In The Garden Of Beasts Part 4

Martha Dodd ( (photo credit p3.2)

CHAPTER 11.

Strange Beings.

They drove south through lovely countryside and small, neat villages, everything looking very much the same as it had thirty-five years earlier when Dodd previously had pa.s.sed this way, with the salient exception that in town after town the facades of public buildings were hung with banners bearing the red, white, and black insignia of the n.a.z.i Party, with the inevitable broken cross at the center. At eleven o'clock they arrived at their first stop, the Schlosskirche, or Castle Church, in Wittenberg, where Martin Luther nailed his "95 Theses" to the door and launched the Reformation. As a student Dodd had traveled to Wittenberg from Leipzig and had sat in on services within the church; now he found its doors locked. A n.a.z.i parade moved through the city's streets.

The group paused in Wittenberg for only an hour, then continued to Leipzig, where they arrived at one o'clock, and made their way directly to one of the most famous restaurants in Germany, Auerbachs Keller, a favorite haunt of Goethe, who used the restaurant as a setting for an encounter between Mephistopheles and Faust, during which Mephisto's wine turned to fire. Dodd gauged the meal excellent, especially its price: three marks. He drank neither wine nor beer. Martha, Bill, and Reynolds, on the other hand, consumed stein after stein.

Now the party split into two groups. The young ones headed off by car toward Nuremberg; Dodd and his wife checked into a hotel, rested for several hours, then went out for supper, another good meal at an even better price: two marks. They continued touring the next day, then caught a train back to Berlin, where they arrived at five o'clock and took a taxi back to their new home at Tiergartenstra.s.se 27a.

DODD HAD BEEN HOME little more than twenty-four hours when another attack occurred against an American. The victim this time was a thirty-year-old surgeon named Daniel Mulvihill, who lived in Manhattan but practiced at a hospital on Long Island and was in Berlin to study the techniques of a famed German surgeon. Messersmith, in a dispatch on the incident, said Mulvihill was "an American citizen of a fine type and is not a Jew." little more than twenty-four hours when another attack occurred against an American. The victim this time was a thirty-year-old surgeon named Daniel Mulvihill, who lived in Manhattan but practiced at a hospital on Long Island and was in Berlin to study the techniques of a famed German surgeon. Messersmith, in a dispatch on the incident, said Mulvihill was "an American citizen of a fine type and is not a Jew."

The attack followed a pattern that would become all too familiar: On the evening of Tuesday, August 15, Mulvihill was walking along Unter den Linden on his way to a drugstore when he stopped to watch the approach of a parade of uniformed SA members. The Storm Troopers were reenacting for a propaganda film the great march through the Brandenburg Gate that took place on the night of Hitler's appointment as chancellor. Mulvihill looked on, unaware that one SA man had left the parade and was headed his way. The trooper, without preamble, struck Mulvihill hard on the left side of his head, then calmly rejoined the parade. Bystanders told the stunned surgeon that the a.s.sault likely had occurred because of Mulvihill's failure to offer the Hitler salute as the parade pa.s.sed. This was the twelfth violent attack on an American since March 4.

The U.S. consulate immediately protested, and by Friday evening the Gestapo claimed to have arrested the a.s.sailant. The next day, Sat.u.r.day, August 19, a senior government official notified Vice Consul Raymond Geist that an order had been issued to the SA and SS stating that foreigners were not expected to give or return the Hitler salute. The official also said that the head of the Berlin division of the SA, a young officer named Karl Ernst, would personally call on Dodd early the next week to apologize for the incident. Consul General Messersmith, who had met Ernst before, wrote that he was "very young, very energetic, direct, enthusiastic" but exuded "an atmosphere of brutality and force which is characteristic of the SA."

Ernst arrived as promised. He clicked his heels and saluted and barked "Heil Hitler." Dodd acknowledged the salute but did not return it. He listened to Ernst's "confessions of regret" and heard him promise that no such attack would occur again. Ernst appeared to think he had done all he needed to do, but Dodd now sat him down and, lapsing into his familiar roles as both father and professor, gave Ernst a severe lecture on the bad behavior of his men and its potential consequences.

