the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, Dodd declared, “Mankind is in grave danger, but democratic governments seem not to know what to do. If they do nothing, Western civilization, religious, personal and economic freedom are in grave danger.” His remarks prompted an immediate protest from Germany, to which Secretary Hull replied that Dodd was now a private citizen and could say what he wished. First, however, there was some debate among State Department officials as to whether the department should also apologize with a statement along the lines of “We always regret anything that might give resentment abroad.” This idea was rejected, opposed by none other than Jay Pierrepont Moffat, who wrote in his diary, “I personally felt quite strongly that, much as I disliked and disapproved of Mr. Dodd, he should not be apologized for.”
With that speech, Dodd embarked on a campaign to raise the alarm about Hitler and his plans, and to combat the increasing drift in America toward isolationism; later he would be dubbed the Cassandra of American diplomats. He founded the American Council Against Nazi Propaganda and became a member of the American Friends of Spanish Democracy. At a speech in Rochester, New York, on February 21, 1938, before a Jewish congregation, Dodd warned that once Hitler attained control of Austria—an event that appeared imminent—Germany would continue seeking to expand its authority elsewhere, and that Romania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia were at risk. He predicted, moreover, that Hitler would be free to pursue his ambitions without armed resistance from other European democracies, as they would choose concessions over war. “Great Britain,” he said, “is terribly exasperated but also terribly desirous of peace.”
THE FAMILY DISPERSED, Bill to a teaching job and Martha to Chicago and then New York. Dodd and Mattie retired to the farm at Round Hill, Virginia, but made occasional forays into Washington. On February 26, 1938, just after seeing Dodd off at the train station in Washington for the start of a journey full of lectures, Mattie wrote to Martha in Chicago, “I do wish we were all nearer together so that we could discuss things and spend some time with each other. Our lives are slipping by so fast. Father often speaks of your being with us and what a joy it would be to have you with him and Billy nearby. I do wish he were younger and more vigorous. He is very delicate & his nervous energy depleted.”
She was deeply concerned about events in Europe. In another letter to Martha soon afterward she wrote, “The world seems in such a mess now, I don’t know what will happen. Too bad that maniac was allowed to go his way so long uncurbed. We may be, sooner or later, involved, God forbid.”
Mrs. Dodd did not share her husband’s deep love of the Round Hill farm. It was fine for summers and vacations, but not as a full-time residence. She hoped they could secure an apartment in Washington where she could live for a portion of each year, with or without him. In the meantime, she set out to make the farm more habitable. She bought curtains in gold silk, a new General Electric refrigerator, and a new stove. As spring advanced, she grew increasingly unhappy about the lack of progress both in finding the Washington pied-a-terre and in fixing up the farmhouse. She wrote to Martha, “So far I can’t get anything done that I want in the house but about 8 or 10 men [are] working on stone fences, beautifying his fields, picking up rocks, hauling, etc. It makes me feel like ‘throwing up the sponge’ and quitting the whole d—business.”
On May 23, 1938, in another letter to her daughter, she wrote, “Wish I did have a home—Washington instead of Chicago. It would be lovely.”
Four days later, Mrs. Dodd was dead. On the morning of May 28, 1938, she failed to join Dodd for breakfast, as was her custom. They kept separate bedrooms. He went to check on her. “It was the greatest shock that ever came to me,” he wrote. She died of heart failure in her bed, with no advance warning of trouble. “She was only sixty-two years old, and I was sixty-eight,” Dodd wrote in his diary. “But there she lay, stone dead, and there was no help for it; and I was so surprised and sad I could hardly decide what to do.”
Martha attributed her mother’s death to “the strain and terror of life” in Berlin. On the day of the funeral Martha pinned roses to her mother’s burial dress and wore matching roses in her own hair. Now, for only the second time, Martha saw tears in her father’s eyes.
Suddenly the farm at Round Hill was not so much a place of rest and peace as one of melancholy. Dodd’s sorrow and loneliness took a toll on his already fragile health, but still he pressed on and gave lectures around the country, in Texas, Kansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maryland, and Ohio, always reprising the same themes—that Hitler and Nazism posed a great risk to the world, that a European war was inevitable, and that once war began the United States would find it impossible to remain aloof. One lecture drew an audience of seven thousand people. In a June 10, 1938, speech in Boston, at the Harvard Club—that den of privilege—Dodd talked of Hitler’s hatred of Jews and warned that his true intent was “to kill them all.”
Five months later, on November 9 and 10, came Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom that convulsed Germany and at last drove Roosevelt to issue a public condemnation. He told reporters he “could scarcely believe that such a thing could occur in twentieth century civilization.”
On November 30, Sigrid Schultz wrote to Dodd from Berlin. “My hunch is that you have lots of chances to say or think ‘didn’t I say so beforehand?’ Not that it is such a great consolation to have been right when the world seems divided between ruthless Vandals and decent people unable to cope with them. We were witnesses when much of the wrecking and looting occurred and yet there are times when you wonder whether what you actually saw was really true—there is a nightmarish quality around the place, even surpassing the oppressiveness of June 30.”
A STRANGE EPISODE SIDETRACKED DODD. On December 5, 1938, as he was driving to a speaking engagement in McKinney, Virginia, his car struck a four-year-old black girl named Gloria Grimes. The impact caused significant injury, including an apparent concussion. Dodd did not stop. “It was not my fault,” he later explained to a reporter. “The youngster ran into the path of my automobile about thirty feet ahead. I put on the brakes, turned the car and drove on because I thought the child had escaped.” He made things worse by seeming to be insensitive when, in a letter to the girl’s mother, he added, “Besides, I did not want the newspapers all over the country to publish a story about the accident. You know how newspapers love to exaggerate things of this sort.”
He was indicted, but on the day his trial was to begin, March 2, 1939, he changed his plea to guilty. His friend, Judge Moore, sat beside him, as did Martha. The court fined him $250 but did not sentence him to jail, citing his poor health and the fact he had paid $1,100 in medical costs for the child, who by now was, reportedly, nearly recovered. He lost his driving privileges and his right to vote, an especially poignant loss for so ardent a believer in democracy.
Shattered by the accident, disillusioned by his experience as ambassador, and worn down by declining health, Dodd retreated to his farm. His health worsened. He was diagnosed as suffering from a neurological syndrome called bulbar palsy, a slow, progressive paralysis of the muscles of the throat. In July 1939 he was admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City for minor abdominal surgery, but before the operation took place he contracted bronchial pneumonia, a frequent complication of bulbar palsy. He became gravely ill. As he lay near death, he was taunted from afar by the Nazis.
A front-page article in Goebbels’s newspaper
The writer spat a puerile brand of malice typical of
It took note of Dodd’s campaign to warn of Hitler’s ambitions. “After returning to the United States, Dodd expressed himself in the most irresponsible and shameless fashion over the German Reich, whose officials had for four years, with almost superhuman generosity, overlooked his and his family’s scandalous affairs, faux pas and political indiscretions.”
Dodd emerged from the hospital and retired to his farm, where he continued to nurture the hope that he would have time to finish the remaining volumes of his
In September 1939, Hitler’s armies invaded Poland and sparked war in Europe. On September 18, Dodd wrote to Roosevelt that it could have been avoided if “the democracies in Europe” had simply acted together to stop Hitler, as he always had urged. “If they had co-operated,” Dodd wrote, “they would have succeeded. Now it is too late.”
