In The Garden Of Beasts Part 9

"Boris, stop it," she snapped. "What are you doing?"

"I'm dying for you, darling. I am willing to, you know."

She declared his parody not funny and stepped away.

Boris apologized. "I didn't mean to offend you," he said. "But I can't understand why Christians adore the sight of a tortured man."

That wasn't the point, she said. "They adore his sacrifice for his beliefs."

"Oh, do they really?" he said. "Do you believe that? Are there so many ready to die for their beliefs, following his example?"

She cited Dimitrov and his bravery in standing up to Goring at the Reichstag trial.

Boris gave her an angelic smile. "Yes, liebes Fraulein liebes Fraulein, but he he was a communist." was a communist."

CHAPTER 24.

Getting Out the Vote On Sunday morning, November 12-cold, with drizzle and fog-the Dodds encountered a city that seemed uncannily quiet, given that this was the day Hitler had designated for the public referendum on his decision to leave the League of Nations and to seek equality of armaments. Everywhere the Dodds went they saw people wearing little badges that indicated not only that they had voted but that they had voted yes. By midday nearly everyone on the streets seemed to be wearing such insignia, suggesting that voters had arisen early in order to get the deed done and thereby avoid the danger almost certain to arise if they were perceived to have failed in their civic duty.

Even the date of the election had been chosen with care. November 12 was the day after the fifteenth anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended the Great War. Hitler, who flew around Germany campaigning for a positive vote, told one audience, "On an eleventh of November the German people formally lost its honor; fifteen years later came a twelfth of November and then the German people restored its honor to itself." President Hindenburg too lobbied for a positive vote. "Show tomorrow your firm national unity and your solidarity with the government," he said in a speech on November 11. "Support with me and the Reich Chancellor the principle of equal rights and of peace with honor."

The ballot had two main components. One asked Germans to elect delegates to a newly reconst.i.tuted Reichstag but offered only n.a.z.i candidates and thus guaranteed that the resulting body would be a cheering section for Hitler's decisions. The other, the foreign-policy question, had been composed to ensure maximum support. Every German could find a reason to justify voting yes-if he wanted peace, if he felt the Treaty of Versailles had wronged Germany, if he believed Germany ought to be treated as an equal by other nations, or if he simply wished to express his support for Hitler and his government.

Hitler wanted a resounding endors.e.m.e.nt. Throughout Germany, the n.a.z.i Party apparatus took extraordinary measures to get people to vote. One report held that patients confined to hospital beds were transported to polling places on stretchers. Victor Klemperer, the Jewish philologist in Berlin, took note in his diary of the "extravagant propaganda" to win a yes vote. "On every commercial vehicle, post office van, mailman's bicycle, on every house and shopwindow, on broad banners, which are stretched across the street-quotations from Hitler are everywhere and always 'Yes' for peace! It is the most monstrous of hypocrisies."

Party men and the SA monitored who voted and who did not; laggards got a visit from a squad of Storm Troopers who emphasized the desirability of an immediate trip to the polls. For anyone dense enough to miss the point, there was this item in the Sunday-morning edition of the official n.a.z.i newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter: Volkischer Beobachter: "In order to bring about clarity it must be repeated again. He who does not attach himself to us today, he who does not vote and vote 'yes' today, shows that he is, if not our b.l.o.o.d.y enemy, at least a product of destruction and that he is no more to be helped." "In order to bring about clarity it must be repeated again. He who does not attach himself to us today, he who does not vote and vote 'yes' today, shows that he is, if not our b.l.o.o.d.y enemy, at least a product of destruction and that he is no more to be helped."

Here was the kicker: "It would be better for him and it would be better for us if he no longer existed."

Some 45.1 million Germans were qualified to vote, and 96.5 percent did so. Of these, 95.1 percent voted in favor of Hitler's foreign policy. More interesting, however, was the fact that 2.1 million Germans-just shy of 5 percent of the registered electorate-made the dangerous decision to vote no.

Hitler issued a proclamation afterward thanking the German people for the "historically unique acknowledgment they have made in favor of real love of peace, at the same time also their claim to our honor and to our eternal equal rights."

