In The Garden Of Beasts Part 18

Hitler resumed: "I ordered the leaders of the guilty shot. I also ordered the abscesses caused by our internal and external poisons cauterized until the living flesh was burned. I also ordered that any rebel attempting to resist arrest should be killed immediately. The nation must know that its existence cannot be menaced with impunity by anyone, and that whoever lifts his hand against the State shall die of it."

He cited the "foreign diplomat's" meeting with Rohm and other alleged plotters and the diplomat's subsequent declaration that the meeting was "entirely inoffensive." It was a clear allusion to the dinner Francois-Poncet had attended in May at the home of Wilhelm Regendanz.

"But," Hitler continued, "when three men capable of high treason organize a meeting in Germany with a foreign statesman, a meeting which they themselves characterize as a 'working' meeting, when they send the servants away, and give strict orders that I should not be informed of their meeting, I have those men shot, even if in the course of those secret conversations the only subjects discussed were the weather, old coins and similar objects."

Hitler acknowledged that the cost of his purge "has been high," and then lied to his audience by setting the death toll at seventy-seven. He sought to temper even this count by claiming that two of the victims killed themselves and-laughably, here-that the total included three SS men shot for "mistreating prisoners."

He closed, "I am ready before history to take the responsibility for the twenty-four hours of the bitterest decision of my life, during which fate has again taught me to cling with every thought to the dearest thing we possess-the German people and the German Reich."

The hall resounded with the thunder of applause and ma.s.sed voices singing the "Horst Wessel Lied." Had Dodd been present, he would have seen two girls give Hitler bouquets of flowers, the girls dressed in the uniform of the Bund Deutscher Madel, the female branch of the Hitler Youth, and would have seen Goring step briskly to the dais to take Hitler's hand, followed by a surge of officials bent on offering their own congratulations. Goring and Hitler stood close and held the pose for the scores of photographers pressing near. The Times' Times' Fred Birchall witnessed it: "They stood face to face on the dais for almost a minute, hand grasping hand, looking into each other's eyes while the flashlights popped." Fred Birchall witnessed it: "They stood face to face on the dais for almost a minute, hand grasping hand, looking into each other's eyes while the flashlights popped."

Dodd turned off his radio. On his side of the park the night was cool and serene. The next day, Sat.u.r.day, July 14, he sent a coded telegram to Secretary Hull: "NOTHING MORE REPULSIVE THAN TO WATCH THE COUNTRY OF GOETHE AND BEETHOVEN REVERT TO THE BARBARISM OF STUART ENGLAND AND BOURBON FRANCE WATCH THE COUNTRY OF GOETHE AND BEETHOVEN REVERT TO THE BARBARISM OF STUART ENGLAND AND BOURBON FRANCE..."

Late that afternoon, he devoted two quiet hours to his Old South Old South, losing himself in another, more chivalrous age.

PUTZI HANFSTAENGL, a.s.sURED of his safety by Foreign Minister Neurath, sailed for home. When he arrived at his office he was struck by the somber, dazed aspect of those around him. They behaved, he wrote, "as if they were chloroformed." of his safety by Foreign Minister Neurath, sailed for home. When he arrived at his office he was struck by the somber, dazed aspect of those around him. They behaved, he wrote, "as if they were chloroformed."

HITLER'S PURGE WOULD BECOME KNOWN as "The Night of the Long Knives" and in time would be considered one of the most important episodes in his ascent, the first act in the great tragedy of appeas.e.m.e.nt. Initially, however, its significance was lost. No government recalled its amba.s.sador or filed a protest; the populace did not rise in revulsion. as "The Night of the Long Knives" and in time would be considered one of the most important episodes in his ascent, the first act in the great tragedy of appeas.e.m.e.nt. Initially, however, its significance was lost. No government recalled its amba.s.sador or filed a protest; the populace did not rise in revulsion.

The most satisfying reaction from a public official in America came from General Hugh Johnson, administrator of the National Recovery Administration, who by now had become notorious for intemperate speeches on a variety of subjects. (When a general strike had taken place in San Francisco in July led by a longsh.o.r.eman who had emigrated from Australia, Johnson had called for deportation of all immigrants.) "A few days ago, in Germany, events occurred which shocked the world," Johnson said in public remarks. "I don't know how they affected you, but they made me sick-not figuratively, but physically and very actively sick. The idea that adult, responsible men can be taken from their homes, stood up against a wall, backs to the rifles and shot to death is beyond expression."

The German foreign office protested. Secretary Hull replied that Johnson "was speaking as an individual and not for the State Department or for the Administration."

