 Book cover of In the Garden of Beasts | |
| Author | Erik Larson |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | History |
| Publisher | Crown Publishers |
Publication date | 2011 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 464 |
| ISBN | 0307408841 |
| LC Class | E748.D6 L37 2011 |
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin is a 2011 non-fiction book by Erik Larson. [1]
Larson recounts the career of the American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, particularly the years 1933 to 1937 when he and his family, including his daughter Martha, lived in Berlin. The Ambassador, who earned his Ph.D. in Leipzig 40 years earlier; and, at the time of his appointment, was head of the History Department at the University of Chicago initially hoped that Germany's new Nazi government would grow more moderate, including in its persecution of the Jews. [2] Martha, separated from her husband and in the process of divorce, became caught up in the glamor and excitement of Berlin's social scene and had a series of liaisons, most of them sexual, including among them Gestapo head Rudolf Diels and Soviet attaché and secret agent Boris Vinogradov. She defended the regime to her skeptical friends. Within months of their arrival, the family became aware of the evils of Nazi rule. Dodd periodically protested against it. President Roosevelt was pleased with Dodd's performance while most State Department officials, suspicious of his lack of background in their area of expertise, as well as his inability to finance embassy activities from his own wealth, found him undiplomatic and idiosyncratic.
The title of the work is a loose translation of Tiergarten, a zoo and park in the center of Berlin.
The other historical figures who appear in Larson's account include:
The Night of the Long Knives, or the Röhm purge, also called Operation Hummingbird, was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization, known colloquially as "Brownshirts". Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Röhm – the so-called Röhm Putsch.
Rudolf Diels was a German civil servant and head of the Gestapo in 1933–34. He obtained the rank of SS-Oberführer and was a protégé of Hermann Göring.
Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk was a German conservative politician, diplomat, Prussian nobleman and General Staff officer. He served as the chancellor of Germany in 1932, and then as the vice-chancellor under Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1934.
William Edward Dodd was an American historian, author and diplomat. A liberal Democrat, he served as the United States Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937 during the Nazi era. Initially a holder of the slightly antisemitic notions of his times, he went to Germany with instructions from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to do what he could to protest Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany "unofficially," while also attempting to follow official State Department instructions to maintain cordial official diplomatic relations. Convinced from first hand observation that the Nazis were an increasing threat, he resigned over his inability to mobilize the Roosevelt administration, particularly the State Department, to counter the Nazis prior to the start of World War II.
The Casablanca Conference or Anfa Conference was held at the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca, French Morocco, from January 14 to 24, 1943, to plan the Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War II. In attendance were United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill. Also attending were the sovereign of Morocco, Sultan Muhammad V, and representing the Free French forces, Generals Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud, but they played minor roles and were not part of the military planning. USSR general secretary Joseph Stalin declined to attend, citing the ongoing Battle of Stalingrad as requiring his presence in the Soviet Union.
Charles Richard Crane was a wealthy American businessman, heir to a large industrial fortune and connoisseur of Arab culture, a noted Arabist. His widespread business interests gave him entree into domestic and international political affairs where he enjoyed privileged access to many influential power brokers at the top levels of government. His special arena of interest was Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Edgar Ansel Mowrer was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and writer best known for his writings on international events.
André François-Poncet was a French politician and diplomat whose post as ambassador to Germany allowed him to witness first-hand the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and the Nazi regime's preparations for World War II.
Carl Fedor Eduard Herbert von Bose was head of the press division of the Vice Chancellery (Reichsvizekanzlei) in Germany under Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen. A conservative opponent of the Nazi regime, Bose was murdered during the Night of the Long Knives in the summer of 1934.
Sigrid Schultz was a notable American reporter and war correspondent in an era when women were a rarity in both print and radio journalism. Working for the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s, she was the first female foreign bureau chief of a major U.S. newspaper.
Martha Eccles Dodd was an American journalist and novelist. The daughter of William Edward Dodd, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first Ambassador to Germany, Dodd lived in Berlin from 1933–1937 and was a witness to the rise of the Third Reich. She became involved in left-wing politics after she witnessed first-hand the violence of the Nazi state. With her second husband, Alfred Stern Jr., she engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union from before World War II until the height of the Cold War.
The sexuality of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, has long been a matter of historical and scholarly debate, as well as speculation and rumour. There is evidence that he had relationships with a number of women during his lifetime, as well as evidence of his antipathy to homosexuality, and no evidence of homosexual encounters. His name has been linked to a number of possible female lovers, two of whom committed suicide. A third died of complications eight years after a suicide attempt, and a fourth also attempted suicide.
Karl Henry von Wiegand was a German born American journalist and war correspondent. The New York newspaper The Sun printed that Karl H Von Wikgand was the only American correspondent allowed to stay in Berlin during World War I.
Hugh Robert Wilson was a member of the United States Foreign Service who headed the United States mission to Switzerland for ten years beginning in 1927. He became Assistant Secretary of State in 1937 and served for several months in 1938 as Ambassador to Germany.
William Edward Dodd Jr. was an American political activist who ran unsuccessfully for Congress during the 1930s. While working for the Federal Communications Commission in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1940s, he became the target of an early congressional crusade against alleged communist sympathizers and subversives. A 1943 amendment to an emergency war appropriations bill deprived Dodd and two other federal officials of their salary and positions. Three years later, the United States Supreme Court declared the law's provision to be an unconstitutional bill of attainder.
Bella Fromm was a German journalist and author of Jewish heritage, who lived in exile in the United States during World War II. She is best known as the author of Blood and Banquets (1943), an account of her time as diplomatic correspondent for Berlin newspapers during the Weimar Republic, and of her experiences during the first five years of the Third Reich. Although this book was published as an authentic contemporary diary and is frequently cited as such, recent research suggests that Fromm wrote it in the U.S. after leaving Germany.
Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power is a 2012 book by the journalist Andrew Nagorski.
Rudolf Rahn was a German diplomat who served the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. As a member of the Party, and as Plenipotentiary to the Italian Social Republic in the closing stages of the Second World War, he was arrested and held at Nuremberg as a potential war criminal, but he was released in 1949 and deemed to be denazified in Class V (exonerated).
The following events occurred in May 1934:
The following events occurred in June 1934: