2 “That was a new Versailles Treaty”: Gallo, 83.
3 “We’ll have to let the thing ripen”: Kershaw,
1 “I stated that I was sorry”: Hull, Memorandum, Feb. 29, 1934, State/Foreign. For a full account of the mock trial, see Anthes.
On May 17, 1934, a counter-rally took place in Madison Square Garden that drew twenty thousand “Nazi friends,” as the
2 “do something to prevent this trial”: John Hickerson, Memorandum, March 1, 1934, State/Foreign.
3 “that if the circumstances were reversed”: Ibid.
4 “I replied,” Hickerson wrote: Ibid.
5 the speakers “were not in the slightest”: Hull, Memorandum, March 2, 1934, State/Foreign.
6 “noticed and resented”: Dodd,
7 “malicious demonstration”: Memorandum, “The German Foreign Office to the American Embassy,” enclosed with Dodd to Hull, March 8, 1934, State/Foreign.
8 “nobody could suppress a private or public meeting”: Dodd,
9 “I reminded the Minister”: Dodd to Hull, March 6, 1934, State/Foreign.
10 “an extraordinary impression”: Ibid.
11 “that nothing which was to be said”: William Phillips, Memorandum, March 7, 1934, State/Foreign.
12 Here too Phillips demurred: Ibid.
13 “take the matter under consideration”: Ibid.
14 The trial took place as planned:
15 “We declare that the Hitler government”: Ibid.
16 “no comment other than to re-emphasize”: Hull to Dodd, March 8, 1934, State/Foreign.
17 First Dodd asked Hitler: My account of Dodd’s meeting with Hitler draws its details mainly from Dodd’s
18 On March 12 an official: Dodd to Roosevelt, Aug. 15, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers; Dallek, 227.
19 “Dodd made no impression”: Hanfstaengl, 214.
20 “Ambassador Dodd, quite without instruction”: Moffat, Diary, March 7, 1934.
21 “I do not think it a disgrace”: Dodd,
22 “such offensive and insulting acts”: Hull, Memorandum, March 13, 1934, State/Foreign.
23 “I stated further that I trusted”: Ibid.
24 “was not feeling as cool as the snow”: Hull, Memorandum, March 23, 1934, State/Foreign. This is one of the few official memoranda from these early days of America’s relationship with Nazi Germany that makes one want to stand up and cheer—cheer, that is, in a manner as understated and oblique as Hull’s prose. Alas, it was only a brief matchbook flare on behalf of liberty.
Undersecretary William Phillips was present for this meeting and was startled by the “violent language” Luther unleashed. “The Secretary,” Phillips wrote in his diary, “was very calm and caustic in his replies and I am not sure that Doctor Luther got the underlying tone of coolness.” Phillips added that if it had been up to him he would have told Luther to leave and come back “after he had cooled down.” Phillips, Diary, March 23, 1934.
25 “tone of asperity”: Hull to John Campbell White, March 30, 1934, State/Foreign.
26 “to communicate to the Government of the German Reich”: Quoted in Spear, 216.
27 “in an embarrassing position”: R. Walton Moore, Memorandum, Jan. 19, 1934, State/Foreign.
28 “exerted his influence”: Spear, 216.
1 “on all sides of the fence at once”: Metcalfe, 201.
2 “We didn’t take too seriously what he said”: Dodd,
3 “You are sick?”: Diels, 283. Also quoted in Metcalfe, 236.
4 Once again Diels left the country: Metcalfe, 237; Dodd,
5 “a pathetic passive-looking creature”: Dodd,
6 “I was young and reckless enough”: Ibid., 136.
7 “like a frightened rabbit”: Ibid., 135.
8 “In some ways the danger”: Ibid., 135–36.
1 “on a short leave”:
2 “handsome limousine”: Dodd,
3 “duty, readiness for sacrifice”: Hitler to Roosevelt, reproduced in Hull to John Campbell White, March 28, 1934, State/Foreign.
4 “strange message”: Phillips, Diary, March 27, 1934.
5 “to prevent our falling into the Hitler trap”: Moffat, Diary, March 24–25, 1934.
6 “who have freely and gladly made heroic efforts”: Roosevelt to Hitler, reproduced in Hull to John Campbell White, March 28, 1934, State/Foreign.
7 “We sought to sidestep the impression”: Phillips, Diary, March 27, 1934.
8 “there might easily be a little civil war”: Dodd to Mrs. Dodd, March 28, 1934, Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers.
9 “to quiet things if possible”: Ibid. Also, see Dodd,
10 “Louis XIV and Victoria style”: Dodd,
11 “house with a hundred rooms”: It was this mansion that became the new location of the Cosmos Club, after Welles sold it to the club in 1953. Gellman, 106–7, 395.
12 Indeed, his lecture: R. Walton Moore to Dodd, May 23, 1934, Box 45, W. E. Dodd Papers.
Moore compliments Dodd on his presentation to the group, known as the Personnel Board, but adds, with a good deal of understatement, “I am not at all certain that some of the members of the Board were pleased to hear it.”
13 had begun to express real hostility: For example, see Moffat, Diary, Dec. 16, 1933; Phillips, Diary, June 25, 1934.
14 “He is … by no means a clear thinker.”: Moffat, Diary, March 17, 1934.
15 “Their chief protector”: Dodd to Mrs. Dodd, March 28, 1934, Box 44, W. E. Dodd Papers.
1 “obviously in a greatly perturbed situation”: Messersmith, “Goering,” unpublished memoir, 3–8, Messersmith Papers.
2 A photograph of the moment: This photograph is one of many in a unique exhibit in Berlin that tracks the growth of the Gestapo and of Nazi terror in a block-long outdoor, and partly subterranean, display erected along the excavated wall of what once was the basement and so-called house prison of Gestapo headquarters. Certain locations in the world seem to concentrate darkness: the same wall once served as the foundation for a segment of the Berlin Wall.
3 “The infliction of physical punishment”: Quoted in Richie, 997; Metcalfe, 240.