The outcome was clear to Dodd well before the votes were counted. He wrote to Roosevelt, "The election here is a farce."

Nothing indicated this more clearly than the vote within the camp at Dachau: 2,154 of 2,242 prisoners-96 percent-voted in favor of Hitler's government. On the fate of the 88 souls who either failed to vote or voted no, history is silent.

ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, President Roosevelt took a few moments to compose a letter to Dodd. He complimented him on his letters thus far and, in an apparent allusion to Dodd's concerns after his interview with Hitler, told Dodd, "I am glad you have been frank with certain people. I think that is a good thing." 13, President Roosevelt took a few moments to compose a letter to Dodd. He complimented him on his letters thus far and, in an apparent allusion to Dodd's concerns after his interview with Hitler, told Dodd, "I am glad you have been frank with certain people. I think that is a good thing."

He mused on an observation by columnist Walter Lippmann that a mere 8 percent of the world's population, meaning Germany and j.a.pan, was able "because of imperialistic att.i.tude" to prevent peace and disarmament for the rest of the world.

"I sometimes feel," the president wrote, "that the world problems are getting worse instead of better. In our own country, however, in spite of sniping, 'chiseling' and growling by the extreme right and by the extreme left, we are actually putting people back to work and raising values."

He closed with a jovial "Keep up the good work!"

IN WASHINGTON, SECRETARY HULL and other senior officials, including Undersecretary Phillips, spent the first half of the month consumed by planning for the impending visit of Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, who was to begin discussions with Roosevelt aimed at U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union. The idea was deeply unpopular with America's isolationists, but Roosevelt saw important strategic benefits, such as opening Russia to American investment and helping check j.a.panese ambitions in Asia. The "Roosevelt-Litvinov conversations," often difficult and frustrating for both parties, ultimately resulted in Roosevelt's a.s.serting formal recognition on November 16, 1933. and other senior officials, including Undersecretary Phillips, spent the first half of the month consumed by planning for the impending visit of Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, who was to begin discussions with Roosevelt aimed at U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union. The idea was deeply unpopular with America's isolationists, but Roosevelt saw important strategic benefits, such as opening Russia to American investment and helping check j.a.panese ambitions in Asia. The "Roosevelt-Litvinov conversations," often difficult and frustrating for both parties, ultimately resulted in Roosevelt's a.s.serting formal recognition on November 16, 1933.

Seven days later, Dodd once again put on his cutaway and stovepipe and paid his first official visit to the Soviet emba.s.sy. An a.s.sociated Press photographer asked for a picture of Dodd standing beside his Soviet counterpart. The Russian was willing, but Dodd begged off, fearing "that certain reactionary papers in America would exaggerate the fact of my call and repeat their attacks upon Roosevelt for his recognition."

CHAPTER 25.

The Secret Boris Now Martha and Boris felt freer about revealing their relationship to the world, though both recognized that discretion was still necessary given the continuing disapproval of Boris's superiors and Martha's parents. Their affair grew steadily more serious, despite Martha's efforts to keep things light and noncommittal. She continued to see Armand Berard of the French emba.s.sy, and possibly Diels, and to accept dates from potential new suitors, and this drove Boris wild with jealousy. He sent a blizzard of notes, flowers, and music and telephoned her repeatedly. "I wanted to love him only lightly," Martha wrote, in an unpublished account; "I tried to treat him as casually as I did other friends. I forced myself to be indifferent to him one week; then the next, I became stupidly jealous. I was forgetful of him, then absorbed in him. It was an unbearable contradiction, grievous and frustrating to us both."

Martha was still committed to seeing the best in the n.a.z.i revolution, but Boris had no illusions about what was occurring around them. To Martha's irritation, he was always looking for the underlying motives that governed the actions of n.a.z.i leaders and the various figures who visited the U.S. emba.s.sy.

"You always see the bad things," she said angrily. "You should try to see the positive things in Germany, and in our visitors, not always suspect them of ulterior motives."

