3 “without any display of orders”: Fromm, 137.
4 “Gravedigger of the Weimar Republic”: Ibid., 321.
5 “I have Hindenburg’s confidence”: Gellately,
6 “Not until they had riveted”: Wheeler-Bennett,
7 “When he arrived he was as suave”: Schultz, “1934,” 3, Personal Writings, Box 34, Schultz Papers.
At diplomatic functions, Papen would often sidle up to George Messersmith’s wife and try to pry from her bits and pieces of intelligence about political matters, such as American attitudes toward Germany. She learned to parry these probes by talking about her pastime of collecting porcelain. Papen “never made any progress,” Messersmith wrote, “because she always returned to porcelain.” Messersmith, “Conversations with Von Papen in Vienna,” unpublished memoir, 7, Messersmith Papers.
8 “The louder the motor”: Fromm, 136.
9 “Why should
10 Goring had claimed: Messersmith, “When I arrived in Berlin…,” unpublished memoir, 7, Messersmith Papers.
11 “sit and calmly tell you”: Messersmith to William Phillips, Sept. 29, 1933, (p. 6; see also, pp. 4–5), Messersmith Papers.
12 “I can tell you that”: Schultz, “Winter of 1933–1934,” 7, Personal Writings, Box 29, Schultz Papers; Schultz, “1934,” 4, Personal Writings, Box 34, Schultz Papers.
13 “brutal and ruthless”: Fromm, 137, 304.
14 Rumors of suicides were common: Goeschel, 100.
15 “I can’t live any more”: Fromm, 138.
16 “We all had a really good time”: Louis Lochner to Betty Lochner, Dec. 26, 1933, Round Robin Letters, Box 6, Lochner Papers.
17 “The dinner was a bore”: Dodd,
18 “From that day on”: Schultz, “Winter of 1933–1934,” 7, Personal Writings, Box 29, Schultz Papers.
19 “Bellachen, we are all so shocked”: Fromm, 138–39.
1 “Berlin is a skeleton”: Isherwood,
2 The SA monopolized the sale of Christmas trees: Gilbert L. MacMaster to Clarence E. Pickett, Feb. 12, 1934, vol. 2, p. 49,
3 “persons who had a grudge against him”: Details on the Wollstein incident can be found in Raymond H. Geist to Hull, Dec. 15, 1933, GRC 362.1121 Wollstein, Erwin/1, State/Decimal.
4 Martha assigned herself the task: Martha describes this tree-trimming episode in her unpublished memoir, “Bright Journey into Darkness,” 14–17, Box 14, Martha Dodd Papers.
5 “Have you lost even your literary interest”: Martha to Thornton Wilder, Dec. 14, 1933, Wilder Papers.
6 “On one occasion the hilarity was so great”: Wilbur Carr took careful notes on his conversation with Raymond Geist, and reported them in a “Strictly Confidential” memorandum dated June 5, 1935, Box 12, Carr Papers.
7 “There appears to be a spare typewriter”: John Campbell White to Jay Pierrepont Moffat, Nov. 17, 1933, White Papers.
8 “a curious individual”: Jay Pierrepont Moffat to John Campbell White, March 31, 1934, White Papers.
9 “Permanent retirement from the post”: Dodd to William Phillips, Dec. 4, 1933, Box 42, W. E. Dodd Papers.
10 “I cannot imagine who gave the
11 “an inside glimpse of conditions”: Phillips, Diary, Dec. 20, 1933.
12 “We went over it from all angles”: Moffat, Diary, Dec. 14, 1933.
13 “much concerned at letters”: Moffat, Diary, Feb. 13, 1934.
14 “Our mutual friend G.S.M.”: George Gordon to Dodd, Jan. 22, 1934, Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers.
15 Lochner told Dodd: Details of Lochner’s plot to save Dimitrov come from Metcalfe, 232–34; Dodd,
16 “high treason, insurrectionary arson”: Tobias, 268.
17 “We were sitting together drinking our coffee”: Lochner, Dec. 26, 1933, Round Robin Letters, Box 6, Lochner Papers.
18 Diels’s precise motives cannot be known: Wheaton, 430. Though he found the camps repellent, Diels was not being entirely altruistic. He recognized that an amnesty would have great political value, burnishing Hitler’s image both inside and outside Germany. But clearly he also knew that an amnesty would be an affront to Himmler, whose SS ran the camps, and that on that score alone the idea would appeal to Goring. Hitler and Goring approved the idea, but insisted that Dachau be exempted, and limited the number of prisoners to be included. They gave Diels authority to decide who would be freed. Goring announced the decree, and said that a total of five thousand prisoners would be released. In fact, the amnesty was not so wide-ranging as Goring’s announcement suggested. A number of camps outside Prussia also were exempted, and the overall total of prisoners released was lower than what Goring had promised. Moreover, plans existed to expand the capacity of the camps in Prussia alone by as many as eight thousand additional prisoners. Crankshaw, 45–47; Wheaton, 429–30.
19 “The Secret Police Chief did”: Dodd,
20 “One might think,” he wrote: Ibid., 66.
PART V: DISQUIET
1 “Thank you for telling me”: Tobias, 284.
2 “Herr Hitler seemed to feel a genuine sympathy”: Phipps, 40.
3 “Hitler is improving definitely”: Martha to Thornton Wilder, Dec. 14, 1933, Wilder Papers.
4 The official tally of unemployed workers: Fritzsche, 57; Miller, 66–67, 136.
5 Within the Reich Ministry of the Interior: Krausnick et al., 419.
One more sign of normalcy was the way the government dealt with an attack against an American that occurred on Jan. 15, 1934. On that cold, rain-soaked Monday a U.S. citizen named Max Schussler, working in Berlin as a landlord, stumbled into the consulate on Bellevuestrasse “bleeding profusely,” according to an account by Raymond Geist, who was serving as acting consul general while Messersmith was in America. Schussler was Jewish. The next morning, after consultation with Dodd, Geist went to Gestapo headquarters and lodged a protest directly with Rudolf Diels. Within forty-eight hours the assailant was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to seven months in prison. What’s more, news of the arrest and punishment received broad play over radio and in newspapers. Geist reported to Washington, “It is very gratifying to see how promptly the German authorities acted.… I believe that these attacks will now definitely cease.” He was wrong, as time would show, but for the moment at least there seemed to be a new effort by the government to win America’s goodwill.
There was an unwholesome element to Geist’s final conversation with Diels. The Gestapo chief complained that Schussler and certain other abused Americans were “not altogether a desirable lot,” as Geist recalled Diels’s remarks. The innuendo was clear, and Geist’s temper spiked. “I told him,” he wrote, “that we would never consider any other fact than that a man was an American citizen, and that the question of race or origin was entirely beside the point, and that any American citizen was entitled to the full protection of the American Government.” Geist to Hull, Jan. 16, 1934, FP 362.1113 Schussler, Max/1, State/Decimal; Geist to Hull, Jan. 18, 1934, 362.1113 Schussler, Max/8 GC, State/Decimal.
6 “More atrocity reports”: Gilbert L. MacMaster to Clarence E. Pickett, Feb. 12, 1934, vol. 2, pp. 58–59,
Deschner, in his biography of Reinhard Heydrich, writes that in these early days, “Jews were not