Ernst, discomfited, insisted that he really did intend to try to stop the attacks. He then rose, snapped to rigid attention, saluted again, "made a Prussian bow," and left.

"I was not a little amused," Dodd wrote.

That afternoon he told Messersmith that Ernst had delivered an appropriate apology.

Messersmith said: "The incidents will go on."

ALL ALONG THE ROUTE to Nuremberg, Martha and her companions encountered groups of men in the brown uniform of the SA, young and old, fat and skinny, parading and singing and holding n.a.z.i banners aloft. Often, as the car slowed to pa.s.s through narrow village streets, onlookers turned toward them and made the Hitler salute, shouting "Heil Hitler," apparently interpreting the low number on the license plate-traditionally America's amba.s.sador to Germany had number 13-as proof that those within must be the family of some senior n.a.z.i official from Berlin. "The excitement of the people was contagious and I 'Heiled' as vigorously as any n.a.z.i," Martha wrote in her memoir. Her behavior dismayed her brother and Reynolds, but she ignored their sarcastic jibes. "I felt like a child, ebullient and careless, the intoxication of the new regime working like wine in me." to Nuremberg, Martha and her companions encountered groups of men in the brown uniform of the SA, young and old, fat and skinny, parading and singing and holding n.a.z.i banners aloft. Often, as the car slowed to pa.s.s through narrow village streets, onlookers turned toward them and made the Hitler salute, shouting "Heil Hitler," apparently interpreting the low number on the license plate-traditionally America's amba.s.sador to Germany had number 13-as proof that those within must be the family of some senior n.a.z.i official from Berlin. "The excitement of the people was contagious and I 'Heiled' as vigorously as any n.a.z.i," Martha wrote in her memoir. Her behavior dismayed her brother and Reynolds, but she ignored their sarcastic jibes. "I felt like a child, ebullient and careless, the intoxication of the new regime working like wine in me."

At about midnight they pulled to a stop in front of their hotel in Nuremberg. Reynolds had been to Nuremberg before and knew it to be a sleepy place this late at night, but now, he wrote, they found the street "filled with an excited, happy crowd." His first thought was that these revelers were partic.i.p.ants in a festival of the city's legendary toy industry.

Inside the hotel Reynolds asked the registration clerk, "Is there going to be a parade?"

The clerk, cheerful and pleasant, laughed with such delight that the tips of his mustache shook, Reynolds recalled. "It will be a kind of a parade," the clerk said. "They are teaching someone a lesson."

The three took their bags to their rooms, then set out for a walk to see the city and find something to eat.

The crowd outside had grown larger and was infused with good cheer. "Everyone was keyed up, laughing, talking," Reynolds saw. What struck him was how friendly everyone was-far more friendly, certainly, than an equivalent crowd of Berliners would have been. Here, he noted, if you b.u.mped into someone by accident, you got a polite smile and cheerful forgiveness.

From a distance they heard the coa.r.s.e, intensifying clamor of a still larger and more raucous crowd approaching on the street. They heard distant music, a street band, all bra.s.s and noise. The crowd pressed inward in happy antic.i.p.ation, Reynolds wrote. "We could hear the roar of the crowd three blocks away, a laughing roar that swelled toward us with the music."

The noise grew, accompanied by a shimmery tangerine glow that fluttered on the facades of buildings. Moments later the marchers came into view, a column of SA men in brown uniforms carrying torches and banners. "Storm Troopers," Reynolds noted. "Not doll makers."

Immediately behind the first squad there followed two very large troopers, and between them a much smaller human captive, though Reynolds could not at first tell whether it was a man or a woman. The troopers were "half-supporting, half-dragging" the figure along the street. "Its head had been clipped bald," Reynolds wrote, "and face and head had been coated with white powder." Martha described the face as having "the color of diluted absinthe."

