In The Garden Of Beasts Part 15

The Dodds arrived late in their new Buick, which had betrayed them along the way with a minor mechanical failure, but they still managed to arrive before Goring himself. Their instructions called for them to drive to a particular point on the estate. To keep guests from getting lost, Goring had stationed men at each crossroads to provide directions. Dodd and his wife found the other guests gathered around a speaker who held forth on some aspect of the grounds. The Dodds learned they were at the edge of the bison enclosure.

At last Goring arrived, driving fast, alone, in what Phipps described as a racing car. He climbed out wearing a uniform that was partly the costume of an aviator, partly that of a medieval hunter. He wore boots of India rubber and in his belt had tucked a very large hunting knife.

Goring took the place of the first speaker. He used a microphone but spoke loudly into it, producing a jarring effect in the otherwise sylvan locale. He described his plan to create a forest preserve that would reproduce the conditions of primeval Germany, complete with primeval animals like the bison that now stood indolently in the near distance. Three photographers and a "cinematograph" operator captured the affair on film.

Elisabetta Cerruti, the beautiful Hungarian and Jewish wife of the Italian amba.s.sador, recalled what happened next.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Goring said, "in a few minutes you will witness a unique display of nature at work." He gestured toward an iron cage. "In this cage is a powerful male bison, an animal almost unheard of on the Continent.... He will meet here, before your very eyes, the female of his species. Please be quiet and don't be afraid."

Goring's keepers opened the cage.

"Ivan the Terrible," Goring commanded, "I order you to leave the cage."

The bull did not move.

Goring repeated his command. Once again the bull ignored him.

The keepers now attempted to prod Ivan into action. The photographers readied themselves for the l.u.s.tful charge certain to ensue.

Britain's Amba.s.sador Phipps wrote in his diary that the bull emerged from the cage "with the utmost reluctance, and, after eyeing the cows somewhat sadly, tried to return to it." Phipps also described the affair in a later memorandum to London that became famous within the British foreign office as "the bison dispatch."

Next, Dodd and Mattie and the other guests climbed aboard thirty small, two-pa.s.senger carriages driven by peasants and set off on a long, meandering ride through forests and across meadows. Goring was in the lead in a carriage pulled by two great horses, with Mrs. Cerruti seated to his right. An hour later, the procession halted near a swamp. Goring climbed from his carriage and gave another speech, this on the glories of birds.

Once again the guests climbed into their carriages and, after another lengthy ride, came to a glade where their cars stood waiting. Goring levered his ma.s.sive self into his car and raced off at high speed. The other guests followed at a slower pace and after twenty minutes came to a lake beside which stood an immense, newly constructed lodge that seemed meant to evoke the home of a medieval lord. Goring was waiting for them, dressed in a wholly new outfit, "a wonderful new white summer garb," Dodd wrote-white tennis shoes, white duck trousers, white shirt, and a hunting jacket of green leather, in whose belt the same hunting knife appeared. In one hand he held a long implement that seemed a cross between a shepherd's staff and a harpoon.

It was now about six o'clock, and the afternoon sun had turned the landscape a pleasing amber. Staff in hand, Goring led his guests into the house. A collection of swords hung just inside the main door. He showed off his "gold" and "silver" rooms, his card room, library, gym, and movie theater. One hallway was barbed with dozens of sets of antlers. In the main sitting room they found a live tree, a bronze image of Hitler, and an as-yet-unoccupied s.p.a.ce in which Goring planned to install a statue of Wotan, the Teutonic G.o.d of war. Goring "displayed his vanity at every turn," Dodd observed. He noted that a number of guests traded amused but discreet glances.