This lack of reaction arose partly because many in Germany and elsewhere in the world chose to believe Hitler's claim that he had suppressed an imminent rebellion that would have caused far more bloodshed. Evidence soon emerged, however, that showed that in fact Hitler's account was false. Dodd at first seemed inclined to believe a plot really had existed but quickly grew skeptical. One fact seemed most clearly to refute the official line: when the SA's Berlin chief, Karl Ernst, was arrested, he was about to set off on a honeymoon cruise, not exactly the behavior of a man supposedly plotting a coup for that same weekend. Whether Hitler at first believed his own story is unclear. Certainly Goring, Goebbels, and Himmler had done all they could to make him believe it. Britain's Sir Eric Phipps initially accepted the official story; it took him six weeks to realize that no plot had existed. When Phipps met Hitler face-to-face several months later, his thoughts harked back to the purge. "It has not increased his charm or attractiveness," Phipps wrote in his diary. "Whilst I spoke he eyed me hungrily like a tiger. I derived the distinct impression that had my nationality and status been different I should have formed part of his evening meal."

In this appraisal he came closest to grasping the true message of the Rohm purge, which continued to elude the world. The killings demonstrated in what should have been unignorable terms how far Hitler was willing to go to preserve power, yet outsiders chose to misinterpret the violence as merely an internal settling of scores-"a type of gangland bloodbath redolent of Al Capone's St. Valentine's Day ma.s.sacre," as historian Ian Kershaw put it. "They still thought that in the business of diplomacy they could deal with Hitler as a responsible statesman. The next years would provide a bitter lesson that the Hitler conducting foreign affairs was the same one who had behaved with such savage and cynical brutality at home on 30 June 1934." Rudolf Diels, in his memoir, acknowledged that at first he also missed the point. "I...had no idea that this hour of lightning was announcing a thunderstorm, the violence of which would tear down the rotten dams of the European systems and would put the entire world into flames-because this was indeed the meaning of June 30, 1934."

The controlled press, not surprisingly, praised Hitler for his decisive behavior, and among the public his popularity soared. So weary had Germans become of the Storm Troopers' intrusions in their lives that the purge seemed like a G.o.dsend. An intelligence report from the exiled Social Democrats found that many Germans were "extolling Hitler for his ruthless determination" and that many in the working cla.s.s "have also become enslaved to the uncritical deification of Hitler."

Dodd continued to hope for some catalyst to cause the end of the regime and believed the imminent death of Hindenburg-whom Dodd called modern Germany's "single distinguished soul"-might provide it, but again he was to be disappointed. On August 2, three weeks after Hitler's speech, Hindenburg died at his country estate. Hitler moved quickly. Before the day was out he a.s.sumed the duties of president as well as chancellor, thereby at last achieving absolute power over Germany. Contending with false humility that the t.i.tle "president" could only be a.s.sociated with Hindenburg, who had borne it so long, Hitler proclaimed that henceforth his own official t.i.tle would be "Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor."

In a confidential letter to Secretary Hull, Dodd forecast "an even more terroristic regime than we have endured since June 30."

Germany accepted the change without protest, to the dismay of Victor Klemperer, the Jewish philologist. He too had hoped the blood purge would at last cause the army to step in and remove Hitler. Nothing happened. And now, this new outrage. "The people hardly notice this complete coup d'etat," he wrote in his diary. "It all takes place in silence, drowned out by hymns to the dead Hindenburg. I would swear that millions upon millions have no idea what a monstrous thing has occurred."

The Munich newspaper Munchner Neueste Nachrichten Munchner Neueste Nachrichten gushed, "Today Hitler is the Whole of Germany," apparently choosing to ignore the fact that just a month earlier its own gentle music critic had been shot dead by mistake. gushed, "Today Hitler is the Whole of Germany," apparently choosing to ignore the fact that just a month earlier its own gentle music critic had been shot dead by mistake.

THE RAINS CAME that weekend, a three-day downpour that drenched the city. With the SA quiescent, its brown uniforms prudently if temporarily closeted, and the nation mourning Hindenburg's death, a rare sense of peace spread over Germany, allowing Dodd a few moments to muse on a subject freighted with irony but dear to that part of him that remained a farmer from Virginia. that weekend, a three-day downpour that drenched the city. With the SA quiescent, its brown uniforms prudently if temporarily closeted, and the nation mourning Hindenburg's death, a rare sense of peace spread over Germany, allowing Dodd a few moments to muse on a subject freighted with irony but dear to that part of him that remained a farmer from Virginia.

In his diary entry for Sunday, August 5, 1934, Dodd remarked upon a trait of the German people that he had observed in his Leipzig days and that had persisted even under Hitler: a love of animals, in particular horses and dogs.

