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In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin / Erik Larson

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William E. Dodd was a lifelong academic who thought an ambassadorship would afford him needed time to work on his life’s ambition, writing a multi-volume history of the American South. He ended up being awarded the posting in Berlin during the years the National Socialists had gained power and Germany was hurtling towards war. He was pretty well-connected in the halls of government, but it helped that several others had refused the German ambassadorship before it was offered to him. He was probably ill-suited to the position, but did what he could to sound warning bells about the rising threat of Nazism and Germany’s renewed military escalation. Had Dodd's warnings been heeded, it may have been possible for western governments to thwart Hitler’s ambitions, but it wasn’t just Neville Chamberlain who indulged the Nazi regime, and eventually the appeasers were to regret their isolationist tendencies and kid-glove treatment of Germany in the 1930s. It seems a real worry, at least from the American perspective, was that Germany would default on its reparations payments from the First World War, and western governments were therefore more inclined to ignore the brutalities of the Nazi regime that continuously escalated with increasing persecution of Jews, the purge of Hitler’s enemies known as the Night of the Long Knives, and eventually the invasion of Poland which started World War II.

The book is as much about Dodd’s adult daughter, Martha, who accompanied the family to its Berlin posting (along with her brother Bill, about whom we hear very little). Martha was a socialite, to say the least. Her liaisons with top Nazi officials and even a Soviet diplomat/spy raised eyebrows at the time, but make fascinating reading today.

This is an intriguing glimpse into Berlin in the 1930s, and as always Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and Isaac’s Storm makes history accessible and entertaining, which frequently catapults his books on the top of the bestseller lists.

[In Erik Larson's end notes he references a documentary from the late 1920s, Berlin:  Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt, a daylong look at the city from dawn to nightfall. Here are some screen stills from the documentary.   You can watch the entire film on Youtube.  It offers a fascinating glimpse into the vibrant, bustling city that Berlin was before the rise of the Nazis and the bombs of World War II.]

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