Then Goring drew the party outside, where all were directed to sit at tables set in the open air for a meal orchestrated by the actress Emmy Sonnemann, whom Goring identified as his "private secretary," though it was common knowledge that she and Goring were romantically involved. (Mrs. Dodd liked Sonnemann and in coming months would become, as Martha noted, "rather attached to her.") Amba.s.sador Dodd found himself seated at a table with Vice-Chancellor Papen, Phipps, and Francois-Poncet, among others. He was disappointed in the result. "The conversation had no value," he wrote-though he found himself briefly engaged when the discussion turned to a new book about the German navy in World War I, during which far-too-enthusiastic talk of war led Dodd to say, "If people knew the truth of history there would never be another great war."

Phipps and Francois-Poncet laughed uncomfortably.

Then came silence.

A few moments later, talk resumed: "we turned," Dodd wrote, "to other and less risky subjects."

Dodd and Phipps a.s.sumed-hoped-that once the meal was over they would be able to excuse themselves and begin their journey back to Berlin, where both had an evening function to attend, but Goring now informed all that the climax of the outing-"this strange comedy," Phipps called it-was yet to come.

Goring led his guests to another portion of the lake sh.o.r.e some five hundred yards away, where he stopped before a tomb erected at the water's edge. Here Dodd found what he termed "the most elaborate structure of its kind I ever saw." The mausoleum was centered between two great oak trees and six large sa.r.s.en stones reminiscent of those at Stonehenge. Goring walked to one of the oaks and planted himself before it, legs apart, like some gargantuan wood sprite. The hunting knife was still in his belt, and again he wielded his medieval staff. He held forth on the virtues of his dead wife, the idyllic setting of her tomb, and his plans for her exhumation and reinterment, which was to occur ten days hence, on the summer solstice, a day that the pagan ideology of the National Socialists had freighted with symbolic importance. Hitler was to attend, as were legions of men from the army, SS, and SA.

At last, "weary of the curious display," Dodd and Phipps in tandem moved to say their good-byes to Goring. Mrs. Cerruti, clearly awaiting her own chance to bolt, acted with more speed. "Lady Cerruti saw our move," Dodd wrote, "and she arose quickly so as not to allow anybody to trespa.s.s upon her fight to lead on every possible occasion."

The next day Phipps wrote about Goring's open house in his diary. "The whole proceedings were so strange as at times to convey a feeling of unreality," he wrote, but the episode had provided him a valuable if unsettling insight into the nature of n.a.z.i rule. "The chief impression was that of the most pathetic naivete of General Goring, who showed us his toys like a big, fat, spoilt child: his primeval woods, his bison and birds, his shooting-box and lake and bathing beach, his blond 'private secretary,' his wife's mausoleum and swans and sa.r.s.en stones.... And then I remembered there were other toys, less innocent though winged, and these might some day be launched on their murderous mission in the same childlike spirit and with the same childlike glee."

CHAPTER 43.

A Pygmy Speaks Wherever Martha and her father now went they heard rumors and speculation that the collapse of Hitler's regime might be imminent. With each hot June day the rumors gained detail. In bars and cafes, patrons engaged in the decidedly dangerous pastime of composing and comparing lists of who would comprise the new government. The names of two former chancellors came up often: General Kurt von Schleicher and Heinrich Bruning. One rumor held that Hitler would remain chancellor but be kept under control by a new, stronger cabinet, with Schleicher as vice-chancellor, Bruning as foreign minister, and Captain Rohm as defense minister. On June 16, 1934, a month shy of the one-year anniversary of his arrival in Berlin, Dodd wrote to Secretary of State Hull, "Everywhere I go men talk of resistance, of possible putsches in big cities."

And then something occurred that until that spring would have seemed impossible given the potent barriers to dissent established under Hitler's rule.