"At a time when nearly every German is afraid to speak a word to any but the closest friends, horses and dogs are so happy that one feels they wish to talk," he wrote. "A woman who may report on a neighbor for disloyalty and jeopardize his life, even cause his death, takes her big kindly-looking dog in the Tiergarten for a walk. She talks to him and coddles him as she sits on a bench and he attends to the requirements of nature."

In Germany, Dodd had noticed, no one ever abused a dog, and as a consequence dogs were never fearful around men and were always plump and obviously well tended. "Only horses seem to be equally happy, never the children or the youth," he wrote. "I often stop as I walk to my office and have a word with a pair of beautiful horses waiting while their wagon is being unloaded. They are so clean and fat and happy that one feels that they are on the point of speaking." He called it "horse happiness" and had noticed the same phenomenon in Nuremberg and Dresden. In part, he knew, this happiness was fostered by German law, which forbade cruelty to animals and punished violators with prison, and here Dodd found deepest irony. "At a time when hundreds of men have been put to death without trial or any sort of evidence of guilt, and when the population literally trembles with fear, animals have rights guaranteed them which men and women cannot think of expecting."

He added, "One might easily wish he were a horse!"

CHAPTER 53.

Juliet #2 Boris was right. Martha had packed her itinerary too full and as a consequence found her journey anything but uplifting. Her travels made her cranky and critical, of Boris and of Russia, which struck her as a drab and weary land. Boris was disappointed. "I am very sad to hear that you do not like everything in Russia," he wrote to her on July 11, 1934. "You ought to review it with completely different eyes than America. You should not settle with a superficial glance (such as bad clothes and bad food). Please, dear Miss, look 'inside,' a bit deeper."

What most annoyed Martha, unfairly, was that Boris did not join her on her travels, even though soon after her departure he too had gone to Russia, first to Moscow, and then to a resort in the Caucasus for a vacation. In an August 5 letter from the resort, Boris reminded her, "You are the one who said we do not have to meet each other in Russia." He acknowledged, however, that other obstacles also had intruded, though he was vague as to their precise nature. "I could not spend my vacation together with you. It was not possible for various reasons. The most important reason: I had to stay in Moscow. My stay in Moscow was not very happy, my destiny is unresolved."

He professed to be hurt by her letters. "You should not write such angry letters to me. I did not deserve it. I was already very sad in Moscow after some of your letters, since I felt that you were so far away and unreachable. But after your angry letter I am more than sad. Why did you do that, Martha? What happened? Can you not be 2 months without me?"

Just as she had wielded other lovers to hurt her ex-husband, Ba.s.sett, so she hinted to Boris that she might renew her affair with Armand Berard of the French emba.s.sy. "Immediately threatening with Armand?" Boris wrote. "I cannot dictate or suggest anything to you. But don't make any stupidities. Stay calm and don't destroy all the good things we both have together."

At some point during her journey, Martha was approached by emissaries of the Soviet NKVD seeking to recruit her as a source of covert information. It is likely that Boris was ordered to stay away from her so as not to interfere with the process, although he also played a role in her recruitment, according to Soviet intelligence records uncovered and made available to scholars by a leading expert on KGB history (and a former KGB agent), Alexander Va.s.siliev. Boris's superiors felt he was not energetic enough in formalizing Martha's role. They transferred him back to Moscow and then to an emba.s.sy post in Bucharest, which he loathed.

Martha, meanwhile, returned to Berlin. She loved Boris, but the two remained separated; she dated other men, including Armand Berard. In autumn 1936, Boris was transferred again, this time to Warsaw. The NKVD a.s.signed another agent, one Comrade Bukhartsev, to take over the effort to recruit Martha. A progress report in NKVD files states: "The entire Dodd family hates National Socialists. Martha has interesting connections that she uses in getting information for her father. She has intimate relations with some of her acquaintances."

Despite their continued separation and emotional battles and Martha's periodic brandis.h.i.+ng of Armand and other lovers, her affair with Boris progressed to the point where on March 14, 1937, during a second visit to Moscow, she formally pet.i.tioned Stalin for permission to marry. Whether Stalin ever saw or responded to the request isn't known, but the NKVD was ambivalent about their romance. Although Boris's masters professed to have no objection to the marriage, they at times also seemed intent on stripping Boris from the picture in order to allow better focus on Martha. At one point the agency commanded that they stay apart for six months, "in the interests of business."