They edged closer, as did the crowd around them, and now Reynolds and Martha saw that the figure was a young woman-though Reynolds still was not completely certain. "Even though the figure wore a skirt, it might have been a man dressed as a clown," Reynolds wrote. "The crowd around me roared at the spectacle of this figure being dragged along."

The genial Nurembergers around them became transformed and taunted and insulted the woman. The troopers at her sides abruptly lifted her to her full height, revealing a placard hung around her neck. Coa.r.s.e laughter rose from all around. Martha, Bill, and Reynolds deployed their halting German to ask other bystanders what was happening and learned in fragments that the girl had been a.s.sociating with a Jewish man. As best Martha could garner, the placard said, "I HAVE OFFERED MYSELF TO A JEW."

As the Storm Troopers went past, the crowd surged from the sidewalks into the street behind and followed. A two-decker bus became stranded in the ma.s.s of people. Its driver held up his hands in mock surrender. Pa.s.sengers on the top deck pointed at the girl and laughed. The troopers again lifted the girl-"their toy," as Reynolds put it-so that the riders could have a better view. "Then someone got the idea of marching the thing into the lobby of our hotel," Reynolds wrote. He learned that the "thing" had a name: Anna Rath.

The band stayed out on the street, where it continued to play in a loud, caustic manner. The Storm Troopers emerged from the lobby and dragged the woman away toward another hotel. The band struck up the "Horst Wessel Song," and suddenly in all directions along the street the crowd came to attention, right arms extended in the Hitler salute, all singing with vigor.

When the song ended, the procession moved on. "I wanted to follow," Martha wrote, "but my two companions were so repelled that they pulled me away." She too had been shaken by the episode, but she did not let it tarnish her overall view of the country and the revival of spirit caused by the n.a.z.i revolution. "I tried in a self-conscious way to justify the action of the n.a.z.is, to insist that we should not condemn without knowing the whole story."

The three retreated to the bar of their hotel, Reynolds vowing to get savagely drunk. He asked the bartender, quietly, about what had just occurred. The bartender told the story in a whisper: In defiance of n.a.z.i warnings against marriage between Jews and Aryans, the young woman had planned to marry her Jewish fiance. This would have been risky anywhere in Germany, he explained, but nowhere more so than in Nuremberg. "You have heard of Herr S., whose home is here?" the bartender said.

Reynolds understood. The bartender was referring to Julius Streicher, whom Reynolds described as "Hitler's circus master of anti-Semitism." Streicher, according to Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, was "a short, squat, shaven-headed bully...utterly possessed by demonic images of Jews." He had founded the virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Sturmer Der Sturmer.

Reynolds recognized that what he, Martha, and Bill had just witnessed was an event that had far more significance than its particular details. Foreign correspondents in Germany had reported on abuses of Jews, but so far their stories had been based on after-the-fact investigation that relied on the accounts of witnesses. Here was an act of anti-Jewish brutality that a correspondent had witnessed firsthand. "The n.a.z.is had all along been denying the atrocities that were occasionally reported abroad, but here was concrete evidence," Reynolds wrote. "No other correspondent," he claimed, "had witnessed any atrocities."

His editor agreed it was an important story but feared that if Reynolds tried to send it by cable it would be intercepted by n.a.z.i censors. He told Reynolds to send it by mail and recommended that he omit any reference to the Dodd children in order to avoid causing difficulties for the new amba.s.sador.

Martha begged him not to write the story at all. "It was an isolated case," she argued. "It was not really important, would create a bad impression, did not reveal actually what was going on in Germany, overshadowed the constructive work they were doing."

Martha, Bill, and Reynolds continued south into Austria, where they spent another week before returning to Germany and making their way back along the Rhine. When Reynolds returned to his office, he found an urgent summons from foreign-press chief Ernst Hanfstaengl.

Hanfstaengl was furious, unaware as yet that Martha and Bill also had witnessed the incident.

"There isn't one d.a.m.ned word of truth in your story!" he raged. "I've talked with our people in Nuremberg and they say nothing of the sort happened there."