On Sunday, June 17, Vice-Chancellor Papen was scheduled to deliver a speech in Marburg at the city's namesake university, a brief rail journey southwest of Berlin. He did not see the text until he was aboard his train, this owing to a quiet conspiracy between his speechwriter, Edgar Jung, and his secretary, Fritz Gunther von Tschirschky und Boegendorff. Jung was a leading conservative who had become so deeply opposed to the n.a.z.i Party that he briefly considered a.s.sa.s.sinating Hitler. Until now he had kept his anti-n.a.z.i views out of Papen's speeches, but he sensed that the growing conflict within the government offered a unique opportunity. If Papen himself spoke out against the regime, Jung reasoned, his remarks might at last prompt President Hindenburg and the army to eject the n.a.z.is from power and quash the Storm Troopers, in the interest of restoring order to the nation. Jung had gone over the speech carefully with Tschirschky, but both men had deliberately kept it from Papen until the last moment so that he would have no choice but to deliver it. "The speech took months of preparation," Tschirschky later said. "It was necessary to find the proper occasion for its delivery, and then everything had to be prepared with the greatest possible care."

Now, in the train, as Papen read the text for the first time, Tschirschky saw a look of fear cross his face. It is a measure of the altered mood in Germany-the widespread perception that dramatic change might be imminent-that Papen, an unheroic personality, felt he could go ahead and deliver it and still survive. Not that he had much choice. "We more or less forced him to make that speech," Tschirschky said. Copies already had been distributed to foreign correspondents. Even if Papen balked at the last minute, the speech would continue to circulate. Clearly hints of its content already had leaked out, for when Papen arrived at the hall the place hummed with antic.i.p.ation. His anxiety surely spiked when he saw that a number of seats were occupied by men wearing brown shirts and swastika armbands.

Papen walked to the podium.

"I am told," he began, "that my share in events in Prussia, and in the formation of the present Government"-an allusion to his role in engineering Hitler's appointment as chancellor-"has had such an important effect on developments in Germany that I am under an obligation to view them more critically than most people."

The remarks that followed would have earned any man of lesser stature a trip to the gallows. "The Government," Papen said, "is well aware of the selfishness, the lack of principle, the insincerity, the unchivalrous behavior, the arrogance which is on the increase under the guise of the German revolution." If the government hoped to establish "an intimate and friendly relationship with the people," he warned, "then their intelligence must not be underestimated, their trust must be reciprocated and there must be no continual attempt to browbeat them."

The German people, he said, would follow Hitler with absolute loyalty "provided they are allowed to have a share in the making and carrying out of decisions, provided every word of criticism is not immediately interpreted as malicious, and provided that despairing patriots are not branded as traitors."

The time had come, he proclaimed, "to silence doctrinaire fanatics."

The audience reacted as if its members had been waiting a very long time to hear such remarks. As Papen concluded his speech, the crowd leapt to its feet. "The thunder of applause," Papen noted, drowned out "the furious protests" of the uniformed n.a.z.is in the crowd. Historian John Wheeler-Bennett, at the time a Berlin resident, wrote, "It is difficult to describe the joy with which it was received in Germany. It was as if a load had suddenly been lifted from the German soul. The sense of relief could almost be felt in the air. Papen had put into words what thousands upon thousands of his countrymen had locked up in their hearts for fear of the awful penalties of speech."

THAT SAME DAY, Hitler was scheduled to speak elsewhere in Germany on the subject of a visit he had just made to Italy to meet with Mussolini. Hitler turned the opportunity into an attack on Papen and his conservative allies, without mentioning Papen directly. "All these little dwarfs who think they have something to say against our idea will be swept away by its collective strength," Hitler shouted. He railed against "this ridiculous little worm," this "pygmy who imagines he can stop, with a few phrases, the gigantic renewal of a people's life."

He issued a warning to the Papen camp: "If they should at any time attempt, even in a small way, to move from their criticism to a new act of perjury, they can be sure that what confronts them today is not the cowardly and corrupt bourgeoisie of 1918 but the fist of the entire people. It is the fist of the nation that is clenched and will smash down anyone who dares to undertake even the slightest attempt at sabotage."