She suggested that at times he too was guilty of hiding his motives-"I think you're jealous of Armand," she said, "or anyone else who takes me out."

The next day, she received a package from Boris. Inside she found three ceramic monkeys and a card that read, "See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil." Boris closed the note: "I love you."

Martha laughed. In return, she sent him a small carved-wood figure of a nun, along with a note that a.s.sured him she was following the monkeys' orders.

Behind it all was that looming question: where could their relationship possibly go? "I could not bear to think of the future, either with or without him," she wrote. "I loved my family, my country, and did not want to face the possibility of separation from either."

This tension led to misunderstandings and grief. Boris suffered.

"Martha!" he wrote in one pain-flushed letter. "I am so sad that I cannot find the right words for everything that happened. Forgive me if I have done something mean or bad to you. I did not mean or wish to do so. I understand you, but not completely, and I do not know what I ought to do. What shall I do?

"Farewell, Martha, be happy without me, and do not think bad about me."

Always they came back together. Each separation seemed to intensify their attraction all the more but also amplified the moments of misunderstanding and anger-until one Sunday afternoon in late November their relationship underwent a material change. She recalled it all in fine-grained detail.

A bleak day, the sky like smudged charcoal, the air cold, but not so cold as to prompt Boris to raise the top on his Ford. They set out for a cozy restaurant they both loved that was housed in a boathouse on pilings over a lake in the Wannsee district. A fragrant pine forest walled the sh.o.r.eline.

They found the restaurant to be almost empty but still charming. Wood tables surrounded a small dance floor. When the jukebox wasn't playing, the sound of water gently smacking the pilings outside was clearly audible.

Martha ordered onion soup, salad, and beer; Boris chose vodka, shashlik, and herring immersed in sour cream and onions. And more vodka. Boris loved food, Martha noted, but never seemed to gain ein Pfund ein Pfund.

After lunch they danced. Boris was improving but still tended to treat dancing and walking as interchangeable phenomena. At one point as their bodies came together, both became very still, Martha recalled; she felt suddenly radiant with heat.

Boris pulled away abruptly. He took her arm and led her outside onto a wooden deck that jutted over the water. She looked at him and saw pain-eyebrows drawn together, lips compressed. He seemed agitated. They stood together at the rail watching a squadron of white swans.

He turned to her, his expression almost somber. "Martha," he said, "I love you." He confessed now that he had felt that way ever since the first time he had seen her at Sigrid Schultz's apartment. He held her before him, his hands firmly vised around her elbows. The mad-cap gaiety was gone.

He stepped back and looked at her. "Don't play with me, darling," he said. "Du hast viele Bewerber." "Du hast viele Bewerber." You have a lot of suitors. "You should not decide yet. But don't treat me lightly. I could not bear it." You have a lot of suitors. "You should not decide yet. But don't treat me lightly. I could not bear it."

She looked away. "I love you, Boris. You know it. And you know how hard I try not to."

Boris turned to watch the water. "Yes, I know it," he said with sorrow. "It is not easy for me either."

Boris could never be subdued for long, however. His smile reappeared-that explosive smile. "But," he said, "your country and mine are now friends, officially, and that makes it better, makes anything possible, doesn't it?"

Yes, but...

There was another obstacle. Boris had been keeping a secret. Martha knew it but had not yet told him so. Now, facing him, she made her voice very quiet.

"Also," she said, "you are married."

Once again Boris stepped away. His complexion, already flushed from the cold, grew perceptibly redder. He moved to the railing and leaned on his elbows. His long frame formed a slender and graceful arc. Neither spoke.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I should have told you. I thought you knew. Forgive me."

She told him that she had not known at first, not until Armand and her parents showed her Boris's entry in the diplomatic directory published by the German foreign office. Next to Boris's name was a reference to his wife, who was "abwesend." "abwesend." Meaning absent. Meaning absent.

"She is not 'absent,'" Boris said. "We are separated. We have not been happy together for a long time. The next diplomatic listing will have nothing in that s.p.a.ce." He revealed as well that he had a daughter, whom he adored. It was only through her, he said, that he continued to have contact with his wife.