Reynolds quietly informed Hanfstaengl that he had watched the parade in the company of two important witnesses whom he had omitted from the story but whose testimony was una.s.sailable. Reynolds named them.

Hanfstaengl sank into his chair and held his head. He complained that Reynolds should have told him sooner. Reynolds invited him to call the Dodds to confirm their presence, but Hanfstaengl waved away the suggestion.

At a press conference soon afterward, Goebbels, the propaganda minister, did not wait for a reporter to raise the issue of abuse against Jews but did so himself. He a.s.sured the forty or so reporters in the room that such incidents were rare, committed by "irresponsible" men.

One correspondent, Norman Ebb.u.t.t, chief of the London Times Times's bureau in Berlin, interrupted. "But, Herr Minister, you must surely have heard of the Aryan girl, Anna Rath, who was paraded through Nuremberg just for wanting to marry a Jew?"

Goebbels smiled. It utterly transformed his face, though the result was neither pleasant nor engaging. Many in the room had encountered this effect before. There was something freakish about the extent to which the muscles of the bottom half of his face became engaged in the production of his smile and how abruptly his expressions could shift.

"Let me explain how such a thing might occasionally happen," Goebbels said. "All during the twelve years of the Weimar Republic our people were virtually in jail. Now our party is in charge and they are free again. When a man has been in jail for twelve years and he is suddenly freed, in his joy he may do something irrational, perhaps even brutal. Is that not a possibility in your country also?"

Ebb.u.t.t, his voice even, noted a fundamental difference in how England might approach such a scenario. "If it should happen," he said, "we would throw the man right back in jail."

Goebbels's smile disappeared, then just as quickly returned. He looked around the room. "Are there any more questions?"

The United States made no formal protest of the incident. Nonetheless, an official of the German foreign office apologized to Martha. He dismissed the incident as isolated and one that would be severely punished.

Martha was inclined to accept his view. She remained enthralled with life in the new Germany. In a letter to Thornton Wilder, she gushed, "The youth are bright faced and hopeful, they sing to the n.o.ble ghost of Horst Wessel with shining eyes and unerring tongues. Wholesome and beautiful lads these Germans, good, sincere, healthy, mystic brutal, fine, hopeful, capable of death and love, deep, rich wondrous and strange beings-these youths of modern Hakenkreuz Hakenkreuz Germany." Germany."

IN THE MEANTIME, Dodd received an invitation from the German foreign office to attend the upcoming party rally in Nuremberg, set to begin in earnest on September 1. The invitation troubled him.

He had read of the n.a.z.i Party's penchant for staging these elaborate displays of party force and energy, and saw them not as official events sponsored by the state but as party affairs that had nothing to do with international relations. He could not imagine himself attending such a rally any more than he could envision the German amba.s.sador to America attending a Republican or Democratic convention. Moreover, he feared that Goebbels and his propaganda ministry would seize on the fact of his attendance and portray it as an endors.e.m.e.nt of n.a.z.i policies and behavior.

On Tuesday, August 22, Dodd cabled the State Department to ask for advice. "I received a non-committal reply," he wrote in his diary. The department promised to support whatever decision he made. "I at once made up my mind not to go, even if all the other amba.s.sadors went." The following Sat.u.r.day he notified the German foreign office that he would not be attending. "I declined it on the grounds of pressure of work, though the main reason was my disapproval of a government invitation to a Party convention," he wrote. "I was also sure the behavior of the dominant group would be embarra.s.sing."

An idea occurred to Dodd: if he could persuade his fellow amba.s.sadors from Britain, Spain, and France also to rebuff the invitation, their mutual action would send a potent yet suitably indirect message of unity and disapproval.

Dodd first met with the Spanish amba.s.sador, a session that Dodd described as "very pleasantly unconventional" because the Spaniard likewise had not yet been accredited. Even so, both approached the issue with caution. "I implied that I would not go," Dodd wrote. He provided the Spanish amba.s.sador with a couple of historical precedents for snubbing such an invitation. The Spanish amba.s.sador agreed that the rally was a party affair and not a state event but did not reveal what he planned to do.