Goebbels acted immediately to suppress Papen's speech. He banned its broadcast and ordered the destruction of the gramophone records onto which it had been cast. He banned newspapers from publishing its text or reporting on its contents, though at least one newspaper, the Frankfurter Zeitung Frankfurter Zeitung, did manage to publish extracts. So intent was Goebbels on stopping dissemination of the speech that copies of the paper "were s.n.a.t.c.hed from the hands of the guests of restaurants and coffee houses," Dodd reported.

Papen's allies used the presses of Papen's own newspaper, Germania Germania, to produce copies of the speech for quiet distribution to diplomats, foreign correspondents, and others. The speech caused a stir throughout the world. The New York Times New York Times requested that Dodd's emba.s.sy provide the full text by telegraph. Newspapers in London and Paris made the speech a sensation. requested that Dodd's emba.s.sy provide the full text by telegraph. Newspapers in London and Paris made the speech a sensation.

The event intensified the sense of disquiet suffusing Berlin. "There was something in the sultry air," wrote Hans Gisevius, the Gestapo memoirist, "and a flood of probable and wildly fantastic rumors spilled out over the intimidated populace. Insane tales were fondly believed. Everyone whispered and peddled fresh rumors." Men on both sides of the political chasm "became extremely concerned with the question of whether a.s.sa.s.sins had been hired to murder them and who these killers might be."

Someone threw a hand-grenade fuse from the roof of a building onto Unter den Linden. It exploded, but the only harm was to the psyches of various government and SA leaders who happened to be in the vicinity. Karl Ernst, the young and ruthless leader of the Berlin division of the SA, had pa.s.sed by five minutes before the explosion and claimed he was its target and that Himmler was behind it.

In this cauldron of tension and fear, the idea of Himmler wishing to kill Ernst was utterly plausible. Even after a police investigation identified the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin as a disgruntled part-time worker, an aura of fear and doubt remained, like smoke drifting from a gun barrel. Wrote Gisevius, "There was so much whispering, so much winking and nodding of heads, that traces of suspicion remained."

The nation seemed poised at the climax of some cinematic thriller. "Tension was at the highest pitch," Gisevius wrote. "The tormenting uncertainty was harder to bear than the excessive heat and humidity. No one knew what was going to happen next and everyone felt that something fearful was in the air." Victor Klemperer, the Jewish philologist, sensed it as well. "Everywhere uncertainty, ferment, secrets," he wrote in his diary in mid-June. "We live from day to day."

FOR DODD, PAPEN'S MARBURG SPEECH seemed a marker of what he had long believed-that Hitler's regime was too brutal and irrational to last. Hitler's own vice-chancellor had spoken out against the regime and survived. Was this indeed the spark that would bring Hitler's government to an end? And if so, how strange that it should be struck by so uncourageous a soul as Papen. seemed a marker of what he had long believed-that Hitler's regime was too brutal and irrational to last. Hitler's own vice-chancellor had spoken out against the regime and survived. Was this indeed the spark that would bring Hitler's government to an end? And if so, how strange that it should be struck by so uncourageous a soul as Papen.

"There is now great excitement all over Germany," Dodd wrote in his diary on Wednesday, June 20. "All old and intellectual Germans are highly pleased." Suddenly fragments of other news began to make more sense, including a heightened fury in the speeches of Hitler and his deputies. "All guards of the leaders are said to be showing signs of revolt," Dodd wrote. "At the same time, aircraft practice and military drills and maneuvers are reported to be increasingly common sights by those who drive about the country."

That same Wednesday, Papen went to Hitler to complain about the suppression of his speech. "I spoke at Marburg as an emissary of the president," he told Hitler. "Goebbels's intervention will force me to resign. I shall inform Hindenburg immediately."

To Hitler this was a serious threat. He recognized that President Hindenburg possessed the const.i.tutional authority to unseat him and commanded the loyalty of the regular army, and that both these factors made Hindenburg the one truly potent force in Germany over which he had no control. Hitler understood as well that Hindenburg and Papen-the president's "Franzchen"-maintained a close personal relationship and knew that Hindenburg had telegraphed Papen to congratulate him on his speech.

