of Europe.”

He got to the point: “Martha,” he said, “you are the woman!”

PART IV

How the Skeleton Aches

The Tiergarten, January 1934 (photo credit p4.1)

CHAPTER 20

The Fuhrer’s Kiss

Dodd walked up a broad stairway toward Hitler’s office, at each bend encountering SS men with their arms raised “Caesar style,” as Dodd put it. He bowed in response and at last entered Hitler’s waiting room. After a few moments the black, tall door to Hitler’s office opened. Foreign Minister Neurath stepped out to welcome Dodd and to bring him to Hitler. The office was an immense room, by Dodd’s estimate fifty feet by fifty feet, with ornately decorated walls and ceiling. Hitler, “neat and erect,” wore an ordinary business suit. Dodd noted that he looked better than newspaper photographs indicated.

Even so, Hitler did not cut a particularly striking figure. He rarely did. Early in his rise it was easy for those who met him for the first time to dismiss him as a nonentity. He came from plebeian roots and had failed to distinguish himself in any way, not in war, not in work, not in art, though in this last domain he believed himself to have great talent. He was said to be indolent. He rose late, worked little, and surrounded himself with the lesser lights of the party with whom he felt most comfortable, an entourage of middlebrow souls that Putzi Hanfstaengl derisively nicknamed the “Chauffeureska,” consisting of bodyguards, adjutants, and a chauffeur. He loved movies— King Kong was a favorite—and he adored the music of Richard Wagner. He dressed badly. Apart from his mustache and his eyes, the features of his face were indistinct and unimpressive, as if begun in clay but never fired. Recalling his first impression of Hitler, Hanfstaengl wrote, “Hitler looked like a suburban hairdresser on his day off.”

Nonetheless the man had a remarkable ability to transform himself into something far more compelling, especially when speaking in public or during private meetings when some topic enraged him. He had a knack as well for projecting an aura of sincerity that blinded onlookers to his true motives and beliefs, though Dodd had not yet come to a full appreciation of this aspect of his character.

First Dodd raised the subject of the many attacks against Americans. Hitler was cordial and apologetic and assured Dodd that the perpetrators of all such attacks would be “punished to the limit.” He promised as well to publicize widely his prior decrees exempting foreigners from giving the Hitler salute. After some bland conversation about Germany’s debts to American creditors, Dodd moved to the topic most on his mind, the “all-pervasive question of the German thunderbolt of last Saturday”—Hitler’s decision to withdraw from the League of Nations.

When Dodd asked him why he had pulled Germany from the League, Hitler grew visibly angry. He attacked the Treaty of Versailles and France’s drive to maintain superiority in arms over Germany. He railed against the “indignity” of keeping Germany in an unequal state, unable to defend herself against her neighbors.

Hitler’s sudden rage startled Dodd. He tried to appear unfazed, less a diplomat now than a professor dealing with an overwrought student. He told Hitler, “There is evident injustice in the French attitude; but defeat in war is always followed by injustice.” He raised the example of the aftermath of the American Civil War and the North’s “terrible” treatment of the South.

Hitler stared at him. After a brief period of silence, the conversation resumed, and for a few moments the two men engaged in what Dodd described as “an exchange of niceties.” But now Dodd asked whether “an incident on the Polish, Austrian or French border which drew an enemy into the Reich” would be enough for Hitler to launch a war.

“No, no,” Hitler insisted.

Dodd probed further. Suppose, he asked, such an incident were to involve the Ruhr Valley, an industrial region about which Germans were particularly sensitive. France had occupied the Ruhr from 1923 to 1925, causing great economic and political turmoil within Germany. In the event of another such incursion, Dodd asked, would Germany respond militarily on its own or call for an international meeting to resolve the matter?

“That would be my purpose,” Hitler said, “but we might not be able to restrain the German people.”

Dodd said, “If you would wait and call a conference, Germany would regain her popularity outside.”

Soon the meeting came to an end. It had lasted forty-five minutes. Though the session had been difficult and strange, Dodd nonetheless left the chancellery feeling convinced that Hitler was sincere about wanting peace. He was concerned, however, that he might again have violated the laws of diplomacy. “Perhaps I was too frank,” he wrote later to Roosevelt, “but I had to be honest.”

At 6:00 p.m. that day he sent a two-page cable to Secretary Hull summarizing the meeting and closed by telling Hull, “The total effect of the interview was more favorable from the point of view of the maintenance of world peace than I had expected.”

Dodd also conveyed these impressions to Consul General Messersmith, who then sent Undersecretary Phillips