Dodd learned, however, that he did at last send his regrets, as did the amba.s.sadors from France and Britain, each citing an inescapable commitment of one kind or another.

Officially the State Department endorsed Dodd's demurral; unofficially, his decision rankled a number of senior officers, including Undersecretary Phillips and Western European affairs chief Jay Pierrepont Moffat. They viewed Dodd's decision as needlessly provocative, further proof that his appointment as amba.s.sador had been a mistake. Forces opposed to Dodd began to coalesce.

CHAPTER 12.

Brutus In late August, President Hindenburg at last returned to Berlin from his convalescence at his country estate. And so, on Wednesday, August 30, 1933, Dodd put on a formal gra.s.shopper cutaway and top hat and drove to the presidential palace to present his credentials.

The president was tall and broad, with a huge gray-white mustache that curled into two feathery wings. The collar of his uniform was high and stiff, his tunic riveted with medals, several of which were gleaming starbursts the size of Christmas-tree ornaments. Overall, he conveyed a sense of strength and virility that belied his eighty-five years. Hitler was absent, as were Goebbels and Goring, all presumably engaged in preparing for the party rally to begin two days later.

Dodd read a brief statement that emphasized his sympathy for the people of Germany and the nation's history and culture. He omitted any reference to the government and in so doing hoped to telegraph that he had no such sympathy for the Hitler regime. For the next fifteen minutes he and the Old Gentleman sat together on the "preferred couch" and conversed on an array of topics, ranging from Dodd's university experience in Leipzig to the dangers of economic nationalism. Hindenburg, Dodd noted later in his diary, "stressed the subject of international relations so pointedly that I thought he meant indirect criticism of the n.a.z.i extremists." Dodd introduced his key emba.s.sy officers, and then all marched from the building to find soldiers of the regular army, the Reichswehr, lining both sides of the street.

This time Dodd did not walk home. As the emba.s.sy cars drove off, the soldiers stood at attention. "It was all over," Dodd wrote, "and I was at last a duly accepted representative of the United States in Berlin." Two days later, he found himself confronting his first official crisis.

ON THE MORNING of September 1, 1933, a Friday, H. V. Kaltenborn, the American radio commentator, telephoned Consul General Messersmith to express regret that he could not stop by for one more visit, as he and his family had finished their European tour and were preparing to head back home. The train to their ship was scheduled to depart at midnight. of September 1, 1933, a Friday, H. V. Kaltenborn, the American radio commentator, telephoned Consul General Messersmith to express regret that he could not stop by for one more visit, as he and his family had finished their European tour and were preparing to head back home. The train to their ship was scheduled to depart at midnight.

He told Messersmith that he still had seen nothing to verify the consul's criticisms of Germany and accused him of "really doing wrong in not presenting the picture in Germany as it really was."

Soon after making the call, Kaltenborn and his family-wife, son, and daughter-left their hotel, the Adlon, to do a little last-minute shopping. The son, Rolf, was sixteen at the time. Mrs. Kaltenborn particularly wanted to visit the jewelry stores and silver shops on Unter den Linden, but their venture also took them seven blocks farther south to Leipziger Stra.s.se, a busy east-west boulevard jammed with cars and trams and lined with handsome buildings and myriad small shops selling bronzes, Dresden china, silks, leather goods, and just about anything else one could desire. Here too was the famous Wertheim's Emporium, an enormous department store-a Warenhaus Warenhaus-in which throngs of customers traveled from floor to floor aboard eighty-three elevators.

As the family emerged from a shop, they saw that a formation of Storm Troopers was parading along the boulevard in their direction. The time was 9:20 a.m.

Pedestrians crowded to the edge of the sidewalk and offered the Hitler salute. Despite his sympathetic outlook, Kaltenborn did not wish to join in and knew that one of Hitler's top deputies, Rudolf Hess, had made a public announcement that foreigners were not obligated to do so. "This is no more to be expected," Hess had declared, "than that a Protestant cross himself when he enters a Catholic Church." Nonetheless, Kaltenborn instructed his family to turn toward a shop window as if inspecting the goods on display.