Martha noticed tears in his eyes. He had cried in her presence before, and she always found it moving but also discomfiting. A crying man-this was new to her. In America, men did not cry. Not yet. Up until now she had seen her father with tears in his eyes only once, upon the death of Woodrow Wilson, whom he counted as a good friend. There would be one other occasion, but that was to come in a few years' time.

They went back into the restaurant, to their table. Boris ordered another vodka. He seemed relieved. They held hands across the table.

But now Martha offered a revelation of her own.

"I too am married," she said.

The intensity of his response startled her. His voice fell and darkened. "Martha, no!" He continued to hold her hands, but his expression changed to one of puzzlement and pain. "Why didn't you you tell me?" tell me?"

She explained that her marriage had been a secret from the start, to all but her family-that her husband was a banker in New York, she had loved him once, and deeply, but now they were legally separated, with only the technicalities of divorce remaining.

Boris dropped his head to his arms. Under his breath he said something in Russian. She stroked his hair.

He stood abruptly and walked back outside. Martha stayed seated. A few moments later, Boris returned.

"Ach, dear G.o.d," he said. He laughed. He kissed her head. "Oh, what a mess we're in. A married woman, a banker, a foreign diplomat's daughter-I don't think it could be worse. But we'll figure it out somehow. Communists are used to doing the impossible. But you must help me."

It was nearly sundown when they left the restaurant and began their drive back toward the city, the top still down. The day had been an important one. Martha recalled small details-the onrushing wind that tore her hair loose from its coil at the back of her head, and how Boris drove with his right arm over her shoulder, his hand cupping her breast, as was often his custom. The dense forests along the roads grew darker in the fading light and exuded a rich autumnal fragrance. Her hair flew behind her in tendrils of gold.

Though neither said so directly, both understood that something fundamental had occurred. She had fallen deeply for this man and could no longer treat him in the same way she treated her other conquests. She had not wanted this to happen, but it had, and with a man whom the rest of the world saw as unsuitable in the extreme.

CHAPTER 26.

The Little Press Ball Every November the Foreign Press a.s.sociation in Berlin threw a dinner and ball at the Hotel Adlon, a glamorous affair to which many of the city's most prominent officials, diplomats, and personalities were invited. The event was nicknamed the Little Press Ball because it was smaller and far less constrained than the annual banquet hosted by Germany's domestic press, which had become even stuffier than usual due to the fact that the country's newspapers were by now almost wholly under the control of Joseph Goebbels and his Ministry of Public Enlightenment. For the foreign correspondents the Little Press Ball had immense practical value. Wrote Sigrid Schultz, "It is always easier to pump a man for a story after he and his wife-if he has one-have been your guests and danced at your ball than if you see him only in business hours." In 1933 the Little Press Ball was held on the evening of Friday, November 24, six days before the city's American population would celebrate Thanksgiving.

Shortly before eight o'clock, the Adlon began receiving the first of a long procession of big cars, many with headlights the size of halved melons. Out stepped an array of senior n.a.z.is, amba.s.sadors, artists, filmmakers, actresses, writers, and of course the foreign correspondents themselves, from countries large and small, all bundled in big coats and furs against the damp, near-freezing air. Among the arrivals were the German state secretary Bernhard von Bulow; Foreign Minister Neurath; French amba.s.sador Francois-Poncet; Sir Eric Phipps, the British amba.s.sador; and of course the ubiquitous and gigantic Putzi Hanfstaengl. Here too came Bella Fromm, the "Auntie Voss" society columnist, for whom the banquet would prove to be edged with darkest tragedy, albeit of a kind grown increasingly common in the Berlin beyond public view. The Dodds-all four-arrived in their old Chevrolet; Hitler's vice-chancellor, Franz von Papen, came in a significantly larger and fancier car and, like Dodd, also brought his wife, daughter, and son. Louis Adlon, beaming in tux and tails, greeted each splendid arrival, while bellmen took away furs, coats, and top hats.

