48 The news was humbling.: Ibid., 10.
49 “the Jews should not be allowed to dominate”: Ibid., 10.
50 “The Jews, after winning the war”: Crane to Dodd, June 14, 1933, Box 40, W. E. Dodd Papers.
51 Dodd partly embraced Crane’s notion: Dodd to Crane, Sept. 16, 1933, Box 40, W. E. Dodd Papers.
52 “Let Hitler have his way.”: Dodd,
53 A dozen or so reporters: Ibid., 11.
54 By this point he had begun: Ibid., 7.
55 “a disproportionate amount of sadness”: Dodd,
1 Martha continued to cry: Dodd,
2 She saw Hitler as “a clown”: Ibid., 10.
3 As a student at the University of Chicago: Ibid., 5.
4 “I was slightly anti-Semitic”: Ibid., 5.
5 One poll found: Breitman and Kraut, 88.
6 A poll taken decades in the future: Anti-Defamation League, 2009, ADL.org.
7 “an enchantress”: Vanden Heuvel, 225.
8 “The personality is all there”: Sandburg, Box 63, W. E. Dodd Papers.
9 “give way to every beckoning”: Ibid.
10 “find out what this man Hitler”: Dodd,
11 Thornton Wilder also offered: Wilder to Martha, n.d., Box 63, W. E. Dodd Papers.
In one letter, dated Sept. 15, 1933, Wilder wrote, “I can see the plane rides”—here an apparent reference to the airborne courtship of her by Ernst Udet, World War I flying ace and aerial adventurer—“and the tea dances and the movie-stars; and the brisk (soon autumnal) stroll in the most autumnal of all great parks. But I cannot see what you’re like when you’re alone—or alone just with the family—or alone with the typewriter. Your letters are so vivacious that they deafen my mind’s eye to all this other.”
He opens his letters to her, variously, with “Dear Marthy,” “Dear Handsome,” “Dear Marthy-la-Belle.”
“We’re cusses,” he wrote in April 1935, “both of us, preposterous exasperating cusses and were meant to be friends.”
12 Martha kept a picture: Brysac, 142.
13 “half a dozen or more”: Wise,
14 “He was most friendly”: Ibid.
15 “One cannot write the whole truth”: Ibid.
16 “unfair at many points”: Dodd,
17 His daughter, Martha: Dodd,
18 He told a friend: Bailey, 150.
19 Dodd had assumed: Dodd,
20 Meanwhile, Dodd fielded questions: Ibid., 20; Dodd,
21 He was stiff and arrogant: Dodd,
22 “very choleric temperament”: Messersmith, “Some Observations on the appointment of Dr. William Dodd, as Ambassador to Berlin,” unpublished memoir, 8, Messersmith Papers.
23 “clipped, polite, and definitely condescending”: Dodd,
24 “the like of which”: Ibid., 21.
25 Mrs. Dodd—Mattie: Ibid., 21.
26 “a dry, drawling, peppery man”: Breitman and Kraut, 40.
27 “I liked Dodd”: Messersmith, “Some Observations on the appointment of Dr. William Dodd, as Ambassador to Berlin,” unpublished memoir, 3, Messersmith Papers.
28 “a perfect example”: Fromm, 121.
29 “looks like a scholar”: Ibid., 120.
30 “is clear and capable”: Brysac, 141.
31 “a woman who is seriously interested”: Ibid.
32 “I was drawn to her immediately”: Unpublished memoir, 3, Box 13, Martha Dodd Papers.
33 She found long, straight boulevards: While I ought to footnote every little nugget in this rather long paragraph, frankly the effort would be too tedious and of limited value. So allow me to refer the reader to a couple of sources that provided me with a vivid sense of old Berlin: Ladd,
34 “The bells on the streetcars”: Kaes et al., 560–62.
35 “Oh, I thought it was burned down!”: Dodd,
36 “Sssh! Young lady”: Ibid., 22.
37 Greta Garbo once was a guest: Kreuder, 26.
Kreuder’s “cultural history” of the Hotel Esplanade includes a number of photographs of the hotel before and immediately after World War II, and in its current incarnation as an artifact sequestered behind a wall of glass. For more on this, please read my source essay (pp. 367–75).
38 the Imperial Suite: Dodd,
39 “that there was scarcely space”: Dodd,
40 “modest quarters”: Messersmith, “Some Observations on the appointment of Dr. William Dodd, as Ambassador to Berlin,” unpublished memoir, 2, Messersmith Papers.
41 The family settled in: Dodd,
42 Later that evening: Ibid., 23–24.
43 “In the Tiergarten”: Kaes et al., 425.
44 “I am sure this was”: Dodd,
45 “I felt the press had badly maligned”: Ibid., 24.
PART II: HOUSE HUNTING IN THE THIRD REICH
1 “A little pudgy”: Dodd,
2 “the dragon from Chicago”: Schultz, “Dragon,” 113.
3 The opening of one such camp: Stackelberg and Winkle, 145. Regarding “wild” camps, KZs, and such, see Krausnick et al., 400, 410, 419;
Richie, 412; Fritzsche, 43; Fest, 115–16; Kershaw,
4 “I didn’t believe all her stories”: Dodd,
5 “What a youthful, carefree”: de Jonge, 140.
6 Within days she found herself: Dodd,
7 “their funny stiff dancing”: Ibid., 24.
8 “weren’t thieves”: Ibid., 25.
9 the
10 “I’m not Jewish”: Grunberger, 371; de Jonge, 161; for more on Finck, see Jelavich, 236–41, 248.
11 “The sun shines”: Isherwood,
