Like many of the veteran journalists, Beam had little patience for the likes of Dilling: Americans who came to Germany and admired the Nazis. Early in his tour, however, he did offer a positive assessment of the Arbeitsdienst, the Nazi-organized compulsory six months of labor service for males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. Henry Leverich, an embassy colleague, had been allowed to spend time at three of the Arbeitsdienst camps and was impressed, as Beam recalled, by “the magnificent physical condition of the camp inmates; their pride in their camp and their work…” He noted later that this would prove good training for military service when many of these men would be called up during the war.
Beam was also given his chance to view a Nazi program firsthand—Kraft durch Freude, Strength Through Joy, that offered cheap cruises for workers to boost their morale. Permitted to travel on a one-week cruise of the North Sea, he concluded, “The tours were well-organized, without undue overcrowding, and the satisfaction of the group appeared to be genuine.” As Beam later pointed out, his and Leverich’s positive reporting on those programs contributed to the judgment of some of their superiors back in Washington that they were soft on the Nazis.
But Beam quickly became a perceptive observer of his surroundings, coming to share the far more critical views of many of the other Americans who knew Germany well. He noticed both the pageantry and propaganda, and the bizarre and the brutal.
To mark the anniversary of Hitler’s coming to power in 1933, every January 30 the Nazis would hold a torchlight parade, and the Foreign Ministry would invite diplomats from various embassies to witness the procession. In 1937, the Americans and the Brazilians were invited. Beam and his colleague James Riddleberger came from the U.S. Embassy, and they were positioned at a window next to the balcony from where Hitler reviewed the SS troops carrying the torches.
After the parade, the American and Brazilian diplomats thought they would be escorted out. Instead, an excited Hitler came up to them, asking for their reactions. When they obliged by saying they were impressed, he invited them next door to the president’s palace, which earlier had been occupied by Hindenburg and was now the scene of a party. As they entered a room that was full of Nazis in uniform, Hitler called over the waiters to make sure each of the diplomats was offered a beer. Then, he clapped his hands and shouted the first words of the “Horst Wessel Song,” the Nazi anthem, as he ordered the crowd to make a path for him. This was the prelude to one of his stranger performances, a rare attempt at humor on his part.
As Beam recalled, Hitler goose-stepped across the room “ostensibly imitating a somewhat slovenly stormtrooper with a protruding stomach.” Reaching a bust of himself, he saluted, turned around and marched back, this time adopting “the style of the SS, with stomach tucked in and lips tightly buttoned.” The assembled Nazi brass didn’t know how to react. After they awkwardly applauded, one of Hitler’s aides nudged the Americans and Brazilians out the door.
There was nothing even vaguely amusing about the Nazis’ ferocious enforcement methods. Beam concluded that they blotted out their “most vaunted domestic achievements.” One bit of evidence that impressed upon him their “blood-lust and brutality” was provided by his colleague, Marselis Parsons. The American vice-consul was sent to witness the cremation of the body of a man who was executed for allegedly trying to assassinate Julius Streicher, the rabidly anti-Semitic founder of the Nazi newspaper
Like many of the career foreign service officers at the American Embassy, Beam was pleased to see Ambassador Dodd depart at the end of 1937. He considered him to be “dignified, considerate, sound in his judgment of the Nazis, but very inarticulate.” And he shared the view that the historian had “embarrassed the U.S. government” with his undiplomatic statements—although Beam stressed that this was “not because of their anti- Nazi content but because they had set off press speculation that the German Government would soon feel compelled to demand his removal.” He also faulted Dodd for “antagonizing most of the State Department’s high command.”
For all those reasons, Beam welcomed the appointment in early 1938 of foreign service veteran Hugh Wilson, who had first served in Berlin for a few months back in 1916 and then from 1920 to 1923. His track record as a diplomat and in Washington, where he served as assistant secretary of state before he was sent to Berlin again, convinced Beam that their new boss was a seasoned professional. “We respected Mr. Wilson’s competence,” he noted. The new envoy was, in Beam’s words, “a veteran, ‘you have to show me’ type diplomat who disapproved of his predecessor’s disorderly performance.”
But, as Beam soon realized, Dodd may have been more accurate in his critical assessment of the Nazi regime than his more experienced replacement. Wilson was “somewhat skeptical of the negative views held by some of us on his staff who had spent a couple of years or more in Berlin,” Beam recalled. He also pointed out that this wasn’t an uncommon experience “since we found it took some time to educate official newcomers to the facts of living with the Nazis.”
Wilson knew that other foreign service officers with extensive Berlin experience, especially former Consul General Messersmith, saw the Nazi regime as an extremely dangerous enemy. But if Messersmith and some others held this stage-four view, Wilson arrived with an attitude that wasn’t marked by the naive admiration characteristic of stage one—but was still far from viewing Hitler’s Germany with alarm. Determined to reach his own judgments, Wilson wanted “to concentrate on the diplomatic aspects of the peace in Europe,” as Beam put it. He didn’t want a confrontation with the Nazis over their internal policies or their broader ambitions; he wanted to use the traditional tools of diplomacy to keep the peace.
For those American diplomats like Beam who were no longer willing to suspend judgment on the Nazi regime, the arrival of Wilson proved to be a classic case of the perils of getting what you wish for. Beam and several of his colleagues also quickly concluded that Wilson “was ‘not on the inside track’ either in Berlin or in Washington when it came to dealing with the affairs of state at the highest level.” Dodd had maintained personal relations with Roosevelt, despite his antagonistic relationship with the president’s appointees at the State Department. And while he was ineffective in his dealings with the Nazis, the former ambassador had quickly shed any illusions that they might moderate their policies.
Wilson, by contrast, believed that there should be no rush to judgment on Hitler’s regime, even in 1938, and that traditional diplomacy could avert a confrontation with it. This was precisely the kind of mind-set that would be eagerly embraced by Britain and France, setting the stage for Munich.
After Wilson presented his credentials to Hitler on March 3, 1938, he promptly wrote to Roosevelt. He found that “the principal impression I carried away is the lack of drama in this exceedingly dramatic figure,” he reported. “He was clad as I was in a dress suit, and wore only one order, the Iron Cross. He is more healthy looking than I had anticipated, more solid, more erect. The complexion is pale, but there is more character in his face than I had imagined from the photographs. He speaks with a strong Austrian accent, but was quite easy to follow.”
Wilson added: “He is a man who does not look at you steadily but gives you an occasional glance as he talks. In our conversation at least he was restrained and made no gestures of any kind.” When Wilson politely told his host he was interested in meeting the man who had pulled his country out of such poverty and despair and produced prosperity and pride, Hitler was reluctant “to assume for himself the credit for the work which is being done.” The envoy found that appealing, although he confessed that their talk was “colorless” and “the very negative nature of my impressions was surprising.” When he had met Mussolini earlier, Wilson had the feeling that he could have happily invited him for dinner and further conversation over a beer. “I had no such desire on leaving Hitler,” he declared.
After a subsequent meeting on March 12, he wrote again to Roosevelt, pointing out that the frequent descriptions by Germans of Hitler as an artist were on target—“in the sense of a man who arrives at his conclusions and undertakes his actions through instinct rather than ratiocination.” He indicated that Hitler was well informed, “but his reasoning, while making use of this knowledge, tends to justify an emotional concept.” As a result, he concluded, “if we think of Hitler as an artist, it explains a great deal.”
That was the same day as the Anschluss, when “the artist” orchestrated the annexation of Austria. In his diary entry for that day, Wilson assessed that event with cool detachment. “One may judge the action from the
