In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

Summary (from the publisher): Erik Larson, bestselling author of Devil in the White City, delivers a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power.

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

    A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

    Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

 

Review: In 1933, William Dodd, a professor from Chicago, becomes the unlikely American ambassador to Germany. He brings along his wife and his two grown children, Martha and Bill. Told largely through the eyes of Dodd and his daughter Martha, this is the story of a family as they grow increasingly aware of the atrocities occurring under Hitler's rule, years before the United States joined in the fight to end his reign.

 

Poor William Dodd was far from Roosevelt's first choice for ambassador, and it seems he wasn't super keen on the appointment himself and would have greatly preferred to be on his farm writing his history of the old American South. "For Dodd, diplomat by accident, not demeanor, the whole thing was utterly appalling. He was a scholar and Jeffersonian democrat, a farmer who loved history and the old Germany in which he had studied as a young man" (329). He was also greatly reviled for his continual harping on the waste and opulence of the ambassador circuit, and refused to conform to the culture - retiring early and hiring fewer servants, etc. Part of this was due to his lack of personal wealth, but he also saw it as a point of pride to not waste funds on social functions. He argued that "the time had come 'to cease grand style performances.' He cited an American consular official who had shipped enough furniture to fill a twenty-room house - and yet had only two people in his family. He added that a mere assistant of his 'had a chauffeur, a porter, a butler, a valet, two cooks and two maids'" (247).

 

Although at times it seemed that Dodd was too focused on championing the cause of reducing excess to be focused on the escalating tensions of the Nazi regime, yet the fact remains that he was one of the few Americans vocalizing the threat of Germany under Nazi rule. At a time when most Americans were advocating isolationism, after Dodd's return to America he toured and lectured across the country about the atrocities occurring in Germany and urging America to not ignore the threats.

 

Dodd's daughter Martha was an interesting character. Although secretly married at the time of her family's departure for Berlin, she managed to carry on numerous affairs during her time there, including with a Russian who was likely in the NKVD, a precursor to the KGB. Martha's journals and letters contain numerous anti-Semitic remarks and she seemed determined to think the best of Germany even after it was obvious that it was going down a dark path. She even got to meet Hitler, who she described to her parents as "charming and peaceful" (161).

 

It seemed a little off balance to have the novel focus so much on Dodd and Martha and provide relatively few details about Dodd's wife and son, who were also present. However, it does make sense both because Dodd and Martha were more involved (and more interesting stories) and because Dodd and Martha were the ones who kept accounts of their time in Berlin, so their first person account of events is  much more readily available.

 

This is the third work I've read by Erik Larsen, having previously read The Devil in the White City and Thunderstruck. The New York Times has referred to this work as "novelistic history" and I think that is true of all of Larsen's work; he's adept at doing comprehensive research but then cutting through the chafe to deliver true stories that can be more compelling than novels. However, this book does differ from my previous reads by Larsen in a couple ways. First, this book does not have a dual storyline, where each chapter alternates in telling two semi-connected historical stories. Instead, it's straightforward and solely about the Dodds and events in Berlin during their time there, although it does move from discussing Dodd to his daughter's account. Second, unlike the more obscure stories told in his other two works, the reader already knows what will happen in Germany. The reader knows going in this will escalate into WWII, so the suspense was somewhat less for me compared to the other books where I was unfamiliar with the stories being told. However, this was an interesting look into what it was like in Germany as the country slowly grew aware of the dark time it was entering and the danger its citizens were in.

 

Stars: 4