In the Garden of the Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
2011; United States Army War College; Volume: 41; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0031-1723
Autores Tópico(s)German History and Society
ResumoIn the Garden of the Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson New York: Crown, 2011 448 pages $26.00 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Erik Larson, an experienced and highly successful writer, has done it again: In the Garden of the Beasts is near the top of The New York Times bestseller list. Briskly told in short chapters, it focuses on Ambassador William E. Dodd and his twenty-four-year-old daughter Martha in Berlin. Rich in detail reflecting extensive research, it begins with their arrival in July 1933 and ends on 30 June 1934, the Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler purged his party of insufficiently obedient elements by having Ernst Roehm and other old SA (Sturmabteilung, the brown-shirted Nazi paramilitary army) Kameraden murdered. While at it, he also eliminated other political enemies, among them two army generals. Appalled at the barbarism, Dodd never again spoke to Hitler and had as little contact with top Nazis as possible. He had earlier refused to attend the Party Days in Nuremberg that celebrated Hitler and the Nazis, an admirable stance. But how useful is an ambassador who refuses to speak to the government to which he is accredited? The Dodd family--four members, but wife Mattie and adult son Bill are minor figures in the book--remained in Berlin for four and a half years. Larson explains: It is their first year that is the subject of the story to follow, for it coincided with Hitler's ascent from chancellor to absolute tyrant. What was it like to dine, dance, and joke with Goebbels and Goering? Larson attempted to recreate what it was like to have witnessed that year firsthand, and he has succeeded. Dodd was not the first choice of newly inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt's to be Ambassador to Germany. In fact, Larson writes, No one wanted the job. When approached by Roosevelt to take up the post, Dodd asked for time to think about it. He was reluctant to accept, dubious about his own effectiveness, and, at best, willing to give Hitler and his gang benefit of the doubt. These facts had to be considered: he was not rich; he had little political influence; he was associated with deceased President Woodrow Wilson's internationalism, anathema to isolationists; he was professor of history at the University of Chicago and designated as President of the American Historical Association; his priority was completing another volume of his Old South, a history, and was in his middle sixties; he was a devoted family man concerned with the futures of his adult children. On the other hand, he had access to the President, lunched privately with him, and directly exchanged letters; he had earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation on Jefferson at Leipzig University in 1900, knew Germany, and spoke the language; and the president held open the possibility of returning in a year. …
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