Papen now told Hitler he would go to Hindenburg's estate, Neudeck, and ask Hindenburg to authorize full publication of the speech.

Hitler tried to mollify him. He promised to remove the propaganda minister's ban on publication and told Papen he would go with him to Neudeck, so that they could meet with Hindenburg together. In a moment of surprising naivete, Papen agreed.

THAT NIGHT, SOLSTICE REVELERS ignited bonfires throughout Germany. North of Berlin the funeral train carrying the body of Goring's wife, Carin, came to a stop at a station near Carinhall. Formations of n.a.z.i soldiers and officials crowded the plaza in front of the station as a band played Beethoven's "Funeral March." First, eight policemen carried the coffin, then with great ceremony it was pa.s.sed to another group of eight men, and so on, until at last it was placed aboard a carriage pulled by six horses for the final journey to Goring's lakeside mausoleum. Hitler joined the procession. Soldiers carried torches. At the tomb there were great bowls filled with flame. In an eerie, carefully orchestrated touch, the mournful cry of hunters' horns rose from the forest beyond the fire glow. ignited bonfires throughout Germany. North of Berlin the funeral train carrying the body of Goring's wife, Carin, came to a stop at a station near Carinhall. Formations of n.a.z.i soldiers and officials crowded the plaza in front of the station as a band played Beethoven's "Funeral March." First, eight policemen carried the coffin, then with great ceremony it was pa.s.sed to another group of eight men, and so on, until at last it was placed aboard a carriage pulled by six horses for the final journey to Goring's lakeside mausoleum. Hitler joined the procession. Soldiers carried torches. At the tomb there were great bowls filled with flame. In an eerie, carefully orchestrated touch, the mournful cry of hunters' horns rose from the forest beyond the fire glow.

Himmler arrived. He was clearly agitated. He took Hitler and Goring aside and gave them unsettling news-untrue, as Himmler surely was aware, but useful as one more prod to get Hitler to act against Rohm. Himmler raged that someone had just tried to kill him. A bullet had pierced his windshield. He blamed Rohm and the SA. There was no time to waste, he said: the Storm Troopers clearly were on the verge of rebellion.

The hole in his windshield, however, had not been made by a bullet. Hans Gisevius got a look at the final police report. The damage was more consistent with what would have been caused by a stone kicked up from a pa.s.sing car. "It was with cold calculation that [Himmler], therefore, blamed the attempted a.s.sa.s.sination on the SA," Gisevius wrote.

The next day, June 21, 1934, Hitler flew to Hindenburg's estate-without Papen, as certainly had been his intent all along. At Neudeck, however, he first encountered Defense Minister Blomberg. The general, in uniform, met him on the steps to Hindenburg's castle. Blomberg was stern and direct. He told Hitler that Hindenburg was concerned about the rising tension within Germany. If Hitler could not get things under control, Blomberg said, Hindenburg would declare martial law and place the government in the army's hands.

When Hitler met with Hindenburg himself, he received the same message. His visit to Neudeck lasted all of thirty minutes. He flew back to Berlin.

THROUGHOUT THE WEEK DODD heard talk of Vice-Chancellor Papen and his speech and of the simple miracle of his survival. Correspondents and diplomats made note of Papen's activities-what luncheons he attended, who spoke with him, who shunned him, where his car was parked, whether he still took his morning walk through the Tiergarten-looking for signs of what might lie ahead for him and for Germany. On Thursday, June 21, Dodd and Papen both attended a speech by Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht. Afterward, Dodd noticed, Papen seemed to get even more attention than the speaker. Goebbels was present as well. Dodd noted that Papen went to his table, shook hands with him, and joined him for a cup of tea. Dodd was amazed, for this was the same Goebbels "who after the Marburg speech would have ordered his prompt execution if Hitler and von Hindenburg had not intervened." heard talk of Vice-Chancellor Papen and his speech and of the simple miracle of his survival. Correspondents and diplomats made note of Papen's activities-what luncheons he attended, who spoke with him, who shunned him, where his car was parked, whether he still took his morning walk through the Tiergarten-looking for signs of what might lie ahead for him and for Germany. On Thursday, June 21, Dodd and Papen both attended a speech by Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht. Afterward, Dodd noticed, Papen seemed to get even more attention than the speaker. Goebbels was present as well. Dodd noted that Papen went to his table, shook hands with him, and joined him for a cup of tea. Dodd was amazed, for this was the same Goebbels "who after the Marburg speech would have ordered his prompt execution if Hitler and von Hindenburg had not intervened."