Boris, as it happened, was more reluctant than Martha ever knew. In a peeved memorandum to his superiors in Moscow dated March 21, 1937, Boris complained, "I don't quite understand why you have focused so much on our wedding. I asked you to point out to her that it is impossible in general and, anyway, won't happen in the next several years. You spoke more optimistically on this issue and ordered a delay of only 6 months or a year." But what would happen then? he asked. "Six months will pa.s.s quickly, and who knows? She may produce a bill that neither you nor I is going to pay. Isn't it better to soften slightly the explicitness of your promises if you really gave them to her?"

In the same memorandum he refers to Martha as "Juliet #2," a reference that KGB expert Va.s.siliev and Allen Weinstein, in their book The Haunted Wood The Haunted Wood, see as indicating that there might have been another woman in his life, a "Juliet #1."

Martha and Boris had a tryst in Warsaw in November 1937, after which Boris sent a report to Moscow. The meeting "went off well," he wrote. "She was in a good mood." She was still intent on marriage and "waits for the fulfillment of our promise despite her parents' warning that nothing would come of it."

But once again Boris revealed a decided lack of interest in actually marrying her. He cautioned: "I think that she shouldn't be left in ignorance with regard to the real situation, for if we deceive her, she may become embittered and lose faith in us."

CHAPTER 54.

A Dream of Love In the months that followed Hitler's final ascent, Dodd's sense of futility deepened, as did a collateral longing to be back on his farm in the soft rise of the Appalachians, among his rich red apples and lazy cows. He wrote, "It is so humiliating to me to shake hands with known and confessed murderers." He became one of the few voices in U.S. government to warn of the true ambitions of Hitler and the dangers of America's isolationist stance. He told Secretary Hull in a letter dated August 30, 1934, "With Germany united as it has never before been, there is feverish arming and drilling of 1,500,000 men, all of whom are taught every day to believe that continental Europe must be subordinated to them." He added, "I think we must abandon our so-called isolation." He wrote to the army chief of staff, Douglas MacArthur, "In my judgment, the German authorities are preparing for a great continental struggle. There is ample evidence. It is only a question of time."

Roosevelt largely shared his view, but most of America seemed more intent than ever on staying out of Europe's squabbles. Dodd marveled at this. He wrote to Roosevelt in April 1935, "If Woodrow Wilson's bones do not turn in the Cathedral grave, then bones never turn in graves. Possibly you can do something, but from reports of Congressional att.i.tudes, I have grave doubts. So many men...think absolute isolation a coming paradise."

Dodd resigned himself to what he called "the delicate work of watching and carefully doing nothing."

His sense of moral revulsion caused him to withdraw from active engagement with Hitler's Third Reich. The regime, in turn, recognized that he had become an intractable opponent and sought to isolate him from diplomatic discourse.

Dodd's att.i.tude appalled Phillips, who wrote in his diary, "What in the world is the use of having an amba.s.sador who refuses to speak to the government to which he is accredited?"

GERMANY CONTINUED ITS MARCH toward war and intensified its persecution of Jews, pa.s.sing a collection of laws under which Jews ceased to be citizens no matter how long their families had lived in Germany or how bravely they had fought for Germany in the Great War. Now on his walks through the Tiergarten Dodd saw that some benches had been painted yellow to indicate they were for Jews. The rest, the most desirable, were reserved for Aryans. toward war and intensified its persecution of Jews, pa.s.sing a collection of laws under which Jews ceased to be citizens no matter how long their families had lived in Germany or how bravely they had fought for Germany in the Great War. Now on his walks through the Tiergarten Dodd saw that some benches had been painted yellow to indicate they were for Jews. The rest, the most desirable, were reserved for Aryans.

Dodd watched, utterly helpless, as German troops occupied the Rhineland on March 7, 1936, without resistance. He saw Berlin transformed for the Olympics as the n.a.z.is polished the city and removed their anti-Jewish banners, only to intensify their persecution once the foreign crowds were gone. He saw Hitler's stature within Germany grow to that of a G.o.d. Women cried as he pa.s.sed near; souvenir hunters dug up parcels of earth from the ground on which he stepped. At the September 1936 party rally in Nuremberg, which Dodd did not attend, Hitler launched his audience into near hysteria. "That you have found me...among so many millions is the miracle of our time!" he cried. "And that I have found you, that is Germany's fortune!"

On September 19, 1936, in a letter marked "Personal and Confidential," Dodd wrote to Secretary Hull of his frustration at watching events unfold with no one daring to intercede. "With armies increasing in size and efficiency every day; with thousands of airplanes ready on a moment's notice to drop bombs and spread poison gas over great cities; and with all other countries, little and great, arming as never before, one can not feel safe anywhere," he wrote. "What mistakes and blunders since 1917, and especially during the past twelve months-and no democratic peoples do anything, economic or moral penalties, to halt the process!"