As Dodd was about to find out, in a milieu as supercharged as Berlin, where every public action of a diplomat accrued exaggerated symbolic weight, even a mere bit of conversational sparring across a banquet table could become the stuff of minor legend.

THE GUESTS MOVED into the hotel, first to the elegant drawing rooms for c.o.c.ktails and hors d'oeuvres, then to the winter-garden hall, beclouded with thousands of hothouse chrysanthemums. The room was always "painfully crowded," in Schultz's appraisal, but tradition required that the ball always be held at the Adlon. Custom also called for guests to arrive in formal wear but "without any display of orders or official rank," as Fromm wrote in her diary, though a few guests anxious to display their enthusiasm for the National Socialist Party wore the drab brown of the Storm Troopers. One guest, a duke named Eduard von Koburg, commander of the SA's Motorized Forces, walked around wearing a dagger given him by Mussolini. into the hotel, first to the elegant drawing rooms for c.o.c.ktails and hors d'oeuvres, then to the winter-garden hall, beclouded with thousands of hothouse chrysanthemums. The room was always "painfully crowded," in Schultz's appraisal, but tradition required that the ball always be held at the Adlon. Custom also called for guests to arrive in formal wear but "without any display of orders or official rank," as Fromm wrote in her diary, though a few guests anxious to display their enthusiasm for the National Socialist Party wore the drab brown of the Storm Troopers. One guest, a duke named Eduard von Koburg, commander of the SA's Motorized Forces, walked around wearing a dagger given him by Mussolini.

The guests were shown to their seats at tables of a kind favored by banquet organizers in Berlin, so agonizingly narrow they put guests in arm's reach of their peers at the opposite side. Such close quarters had the potential to create awkward social and political situations-putting, say, the mistress of an industrialist across from the man's wife-so the hosts of each table made sure their seating plans were reviewed by various protocol officials. Some juxtapositions simply could not be avoided. The most important German officials had to be seated not only at the head table, which this year was hosted by the American correspondents, but also close to the captains of the table, Schultz and Louis Lochner, chief of the Berlin bureau of the a.s.sociated Press, and to the table's most prominent U.S. figure, Amba.s.sador Dodd. Thus Vice-Chancellor Papen wound up sitting directly opposite Schultz, despite the fact that Papen and Schultz were known to dislike each other.

Mrs. Dodd also took a prominent seat, as did State Secretary Bulow and Putzi Hanfstaengl; Martha and Bill Jr. and numerous other guests filled out the table. Photographers circled and took picture after picture, the flare from their "flashlights" illuminating whorls of cigar smoke.

Papen was a handsome man-he resembled the character Topper as played on television years later by the actor Leo G. Carroll. But he had an unsavory reputation as an opportunist and betrayer of trust and was deemed by many to be arrogant in the extreme. Bella Fromm called him the "Gravedigger of the Weimar Republic," alluding to Papen's role in engineering the appointment of Hitler as chancellor. Papen was a protege of President Hindenburg, who affectionately called him Franzchen, or Little Franz. With Hindenburg in his camp, Papen and fellow intriguers had imagined they could control Hitler. "I have Hindenburg's confidence," Papen once crowed. "Within two months we will have pushed Hitler so far into a corner that he'll squeak." It was possibly the greatest miscalculation of the twentieth century. As historian John Wheeler-Bennett put it, "Not until they had riveted the fetters upon their own wrists did they realize who indeed was captive and who captor."

Dodd too viewed Papen with distaste, but for reasons stemming from treachery of a more concrete variety. Shortly before the United States had entered the past world war, Papen had been a military attache a.s.signed to the German emba.s.sy in Washington, where he had planned and abetted various acts of sabotage, including the dynamiting of rail lines. He had been arrested and thrown out of the country.