The atmosphere in Berlin remained charged, Dodd noted in his diary on Sat.u.r.day, June 23. "The week closes quietly but with great uneasiness."

CHAPTER 44.

The Message in the Bathroom Papen moved about Berlin seemingly unperturbed and on June 24, 1934, traveled to Hamburg as Hindenburg's emissary to the German Derby, a horse race, where the crowd gave him a spirited ovation. Goebbels arrived and pushed through the crowd behind a phalanx of SS, drawing hisses and boos. Both men shook hands as photographers snapped away.

Edgar Jung, Papen's speechwriter, kept a lower profile. By now he had become convinced that the Marburg speech would cost him his life. Historian Wheeler-Bennett arranged a clandestine meeting with him in a wooded area outside Berlin. "He was entirely calm and fatalistic," Wheeler-Bennett recalled, "but he spoke with the freedom of a man who has nothing before him and therefore nothing to lose, and he told me many things."

The rhetoric of the regime grew more menacing. In a radio address on Monday, June 25, Rudolf Hess warned, "Woe to him who breaks faith, in the belief that through a revolt he can serve the revolution." The party, he said, would meet rebellion with absolute force, guided by the principle "If you strike, strike hard!"

The next morning, Tuesday, June 26, Edgar Jung's housekeeper arrived at his home to find it ransacked, with furniture upended and clothing and papers scattered throughout. On the medicine chest in his bathroom Jung had scrawled a single word: GESTAPO.

DIELS READIED HIMSELF to be sworn in as regional commissioner of Cologne. Goring flew to the city for the occasion. His white plane emerged from a clear cerulean sky on what Diels described as a "beautiful Rhineland summer day." At the ceremony Diels wore his black SS uniform; Goring wore a white uniform of his own design. Afterward, Goring took Diels aside and told him, "Watch yourself in the next few days." to be sworn in as regional commissioner of Cologne. Goring flew to the city for the occasion. His white plane emerged from a clear cerulean sky on what Diels described as a "beautiful Rhineland summer day." At the ceremony Diels wore his black SS uniform; Goring wore a white uniform of his own design. Afterward, Goring took Diels aside and told him, "Watch yourself in the next few days."

Diels took it to heart. Adept now at timely exits, he left the city for a sojourn in the nearby Eifel Mountains.

CHAPTER 45.

Mrs. Cerruti's Distress In his diary entry for Thursday, June 28, 1934, Amba.s.sador Dodd wrote, "During the last five days, stories of many kinds have tended to make the Berlin atmosphere more tense than at any time since I have been in Germany." Papen's speech continued to be a topic of daily conversation. With rising ferocity, Hitler, Goring, and Goebbels warned of dire consequences for anyone who dared to oppose the government. In a cable to the State Department, Dodd likened the atmosphere of threat to that of the French Revolution-"the situation was much as it was in Paris in 1792 when the Girondins and Jacobins were struggling for supremacy."