The idea of resigning gained appeal for Dodd. He wrote to Martha, "You must not mention to anyone, but I do not see how I can continue in this atmosphere longer than next spring. I can not render my country any service and the stress is too great to be always doing nothing."

Meanwhile, his opponents within the State Department stepped up their campaign to have him removed. His longtime antagonist Sumner Welles took over as undersecretary of state, replacing William Phillips, who in August 1936 became amba.s.sador to Italy. Closer to hand a new antagonist emerged, William C. Bullitt, another of Roosevelt's handpicked men (a Yale grad, however), who moved from his post as amba.s.sador to Russia to lead the U.S. emba.s.sy in Paris. In a letter to Roosevelt on December 7, 1936, Bullitt wrote, "Dodd has many admirable and likeable qualities, but he is almost ideally ill equipped for his present job. He hates the n.a.z.is too much to be able to do anything with them or get anything out of them. We need in Berlin someone who can at least be civil to the n.a.z.is and speaks German perfectly."

Dodd's steadfast refusal to attend the n.a.z.i Party rallies continued to rankle his enemies. "Personally, I cannot see why he is so sensitive," Moffat wrote in his diary. Alluding to Dodd's Columbus Day speech in October 1933, Moffat asked, "Why is it worse for him to listen to the Germans inveigh against our form of Government when he chose, at the Chamber of Commerce, to inveigh to a German audience against an autocratic form of government?"

A pattern of leaks persisted, building public pressure for Dodd's removal. In December 1936 columnist Drew Pearson, primary author with Robert S. Allen of a United Features Syndicate column called "Was.h.i.+ngton Merry-Go-Round," published a harsh a.s.sault on Dodd, "attacking me violently as a complete failure here and pretending that the President is of the same opinion," Dodd wrote on December 13. "This is news to me."

Pearson's attack deeply wounded Dodd. He had spent the better part of four years seeking to fulfill Roosevelt's mandate to serve as a model of American values and believed he had done as well as any man could have been expected to do, given the strange, irrational, and brutal nature of Hitler's government. He feared that if he resigned now, under such a black cloud, he would leave the impression that he had been forced to do so. "My position is difficult, but under such criticism I cannot resign, as I planned, next spring," he wrote in his diary. "To give up my work here under these circ.u.mstances would put me in a defensive and positively false position at home." His resignation, he acknowledged, "would at once be recognized as a confession of failure."

He decided to postpone his departure, even though he knew that the time had come to step down. In the meantime he requested another leave in America, to get some rest on his farm and meet with Roosevelt. On July 24, 1937, Dodd and his wife made the long drive to Hamburg, where Dodd boarded the City of Baltimore City of Baltimore and at 7:00 p.m. began the slow sail down the Elbe to the sea. and at 7:00 p.m. began the slow sail down the Elbe to the sea.

LEAVING DODD ABOARD s.h.i.+P broke his wife's heart. The next evening, Sunday, she wrote him a letter so that he would receive it upon his arrival. "I thought of you, my dear, all the way back to Berlin and felt very sad and lonely, especially to see you go away feeling so bad and so miserable." broke his wife's heart. The next evening, Sunday, she wrote him a letter so that he would receive it upon his arrival. "I thought of you, my dear, all the way back to Berlin and felt very sad and lonely, especially to see you go away feeling so bad and so miserable."

She urged him to relax and try to quell the persistent "nervous headaches" that had plagued him for the last couple of months. "Please, please, for our sakes, if not your own, take better care of yourself and live less strenuously and exacting." If he kept well, she told him, he would still have time to achieve the things he wanted to achieve-and presumably here she meant the completion of his Old South Old South.

She worried that all this sorrow and stress, these four years in Berlin, had been partly her fault. "Perhaps I have been too ambitious for you, but it does not mean that I love you any the less," she wrote. "I can't help it-my ambitions for you. It is innate."

But all that was done with, she told him now. "Decide what is best and what you want most, and I shall be content."

Her letter turned grim. She described the drive back to Berlin that night. "We made good time although we pa.s.sed and met many army trucks-those awful instruments of death and destruction within. I still feel a shudder run through me when I see them and the many other signs of coming catastrophe. Is there no possible possible way to stop men and nations from destroying each other? Horrible!" way to stop men and nations from destroying each other? Horrible!"

This was four and a half years before America's entry into the Second World War.

