Posted on 12/31/2011 12:17:31 AM PST by nickcarraway
When University of Chicago professor William Dodd assumed the post of U.S. ambassador to Germany in 1933, he hoped for an undemanding position that would allow him spare time to write a book.
At the time, few in the United States or Europe considered then-Chancellor Adolf Hitler a serious threat, and few expected him to remain in power long. Dodd was no exception, says Erik Larson, author of In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin.
Having studied in Germany as a college student in the 1890s, Dodd began his term as ambassador with "a predisposition to like the Germans and to like Germany," Larson tells NPR's Jennifer Ludden.
He arrived in Berlin, Larson says, with "almost a deliberate desire — deliberate objectivity, let's say — to view things as objectively as possible, without prejudging."
But over the subsequent four years, the Dodd family grew uneasy as they watched Hitler consolidate his power and impose increasingly severe restrictions on Germany's Jewish population.
Matters came to head as Dodd clashed with the Nazi Party and the State Department and eventually resigned over the failure of officials back home to recognize the threat the Nazis posed.
I fail to see how a simple overview of a book about the pre-war conditions in Germany, needs to somehow draw parallels to current events - or re you refering to NPR in general?
I was wondering the same thing
Both John Bachelor and Milt Rosenberg (WGN Chicago ) reviewed the book. In Bachelor’s 1 segment review he for some reason concenstrated on Dodd’s daughter who hooked up with the head of the emerging GESTAPO and also shacked up with Stalin’s chief spy in Berlin. . But he did conclude with FDR’s contribution to foreign policy promoting American style democracy and idealism which since FDR’s time which has been followed by every president excepting the present one.
...essentially ignoring, at first, the building tension around him.
Well written, researched and moving....the inevitable conclusion of Hitler's absolute tyranny finally moves Dodd to warn our nation ....
...the toll is taken on him....he tries for neutral tones while meeting and dealing with Hitler and his henchmen-----to give them the benefit of the doubt (unbelievable)....
..and at the time, although many who lived there and watched the ratchet up of thuggery, horror and deaths....Dodd took a long time to come to the right conclusion.
His daughter was a whole other matter.......spoiled, strong willed and immodest.
I didn't care for Dodd, or his daughter....and his wife and son are not as strongly characterized....
..but these short few years of living with the Third Reich took their toll on Dodd in the end.
And the comparison by others on this thread of our 'heads in the sand' is spot on.
No, I fail to see a reason why, in a brief summary of a book, someone is compelled to make comparisions to current events. But then again, that is exactly what I said in my original post ...
The daughter became so uneasy, she became a Soviet agent.
See this bio of Marthe Dodd to get an idea of how “uneasy” the “family” became with the Nazis...including her affair with Nazi ace, Erst Udet and a top Gestapo officer...before she became a Soviet agent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Dodd
Martha and her brother accompanied their parents to Berlin when her father took up the post of U.S. Ambassador in 1933. She initially found the Nazi movement attractive. She later wrote that she “became temporarily an ardent defender of everything going on” and admired the “glowing and inspiring faith in Hitler, the good that was being done for the unemployed.”[5] She made a number of friends in high circles, and Ernst Hanfstaengl, her sometime lover and an aide to Adolf Hitler, tried to encourage a romantic relationship between Hitler and Dodd. Dodd found Hitler “excessively gentle and modest in his manners”, but no romance followed their meeting.[5] She had numerous relationships while in Berlin, including one with Ernst Udet, a senior Luftwaffe officer, and another with French diplomat Armand Berard (later France's ambassador to the United Nations.)[6][7] She also had brief affairs with Americans Thomas Wolfe and Carl Sandburg [8] Other lovers included future Nobel Laureate Max Delbrück and the first head of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels.[9]
Following the Night of the Long Knives, the mid-1934 Nazi purge of its paramilitary Sturmabteilung, Dodd changed her views on the Nazis. People in her social circle were begging the Americans for help and the Dodd family found its phones tapped and their servants enlisted as spies.[10] Her mother wrote that Dodd “got into a nervous state that almost bordered on the hysterical [and] had terrible nightmares”.[5] She then became active in left-wing politics. In March 1934, the Soviet NKVD Center ordered intelligence officer Boris Winogradov (under diplomatic cover Berlin as press attache), to recruit his lover Martha Dodd as an agent.[11] Vinogradov and Dodd began a romantic relationship that lasted for years, even after he left Berlin; in 1936 they asked Joseph Stalin asking for permission to marry.[1][12] Martha Dodd agreed to spy for the Soviet Union.
I read this book recently. In short, Dodd was a pacifist imbecile and his daughter Martha was a Nazi/commie-loving slut who’s knees didn’t spend a night together the moment she hit Berlin.
Not one whit of religion. I really mourn for this type of person.
No. Are you an idiot? Yes.
Dodd was certainly wrong about a lot of things. But it was more than that: he was in way, way over his head, dealing with things that had no parallels in his own earlier experience. You could say that any old school Jeffersonian was bound to be out of his depth in interwar Europe, but Dodd was more a tragic figure than anything else. His son also had a miserable fate.
I'll tell you what I'm not,
someone whose ideas are so incredibly outrageous that I have to cloak them in vagueness.
You exhibit paranoid personality disorder
and are rightly wary of being straight forward in your accusations.
Jack Chick was relatively sane when compared to your delusional beliefs.
I hope you get some help.
Here's some clues...
"No, its that catholism created islam and is using islam as a foil to regain power. muhammad married into a catholic family." link
"If you were really able to step outside your worldview you’d see that these second-rate enemies aren’t the problem. Who’s letting them in? Who’s letting them be a threat? You’re being played. If you’re smart you’ll figure it out. It’s the oldest religion in the world playing out their last act. Will be very bloody. That’s what they’re good at. As long as it isn’t them." link
"The muzzies are a plant. The ultimate red flag operation against the Western world. Why are they let into Western countries knowing their proclavities? To be a threat that needs to be dealt with. What religion comes out the hero? It’s not the Protestants" link
Thank you for the post.
He is a little deranged isn’t he.
I hope you and yours survive what’s coming. Civil society harbors you twits. Doubt your degree will come in handy in the future.
I’ll tell you what I’m not,
someone whose ideas are so incredibly outrageous that I have to cloak them in vagueness.
I almost forgot your Freudian slip. Look for the I, slick.
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