Several troopers marched up to the Kaltenborns and demanded to know why they had their backs to the parade and why they did not salute. Kaltenborn in flawless German answered that he was an American and that he and his family were on their way back to their hotel.

The crowd began insulting Kaltenborn and became threatening, to the point where the commentator called out to two policemen standing ten feet away. The officers did not respond.

Kaltenborn and his family began walking back toward their hotel. A young man came from behind and without a word grabbed Kaltenborn's son and struck him in the face hard enough to knock him to the sidewalk. Still the police did nothing. One officer smiled.

Furious now, Kaltenborn grabbed the young a.s.sailant by the arm and marched him toward the policemen. The crowd grew more menacing. Kaltenborn realized that if he persisted in trying to get justice, he risked further attack.

At last an onlooker interceded and persuaded the crowd to leave the Kaltenborns alone, as they clearly were American. The parade moved on.

After reaching the safety of the Adlon, Kaltenborn called Messersmith. He was upset and nearly incoherent. He asked Messersmith to come to the Adlon right away.

For Messersmith, it was a troubling but darkly sublime moment. He told Kaltenborn he could not come to the hotel. "It just so happened that I had to be at my desk for the next hour or so," he recalled. He did, however, dispatch to the Adlon Vice Consul Raymond Geist, who arranged that the Kaltenborns would be escorted to the station that night.

"It was ironical that this was just one of the things which Kaltenborn said could not happen," Messersmith wrote later, with clear satisfaction. "One of the things that he specifically said I was incorrectly reporting on was that the police did not do anything to protect people against attacks." Messersmith acknowledged that the incident must have been a wrenching experience for the Kaltenborns, especially their son. "It was on the whole, however, a good thing that this happened because if it hadn't been for this incident, Kaltenborn would have gone back and told his radio audience how fine everything was in Germany and how badly the American officials were reporting to our government and how incorrectly the correspondents in Berlin were picturing developments in the country."

Messersmith met with Dodd and asked whether the time had come for the State Department to issue a definitive warning against travel in Germany. Such a warning, both men knew, would have a devastating effect on n.a.z.i prestige.

Dodd favored restraint. From the perspective of his role as amba.s.sador, he found these attacks more nuisance than dire emergency and in fact tried whenever possible to limit press attention. He claimed in his diary that he had managed to keep several attacks against Americans out of the newspapers altogether and had "otherwise tried to prevent unfriendly demonstrations."

On a personal level, however, Dodd found such episodes repugnant, utterly alien to what his experience as a student in Leipzig had led him to expect. During family meals he condemned the attacks, but if he hoped for a sympathetic expression of outrage from his daughter, he failed to get it.

Martha remained inclined to think the best of the new Germany, partly, as she conceded later, out of the simple perverseness of a daughter trying to define herself. "I was trying to find excuses for their excesses, and my father would look at me a bit stonily if tolerantly, and both in private and in public gently label me a young n.a.z.i," she wrote. "That put me on the defensive for some time and I became temporarily an ardent defender of everything going on."

She countered that there was so much else that was good about Germany. In particular, she praised the enthusiasm of the country's young people and the measures. .h.i.tler was taking to reduce unemployment. "I felt there was something n.o.ble in the fresh, vigorous, strong young faces I saw everywhere, and would say so combatively every chance I got." In letters back to America she proclaimed that Germany was undergoing a thrilling rebirth, "and that the press reports and atrocity stories were isolated examples exaggerated by bitter, closed-minded people."

THE SAME FRIDAY that had begun so tumultuously with the attack on the Kaltenborns ended for Dodd in a far more satisfactory manner. that had begun so tumultuously with the attack on the Kaltenborns ended for Dodd in a far more satisfactory manner.

That evening correspondent Edgar Mowrer set out for Zoo Station to begin his long journey to Tokyo. His wife and daughter accompanied him to the station but only to see him off: they were to stay behind to oversee the packing of the family's household goods and would follow soon afterward.