DODD NEEDED THE RESPITE. His health had indeed begun to trouble him. Ever since arriving in Berlin he had experienced stomach troubles and headaches, but lately these had grown more intense. His headaches sometimes persisted for weeks on end. The pain, he wrote, "spread over the nerve connections between the stomach, shoulders and brain until sleep is almost impossible." His symptoms had worsened to the point where on one of his previous leaves he had consulted a specialist, Dr. Thomas R. Brown, chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore (who, at a 1934 gastroenterological symposium, noted with dead sobriety that "we must not forget it is essential to study the stool from every angle"). Upon learning that Dodd was at work on an epic history of the South and that completing it was the great goal of his life, Dr. Brown gently recommended that he quit his post in Berlin. He told Dodd, "At sixty-five one must take stock and decide what are the essentials, and lay one's plans to complete the major work, if possible."

By the summer of 1937, Dodd was reporting near continuous headaches and bouts of digestive trouble that in one case caused him to go without food for thirty hours.

Something more serious than the stress of work may have lain at the root of his health troubles, though certainly stress was a contributing factor. George Messersmith, who eventually moved from Vienna to Was.h.i.+ngton to become an a.s.sistant secretary of state, wrote in an unpublished memoir that he believed Dodd had undergone an organic intellectual decline. Dodd's letters rambled and his handwriting degraded to the point where others in the department pa.s.sed them to Messersmith for "deciphering." Dodd's use of longhand increased as his distrust of his stenographers grew. "It was quite obvious that something had happened to Dodd," Messersmith wrote. "He was suffering from some form of mental deterioration."

The cause of all this, Messersmith believed, was Dodd's inability to adjust to the behavior of Hitler's regime. The violence, the obsessive march toward war, the ruthless treatment of Jews-all of it had made Dodd "tremendously depressed," Messersmith wrote. Dodd could not grasp how these things could be occurring in the Germany he had known and loved as a young scholar in Leipzig.

Messersmith wrote: "I think he was so thoroughly appalled by everything that was happening in Germany and the dangers which it had for the world that he was no longer capable of reasoned thought and judgment."

AFTER A WEEK on his farm, Dodd felt much better. He went to Was.h.i.+ngton and on Wednesday, August 11, met with Roosevelt. During their hourlong conversation, Roosevelt said he'd like him to stay in Berlin a few months longer. He urged Dodd to do as many lectures as he could while in America and "speak the truth about things," a command that affirmed for Dodd that he still had the president's confidence. on his farm, Dodd felt much better. He went to Was.h.i.+ngton and on Wednesday, August 11, met with Roosevelt. During their hourlong conversation, Roosevelt said he'd like him to stay in Berlin a few months longer. He urged Dodd to do as many lectures as he could while in America and "speak the truth about things," a command that affirmed for Dodd that he still had the president's confidence.

But while Dodd was in America the Pretty Good Club engineered a singular affront. One of the emba.s.sy's newest men, Prentiss Gilbert, standing in as acting amba.s.sador-the charge d'affaires-was advised by the State Department to attend the upcoming n.a.z.i Party rally in Nuremberg. Gilbert did so. He rode in a special train for diplomats whose arrival in Nuremberg was greeted by seventeen military aircraft flying in swastika formation.

Dodd sensed the hand of Undersecretary Sumner Welles. "I have long believed Welles was opposed to me and everything I recommended," Dodd wrote in his diary. One of Dodd's few allies in the State Department, R. Walton Moore, an a.s.sistant secretary of state, shared Dodd's distaste for Welles and confirmed his fears: "I have not the slightest doubt that you are correct in locating the influence that has been determining very largely the action of the Department since last May."

Dodd was angry. Staying clear of these congresses was one of the few ways he believed he could signal his, and America's, true feelings about the Hitler regime. He sent a pointed and-he thought-confidential protest to Secretary Hull. To Dodd's great dismay, even this letter was leaked to the press. On the morning of September 4, 1937, he saw an article on the subject in the New York Herald Tribune New York Herald Tribune, which excerpted an entire paragraph from the letter, along with a subsequent telegram.

Dodd's letter incensed Hitler's government. The new German amba.s.sador to America, Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff, told Secretary of State Hull that while he was not making a formal request for Dodd's removal, he "desired to make it plain that the German Government did not feel that he was persona grata. persona grata."

ON OCTOBER 19, 1937, Dodd had a second meeting with Roosevelt, this at the president's home in Hyde Park-"a marvelous place," Dodd wrote. His son Bill accompanied him. "The President revealed his anxiety about foreign affairs," Dodd wrote in his diary. They discussed the Chinese-j.a.panese conflict, then in full flare, and the prospects of a major peace conference soon to take place in Brussels aimed at bringing it to an end. "One thing troubled him," Dodd wrote: "Could the United States, England, France and Russia actually co-operate?" 19, 1937, Dodd had a second meeting with Roosevelt, this at the president's home in Hyde Park-"a marvelous place," Dodd wrote. His son Bill accompanied him. "The President revealed his anxiety about foreign affairs," Dodd wrote in his diary. They discussed the Chinese-j.a.panese conflict, then in full flare, and the prospects of a major peace conference soon to take place in Brussels aimed at bringing it to an end. "One thing troubled him," Dodd wrote: "Could the United States, England, France and Russia actually co-operate?"