In his own household, there was an extra layer of strain that had nothing to do with weather or political upheaval. Against her parents' wishes, Martha continued planning her trip to Russia. She insisted that her interest had nothing to do with communism per se but rather arose out of her love for Boris and her mounting distaste for the n.a.z.i revolution. She recognized that Boris was indeed a loyal communist, but she claimed he exerted influence over her political perspective only "by the example of his magnetism and simplicity, and his love of country." She confessed to feeling a gnawing ambivalence "regarding him, his beliefs, the political system in his country, our future together." She insisted on taking the trip without him.

She wanted to see as much of Russia as she could and ignored his advice to concentrate on only a few cities. He wanted her to gain a deep understanding of his homeland, not some glancing tourist's appreciation. He recognized also that travel in his country was not as quick or comfortable as in Western Europe, nor did its cities and towns have the obvious charm of the picturesque villages of Germany and France. Indeed, the Soviet Union was anything but the workers' paradise many left-leaning outsiders imagined it to be. Under Stalin, peasants had been forced into vast collectives. Many resisted, and an estimated five million people-men, women, and children-simply disappeared, many shipped off to far-flung work camps. Housing was primitive, consumer goods virtually nonexistent. Famine scoured the Ukraine. Livestock suffered a drastic decline. From 1929 to 1933 the total number of cattle fell from 68.1 million to 38.6 million; of horses, from 34 million to 16.6 million. Boris knew full well that to a casual visitor, the physical and social scenery and especially the drab workers' fashion of Russia could seem less than captivating, especially if that visitor happened to be exhausted by difficult travel and the mandatory presence of an Intourist guide.

Nonetheless, Martha chose Tour No. 9, the Volga-Caucasus-Crimea tour, set to begin on July 6 with a flight-her first ever-from Berlin to Leningrad. After two days in Leningrad, she would set out by train for Moscow, spend four days there, then proceed by overnight train to Gorki and, two hours after her 10:04 arrival, catch a Volga steamer for a four-day cruise with stops at Kazan, Samara, Saratov, and Stalingrad, where she was to make the obligatory visit to a tractor works; from Stalingrad, she would take a train to Rostov-on-Don, where she would have the option of visiting a state farm, though here her itinerary exuded just a whiff of capitalism, for the farm tour would require an "extra fee." Next, Ordzhonikidze, Tiflis, Batumi, Yalta, Sebastopol, Odessa, Kiev, and, at last, back to Berlin by train, where she was to arrive on August 7, the thirty-third day of her journey, at precisely-if optimistically-7:22 p.m.

Her relationship with Boris continued to deepen, though with its usual wild swings between pa.s.sion and anger and the usual cascade of pleading notes and fresh flowers from him. At some point she returned his three "see no evil" ceramic monkeys. He sent them back.

"Martha!" he wrote, indulging his pa.s.sion for exclamation: "I thank you for your letters and for 'not forgetfulness.' Your three monkeys have grown (they have become big) and want to be with you. I am sending them. I have to tell you very frankly: three monkeys have longed for you. And not only the three monkeys, I know another handsome, blond (aryan!!) young man, who has longed to be with you. This handsome boy (not older than 30)-is me me.

"Martha! I want to see you, I need to tell you that I also have not forgotten my little adorable lovely Martha!

"I love you, Martha! What do I have to do to establish more confidence in you?

"Yours, Boris."

In any era their relationship would have been likely to draw the attention of outsiders, but that June in Berlin everything took on added gravitas. Everyone watched everyone else. At the time, Martha gave little thought to the perceptions of others, but years later, in a letter to Agnes Knickerbocker, the wife of her correspondent friend Knick, she acknowledged how readily perception could distort reality. "I never plotted the overthrow nor even the subversion of the U.S. government, neither in Germany nor in the USA!" she wrote. "I think however that just knowing and loving Boris would be enough for some people to suspect the worst."

At the time there was nothing to suspect, she insisted. "Instead it was one of those absorbing things that had no political base at all, except that through him I came to know something about the USSR."