Most of the foreign correspondents in the city converged on the station, as did a few stalwart Germans daring enough to let themselves be seen and identified by the agents who still kept Mowrer under surveillance.

A n.a.z.i official a.s.signed to make sure Mowrer actually got on the train came up to him and in a wheedling voice asked, "And when are you coming back to Germany, Herr Mowrer?"

With cinematic flare, Mowrer answered: "Why, when I can come back with about two million of my countrymen."

Messersmith embraced him in a display of support intended for the agents keeping watch. In a voice loud enough to be overheard, Messersmith promised that Mowrer's wife and daughter would follow unmolested. Mowrer was appreciative but had not forgiven Messersmith for failing to support his bid to stay in Germany. As Mowrer climbed aboard the train he turned to Messersmith with a slight smile and said: "And you too, Brutus."

For Messersmith it was a crushing remark. "I felt miserable and depressed," he wrote. "I knew it was the thing for him to do to leave and yet I hated the part that I had played in his leaving."

Dodd did not appear. He was glad Mowrer was gone. In a letter to a friend in Chicago, he wrote that Mowrer "was for a time, as you may know, somewhat of a problem here." Dodd conceded that Mowrer was a talented writer. "His experiences, however, after the publication of his book"-his notoriety and a Pulitzer Prize-"were such that he became rather more sharp and irritable than was best for all parties concerned."

Mowrer and his family made it safely to Tokyo. His wife, Lillian, recalled her great sorrow at having to leave Berlin. "Nowhere have I had such lovely friends as in Germany," she wrote. "Looking back on it all is like seeing someone you love go mad-and do horrible things."

THE DEMANDS OF PROTOCOL-in German, Protokoll Protokoll-descended over Dodd's days like a black fog and kept him from the thing he loved most, his Old South Old South. With his status as amba.s.sador now official, his routine diplomatic responsibilities suddenly swelled, to a degree that caused him dismay. In a letter to Secretary of State Hull, he wrote, "The protokoll arbiters of one's social behavior follow precedent, and commit one to entertainments the early part of one's residence which are substantially useless, and which give every one of the various emba.s.sies and ministries the 'social' right to offer grand dinners."

It started almost immediately. Protocol required that he give a reception for the entire diplomatic corps. He expected forty to fifty guests but then learned that each diplomat planned to bring one or more members of his staff, causing the eventual attendance to rise to over two hundred. "So today the show began at five o'clock," Dodd wrote in his diary. "The Emba.s.sy rooms had been prepared; flowers abounded everywhere; a great punch bowl was filled with the accustomed liquors." Foreign Minister Neurath came, as did Reichsbank president Schacht, one of the few other men in Hitler's government whom Dodd saw as reasonable and rational. Schacht would become a frequent visitor to the Dodds' home, well liked by Mrs. Dodd, who often used him to avoid the awkward social moments that occurred when an expected guest suddenly canceled. She was fond of saying, "Well, if at the last minute another guest can't come, we can always invite Dr. Schacht." Overall, Dodd decided, "It was not a bad affair, and"-a point of special satisfaction-"cost 700 marks."

But now a flood of return invitations, both diplomatic and social, arrived on Dodd's desk and at his home. Depending on the importance of the event, these were often followed by an exchange of seating charts, given to protocol officers to ensure that no unfortunate error of propinquity would mar the evening. The number of supposedly must-go banquets and receptions reached a point where even veteran diplomats complained that attendance had become onerous and exhausting. A senior official in the German foreign office said to Dodd, "You people in the Diplomatic Corps will have to limit social doings or we shall have to quit accepting invitations." And a British official complained, "We simply cannot stand the pace."