The conversation s.h.i.+fted to Berlin. Dodd asked Roosevelt to keep him in place at least until March 1, 1938, "partly because I did not wish to have the German extremists think their complaints...had operated too effectively." He was under the impression that Roosevelt agreed.

Dodd urged the president to choose a fellow history professor, James T. Shotwell of Columbia University, as his replacement. Roosevelt seemed willing to consider the idea. As the conversation came to an end, Roosevelt invited Dodd and Bill to stay for lunch. Roosevelt's mother and other members of the Delano clan joined them. Dodd called it "a delightful occasion."

As he prepared to leave, Roosevelt told him, "Write me personally about things in Europe. I can read your handwriting very well."

In his diary Dodd added: "I promised to write him such confidential letters, but how shall I get them to him unread by spies?"

Dodd sailed for Berlin. His diary entry for Friday, October 29, the day of his arrival, was brief but telling: "In Berlin once more. What can I do?"

He was unaware that in fact Roosevelt had bowed to pressure from both the State Department and the German foreign office and had agreed that Dodd should leave Berlin before the end of the year. Dodd was stunned when on the morning of November 23, 1937, he received a curt telegram from Hull, marked "Strictly Confidential," that stated, "Much as the President regrets any personal inconvenience which may be occasioned to you, he desires me to request that you arrange to leave Berlin if possible by December 15 and in any event not later than Christmas, because of the complications with which you are familiar and which threaten to increase."

Dodd protested, but Hull and Roosevelt stood fast. Dodd booked pa.s.sage for himself and his wife on the SS Was.h.i.+ngton Was.h.i.+ngton, to depart on December 29, 1937.

MARTHA SAILED TWO WEEKS earlier, but first she and Boris met in Berlin to say good-bye. To do so, she wrote, he left his post in Warsaw without permission. It was a romantic and heartbreaking interlude, at least for her. She again declared her desire to marry him. earlier, but first she and Boris met in Berlin to say good-bye. To do so, she wrote, he left his post in Warsaw without permission. It was a romantic and heartbreaking interlude, at least for her. She again declared her desire to marry him.

This was their final meeting. Boris wrote to her on April 29, 1938, from Russia. "Until now I have lived with the memory of our last get-together in Berlin. What a pity that it was only 2 nights long. I want to stretch this time to the rest of our lives. You were so nice and kind to me darling. I will never forget that.... How was the trip across the ocean? One time we will cross this ocean together and together we will watch the eternal waves and feel our eternal love. I love you. I feel you and dream of you and us. Don't forget me. Yours, Boris."

Back in America, true to her nature if not to Boris, Martha met and promptly fell in love with a new man, Alfred Stern, a New Yorker of left-leaning sensibility. He was a decade older, five foot ten, handsome, and rich, having received a lush settlement upon his earlier divorce from an heiress of the Sears Roebuck empire. They became engaged and in breathtakingly short order they married, on June 16, 1938, though news reports show there was a second ceremony, later, on the farm in Round Hill, Virginia. She wore a black velvet dress with red roses. She would write years later that Stern was the third and last great love of her life.

She told Boris of her marriage in a letter dated July 9, 1938. "You know, honey, that for me, you meant more in my life than anybody else. You also know that, if I am needed, I will be ready to come when called." She added, "I look into the future and see you in Russia again."

By the time her letter arrived in Russia, Boris was dead, executed, one of countless NKVD operatives who fell victim to Stalin's paranoia. Martha learned later that Boris had been accused of collaborating with the n.a.z.is. She dismissed the charge as "insane." She wondered long afterward if her relations.h.i.+p with him, especially that final, unauthorized meeting in Berlin, had played a role in sealing his fate.

She never learned that Boris's last letter, in which he claimed to dream of her, was a fake, written by Boris at the direction of the NKVD shortly before his execution, in order to keep his death from destroying her sympathy for the Soviet cause.

CHAPTER 55.