FRIDAY, JUNE 29, 1934, brought the same atmosphere of impending storm that had marked the preceding weeks. "It was the hottest day we had had that summer," recalled Elisabetta Cerruti, wife of the Italian amba.s.sador. "The air was so heavy with moisture that we could hardly breathe. Black clouds loomed on the horizon, but a merciless sun burned overhead." 29, 1934, brought the same atmosphere of impending storm that had marked the preceding weeks. "It was the hottest day we had had that summer," recalled Elisabetta Cerruti, wife of the Italian amba.s.sador. "The air was so heavy with moisture that we could hardly breathe. Black clouds loomed on the horizon, but a merciless sun burned overhead."

That day the Dodds held a lunch at their home, to which they had invited Vice-Chancellor Papen and other diplomatic and government figures, including the Cerrutis and Hans Luther, Germany's amba.s.sador to the United States, who at the time happened to be in Berlin.

Martha also attended and watched as her father and Papen stepped away from the other guests for a private conversation in the library, in front of the now-dormant fireplace. Papen, she wrote, "seemed self-confident and as suave as usual."

At one point Dodd spotted Papen and Luther edging toward each other with a "rather tense att.i.tude" between them. Dodd moved to intervene and steered them out to the lovely winter garden, where another guest joined them in conversation. Dodd, referring to the press photographs taken during the German Derby, said to Papen, "You and Dr. Goebbels seemed to be quite friendly at Hamburg the other day."

Papen laughed.

At lunch, Mrs. Cerruti sat on Dodd's right and Papen sat directly opposite, next to Mrs. Dodd. Mrs. Cerruti's anxiety was palpable, even to Martha, watching from a distance. Martha wrote, "She sat by my father in a state of near-collapse, hardly speaking, pale, preoccupied, and jumpy."

Mrs. Cerruti told Dodd, "Mr. Amba.s.sador, something terrible is going to happen in Germany. I feel it in the air."

A later rumor held that Mrs. Cerruti somehow knew in advance what was about to happen. She found this astonishing. Her remark to Dodd, she claimed years later, referred only to the weather.

IN AMERICA THAT FRIDAY the "great heat" worsened. In humid locales like Washington it became nearly impossible to work. Moffat noted in his diary: "Temperature 101 and in the shade today." the "great heat" worsened. In humid locales like Washington it became nearly impossible to work. Moffat noted in his diary: "Temperature 101 and in the shade today."

The heat and humidity were so unbearable that as evening approached Moffat and Phillips and a third official went to the home of a friend of Moffat's to use his pool. The friend was away at the time. The three men undressed and climbed in. The water was warm and provided scant relief. No one swam. Instead the three simply sat there, talking quietly, only their heads showing above the water.

That Dodd was a subject of this conversation seems likely. Just a few days earlier Phillips had written in his diary about Dodd's unrelenting a.s.sault on the wealth of diplomats and consular officials.

"Presumably the Amba.s.sador has been complaining to the President," Phillips groused in his diary. Dodd "always complains because of the fact that they are spending in Berlin more than their salaries. This he objects to strenuously, probably for the simple reason that he himself has not the money to spend beyond that of his salary. It is, of course, a small town att.i.tude."

ODDLY ENOUGH, MOFFAT'S MOTHER, Ellen Low Moffat, was in Berlin that Friday, to visit her daughter (Moffat's sister), who was married to the emba.s.sy secretary, John C. White. That evening the mother attended a dinner party where she sat beside Papen. The vice-chancellor was, as she later told her son, "well and in extremely high spirits."

CHAPTER 46.

Friday Night That Friday evening, July 29, 1934, Hitler settled in at the Hotel Dreesen, a favorite of his, in the resort of Bad G.o.desberg, situated along the Rhine just outside central Bonn. He had traveled here from Essen, where he had received yet another dose of troubling news-that Vice-Chancellor Papen planned to make good on his threat and meet with President Hindenburg the next day, Sat.u.r.day, June 30, to persuade the Old Gentleman to take steps to rein in Hitler's government and the SA.