It was not all drudgery, of course. These parties and banquets yielded moments of fun and humor. Goebbels was known for his wit; Martha, for a time, considered him charming. "Infectious and delightful, eyes sparkling, voice soft, his speech witty and light, it is difficult to remember his cruelty, his cunning destructive talents." Her mother, Mattie, always enjoyed being seated next to Goebbels at banquets; Dodd considered him "one of the few men with a sense of humor in Germany" and often engaged him in a brisk repartee of quips and ironic comment. An extraordinary newspaper photograph shows Dodd, Goebbels, and Sigrid Schultz at a formal banquet during a moment of what appears to be animated, carefree bonhomie. Though doubtless useful for n.a.z.i propaganda, the scene as played out in the banquet hall was rather more complex than was captured on film. In fact, as Schultz later explained in an oral-history interview, she was trying not not to speak to Goebbels but in the process "certainly looked flirtatious." She explained (deploying the third person): "In this picture Sigrid won't give him the time of day, you see. He's turning on a thousand watts of charm, but he knows and she knows that she has no use for him." When Dodd saw the resulting photograph, she said, he "laughed his head off." to speak to Goebbels but in the process "certainly looked flirtatious." She explained (deploying the third person): "In this picture Sigrid won't give him the time of day, you see. He's turning on a thousand watts of charm, but he knows and she knows that she has no use for him." When Dodd saw the resulting photograph, she said, he "laughed his head off."

Goring too seemed a relatively benign character, at least as compared with Hitler. Sigrid Schultz found him the most tolerable of the senior n.a.z.is because at least "you felt you could be in the same room with the man," whereas. .h.i.tler, she said, "kind of turned my stomach." One of the American emba.s.sy's officers, John C. White, said years later, "I was always rather favorably impressed by Goring.... If any n.a.z.i was likeable, I suppose he came nearest to it."

At this early stage, diplomats and others found Goring hard to take seriously. He was like an immense, if exceedingly dangerous, little boy who delighted in creating and wearing new uniforms. His great size made him the brunt of jokes, although such jokes were told only well out of his hearing.

One night Amba.s.sador Dodd and his wife went to a concert at the Italian emba.s.sy, which Goring also attended. In a vast white uniform of his own design, he looked especially huge-"three times the size of an ordinary man," as daughter Martha told the story. The chairs set out for the concert were tiny gilded antiques that seemed far too fragile for Goring. With fascination and no small degree of anxiety, Mrs. Dodd watched Goring choose the chair directly in front of hers. She immediately found herself transfixed as Goring attempted to fit his gigantic "heart-shaped" rump onto the little chair. Throughout the concert she feared that at any moment the chair would collapse and Goring's great bulk would come crashing into her lap. Martha wrote, "She was so distracted at the sight of the huge loins rolling off the sides and edges of the chair, so perilously near to her, she couldn't remember a single piece that was played."

DODD'S BIGGEST COMPLAINT about the diplomatic parties thrown by other emba.s.sies was how much money was wasted in the process, even by those countries laid low by the Depression. about the diplomatic parties thrown by other emba.s.sies was how much money was wasted in the process, even by those countries laid low by the Depression.

"To ill.u.s.trate," he wrote to Secretary Hull, "last night we went at 8:30 to dine at the 53-room house of the Belgian minister (whose country is supposed to be unable to meet its lawful obligations)." Two servants in uniform met his car. "Four lackeys stood on the stairways, dressed in the style of Louis XIV servants. Three other servants in knee breeches took charge of our wraps. Twenty-nine people sat down in a more expensively furnished dining room than any room in the White House that I have seen. Eight courses were served by four uniformed waiters on silver dishes and platters. There were three wine gla.s.ses at every plate and when we rose, I noticed that many gla.s.s[es] were half full of wine which was to be wasted. The people at the party were agreeable enough, but there was no conversation of any value at all at my part of the table (this I have noted at all other large parties).... Nor was there any serious, informative or even witty talk after dinner." Martha attended as well and described how "all the women were covered with diamonds or other precious stones-I had never seen such a lavish display of wealth." She noted also that she and her parents left at ten thirty, and in so doing caused a minor scandal. "There was a good deal of genteel raising of eyebrows, but we braved the storm and went home." It was bad form, she discovered later, to leave a diplomatic function before eleven.