As Darkness Fell A week before his voyage home, Dodd gave a farewell speech at a luncheon of the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, where just over four years earlier he had first kindled n.a.z.i ire with his allusions to ancient dictators.h.i.+ps. The world, he said, "must face the sad fact that in an age when international cooperation should be the keyword, nations are farther apart than ever." He told his audience that the lessons of the Great War had gone unlearned. He praised the German people as "basically democratic and kindly toward each other." And he said, "I doubt whether any Amba.s.sador in Europe properly performs his duties or earns his pay." week before his voyage home, Dodd gave a farewell speech at a luncheon of the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, where just over four years earlier he had first kindled n.a.z.i ire with his allusions to ancient dictators.h.i.+ps. The world, he said, "must face the sad fact that in an age when international cooperation should be the keyword, nations are farther apart than ever." He told his audience that the lessons of the Great War had gone unlearned. He praised the German people as "basically democratic and kindly toward each other." And he said, "I doubt whether any Amba.s.sador in Europe properly performs his duties or earns his pay."

He struck a different tone once he arrived in America. On January 13, 1938, at a dinner given in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, Dodd declared, "Mankind is in grave danger, but democratic governments seem not to know what to do. If they do nothing, Western civilization, religious, personal and economic freedom are in grave danger." His remarks prompted an immediate protest from Germany, to which Secretary Hull replied that Dodd was now a private citizen and could say what he wished. First, however, there was some debate among State Department officials as to whether the department should also apologize with a statement along the lines of "We always regret anything that might give resentment abroad." This idea was rejected, opposed by none other than Jay Pierrepont Moffat, who wrote in his diary, "I personally felt quite strongly that, much as I disliked and disapproved of Mr. Dodd, he should not be apologized for."

With that speech, Dodd embarked on a campaign to raise the alarm about Hitler and his plans, and to combat the increasing drift in America toward isolationism; later he would be dubbed the Ca.s.sandra of American diplomats. He founded the American Council Against n.a.z.i Propaganda and became a member of the American Friends of Spanish Democracy. At a speech in Rochester, New York, on February 21, 1938, before a Jewish congregation, Dodd warned that once Hitler attained control of Austria-an event that appeared imminent-Germany would continue seeking to expand its authority elsewhere, and that Romania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia were at risk. He predicted, moreover, that Hitler would be free to pursue his ambitions without armed resistance from other European democracies, as they would choose concessions over war. "Great Britain," he said, "is terribly exasperated but also terribly desirous of peace."

THE FAMILY DISPERSED, Bill to a teaching job and Martha to Chicago and then New York. Dodd and Mattie retired to the farm at Round Hill, Virginia, but made occasional forays into Was.h.i.+ngton. On February 26, 1938, just after seeing Dodd off at the train station in Was.h.i.+ngton for the start of a journey full of lectures, Mattie wrote to Martha in Chicago, "I do wish we were all nearer together so that we could discuss things and spend some time with each other. Our lives are slipping by so fast. Father often speaks of your being with us and what a joy it would be to have you with him and Billy nearby. I do wish he were younger and more vigorous. He is very delicate & his nervous energy depleted."

She was deeply concerned about events in Europe. In another letter to Martha soon afterward she wrote, "The world seems in such a mess now, I don't know what will happen. Too bad that maniac was allowed to go his way so long uncurbed. We may be, sooner or later, involved, G.o.d forbid."

Mrs. Dodd did not share her husband's deep love of the Round Hill farm. It was fine for summers and vacations, but not as a full-time residence. She hoped they could secure an apartment in Was.h.i.+ngton where she could live for a portion of each year, with or without him. In the meantime, she set out to make the farm more habitable. She bought curtains in gold silk, a new General Electric refrigerator, and a new stove. As spring advanced, she grew increasingly unhappy about the lack of progress both in finding the Was.h.i.+ngton pied-a-terre and in fixing up the farmhouse. She wrote to Martha, "So far I can't get anything done that I want in the house but about 8 or 10 men [are] working on stone fences, beautifying his fields, picking up rocks, hauling, etc. It makes me feel like 'throwing up the sponge' and quitting the whole d-business."

On May 23, 1938, in another letter to her daughter, she wrote, "Wish I did have a home-Was.h.i.+ngton instead of Chicago. It would be lovely."

Four days later, Mrs. Dodd was dead. On the morning of May 28, 1938, she failed to join Dodd for breakfast, as was her custom. They kept separate bedrooms. He went to check on her. "It was the greatest shock that ever came to me," he wrote. She died of heart failure in her bed, with no advance warning of trouble. "She was only sixty-two years old, and I was sixty-eight," Dodd wrote in his diary. "But there she lay, stone dead, and there was no help for it; and I was so surprised and sad I could hardly decide what to do."

Martha attributed her mother's death to "the strain and terror of life" in Berlin. On the day of the funeral Martha pinned roses to her mother's burial dress and wore matching roses in her own hair. Now, for only the second time, Martha saw tears in her father's eyes.