Once all were seated, conversation ignited at various points along the table. Dodd and Mrs. Papen talked about the American university system, which Mrs. Papen praised for its excellence: during the Papens' tenure in Washington, their son had attended Georgetown University. Putzi was his usual boisterous self. Even seated he towered above the guests around him. A strained silence occupied the cleft of linen, crystal, and china that separated Schultz and Papen. That a chill existed between them was obvious to all. "When he arrived he was as suave and polite as his reputation required," Schultz wrote, "but all through the first four courses of the dinner the gentleman ignored [me] with remarkable consistency." She noted: "This was not easy to do because it was a narrow table and I sat just about three feet opposite him."

She did all she could to draw Papen into conversation, only to be rebuffed. She had promised herself that she would "try to be the perfect hostess and steer clear of controversial subjects," but the more Papen ignored her, the less inclined she was to do so. Her resolve, she wrote, "wore thin in the face of Papen's obvious bad manners."

After the fourth course, when she could resist no longer, she looked at Papen and, deploying what she described as "the most naive sounding tones" she could muster, said, "Mr. Chancellor, there is something in the Memoirs of President von Hindenburg which I am sure you can elucidate for me."

Papen gave her his attention. His eyebrows were flared upward at the ends like feathers and imparted to his gaze the cold focus of a raptor.

Schultz kept her expression cherubic and continued: "He complains that in the last war, in 1917, the German High Command never heard anything about the peace suggestions of President Wilson and that if he had known about them the dangerous submarine campaign would not have been launched. How was that possible?"

Despite the quiet of her voice, suddenly everyone at the table within eavesdropping distance became silent and intent. Dodd watched Papen; State Secretary Bulow leaned in toward the conversation with what Schultz described as "a gleam of wicked amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes."

Papen said brusquely, "There never was such a thing as a peace suggestion by President Wilson."

A very foolish thing to say, Schultz knew, given the presence of Amba.s.sador Dodd, an expert on Wilson and the period in question.

Quietly but firmly, his voice bearing the lingual mists of North Carolina-"every bit the Southern gentleman," Schultz recalled-Dodd looked at Papen and said, "Oh yes there was." And gave the precise date.

Schultz was delighted. "Papen's long horsey teeth grew longer," she wrote. "He did not even try to emulate the quiet tone of Amba.s.sador Dodd."

Instead, Papen "just snarled" his reply: "I never understood anyhow why America and Germany got to grips in that war." He looked at the faces around him "triumphantly proud of the arrogance of his tone," Schultz wrote.

In the next instant Dodd won Shultz's "undying admiration and grat.i.tude."

MEANWHILE, AT ANOTHER TABLE, Bella Fromm experienced an anxiety unrelated to the conversations around her. She had come to the ball because it was always great fun and very useful for her column on Berlin's diplomatic community, but this year she arrived suppressing a deep uneasiness. Though she was enjoying herself, at odd moments her mind returned to her best friend, Wera von Huhn, also a prominent columnist, whom most everyone knew by her nickname, "Poulette," French for "young hen," derived from her last name, Huhn, which in German means "chicken."

Ten days earlier, Fromm and Poulette had gone for a drive through the Grunewald, an eleven-thousand-acre forest preserve west of Berlin. Like the Tiergarten, it had become a haven for diplomats and others seeking respite from n.a.z.i surveillance. The act of driving in the forest provided Fromm one of the few moments when she felt truly safe. "The louder the motor," she wrote in her diary, "the more I feel at ease."

There was nothing carefree about this latest drive, however. Their conversation centered on the law pa.s.sed the preceding month that barred Jews from editing and writing for German newspapers and required members of the domestic press to present doc.u.mentation from civil and church records to prove they were "Aryan." Certain Jews could retain their jobs, namely those who had fought in the past war or lost a son in battle or who wrote for Jewish newspapers, but only a small number qualified for these exemptions. Any unregistered journalist caught writing or editing faced up to one year in prison. The deadline was January 1, 1934.

Poulette sounded deeply troubled. Fromm found this perplexing. She herself knew about the requirement, of course. Being Jewish, she had resigned herself to the fact that she would be out of a job by the new year. But Poulette? "Why should you you worry?" Fromm asked. worry?" Fromm asked.

"I have reason, Bella darling. I wrote for my papers, chased all over the place getting them. Finally I found out that my grandmother was Jewish."