Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power (23 page)

Writing to his daughter Betty at the University of Chicago on June 30, 1933, the AP’s Louis Lochner mused about President Roosevelt’s decision to send historian William Dodd to represent the United States in Berlin. “
Roosevelt must have
a sense of humor to send this exponent of the most liberal Jeffersonian democracy . . . into this anti-democratic country,” he wrote. “He’ll fit into here about like a square peg into a round hole!”

When Dodd arrived in Germany in July, he began cautiously exploring his new surroundings, gauging the reception he received, and sizing up the political situation. Meeting Konstantin von Neurath, Dodd found the foreign minister “
most agreeable
.” Hans Luther, Germany’s ambassador to the United States, who was also in Berlin that July, visited his new American counterpart to discuss Hitler’s plans for economic recovery and tariff policy. As for the touchier issues of how the Nazi government would treat its immediate neighbors, Luther sought to be reassuring. “
He showed no
belligerent spirit toward France and did not mention the Polish corridor,” Dodd wrote in his diary.

Dodd was particularly interested in the views of his fellow academics, and what he heard left him with an uneasy feeling. Professor Otto Hoetzsch of the University of Berlin, a former member of the Reichstag and “
well-known internationalist
,” as Dodd wrote, expressed “his comparative satisfaction with the Hitler regime.” As the new ambassador observed, “So far nearly all university men seem to acquiesce in their own intimidation, but one sees that it is fear of unemployed status rather than a willing surrender.”

On July 28, Dodd described “
the saddest story
of Jewish persecution I have yet heard.” Acclaimed chemist Fritz Haber came to ask him whether he could emigrate to the United States. He had been fired from his post and denied a pension by the Nazis, all the while suffering from heart problems. Dodd told him that there were no places left in the immigration quota, and there were no special provisions for scientists of his stature. While Haber did have an alternative plan to try to go to Spain, Dodd reflected: “Such treatment can only bring evil to the government which practices such terrible cruelty.”

Like Consul General Messersmith and other American diplomats, Dodd found himself trying to intervene in the growing number of cases where Americans were beaten by Brownshirts, especially after they failed to give
Heil Hitler
salutes. Foreign Minister von Neurath assured him that he would do everything possible to prevent such incidents in the future, but he maintained that the Brownshirts “
are so uncontrollable
that I am afraid we cannot stop them.”

In a Columbus Day speech
to the American Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Adlon Hotel, Dodd decided to make some broader points about the nature of government and the perils of repressive actions. With representatives of the Foreign, Economics and Propaganda ministries present, he warned that new social experiments could easily end in disaster. “
It would be no sin
if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse,” he declared. As an alternative, he pointed to Thomas Jefferson’s belief that “to develop the ideal social order was to leave every man the utmost freedom of initiative and action and always to forbid any man or group of men to profiteer at the expense of others.”

Dodd was immensely gratified by the “
extraordinary applause
” his declaration produced, although he noted the high level of tension in the room. He also recognized that the authorities were showing signs of irritation with his pronouncements and his persistent inquiries about the assaults on Americans. “
It is evident
some dislike of me is arising here now in official circles,” he wrote. “I believe it is simply Nazi opposition.”

On October 17, the ambassador was able to present his case directly to Hitler. His first impression: “
He looks somewhat better
than the pictures that appear in papers.” When Dodd raised the issue again of attacks on Americans, Hitler sounded accommodating. As the ambassador wrote in his diary, “The Chancellor assured me personally that he would see that any future attack was punished to the limit and that publicity would be given to decrees warning everyone that foreigners were not to be expected to give the Hitler salute.”

But when Dodd asked Hitler about his recent announcement that Germany was withdrawing from the League of Nations, the chancellor
“
ranted
” about the Treaty of Versailles and the many alleged indignities a victimized Germany had faced at the hands of the victors of World War I. Dodd conceded that the French had been unjust, but he tried to strike a more philosophical note. War is always followed by injustice, he argued, citing the example of how southern states were treated after the U.S. Civil War. But Hitler wasn’t exactly the eager student of history: he remained conspicuously silent as the former professor tried to illustrate his point.

A few days earlier, Dodd had tried to take a similarly philosophical tack with Roosevelt in discussing the nature of what was happening in Germany. In an October 12 letter to the president, he wrote about the need for reserving judgment on that country’s new rulers, implying that there was still reason for hope. “
Fundamentally, I believe
a people has a right to govern itself and that other peoples must exercise patience even when crudities and injustices are done. Give men a chance to try their schemes.”

Dodd tried to draw Hitler out on what his schemes might be—specifically, whether a border incident with any of Germany’s neighbors could trigger a new war. “No, no,” Hitler protested. But when Dodd asked whether he would try to call a European conference if there were any flare-up in the Ruhr Valley, he replied: “That would be my purpose, but we might not be able to restrain the German people.” Dodd noted in his diary, “I saw that meant the violent Nazis whom he has trained to violence.” The ambassador’s conclusion: “My first impression was of his belligerence and self-confidence.”

Still, Dodd wasn’t convinced that Hitler had the full support of the German people and questioned how strong his grip on power really was. Two days before he met the chancellor, he had gone to the movies and observed that Hitler’s appearance in a newsreel only triggered tepid applause. “Hitler is surely not so powerful with the people as Mussolini, the Italian despot, has been,” he observed. But Dodd certainly understood the physical danger represented by his movement. On the last Sunday in October, he was walking along the Tiergartenstrasse at noon and spotted a procession of Storm Troopers approaching. “
I walked into the park
to avoid embarrassment,” he recorded in his diary. Understandably, he did
not want to become a cause célèbre by not giving the Hitler salute and possibly paying the price as other Americans already had.

Nonetheless, Dodd was intent on continuing to do what he could to make the case that Germany should put some brakes on repression, preserving a modicum of liberty and decency. Asked to speak at the German-American Church Forum on November 19, which was designated as Martin Luther Day, the ambassador lectured about Luther’s life “
just as I would have done
before an American audience,” he noted with visible pride. The audience was about two-thirds German and one-third American, and both groups applauded him enthusiastically. “It was clear to me that Germans wished me to say in public what they are not allowed to say in private, especially about religious and personal freedom,” he concluded.

Dodd had by no means shed all illusions about Hitler’s intentions.
In early December, Sir Eric Phipps
, his British counterpart in Berlin, dropped by his house to brief him on Hitler’s renewal of an earlier proposal to discuss a disarmament deal with France. Under its provisions, Germany would be able to maintain a 300,000-man army along with guns and “defensive airplanes.” Now, Hitler was adding that he would include a ten-year pledge not to go to war, and accept international supervision of German armaments and of its 2.5 million SA and SS troops. Dodd promised to cable a report summarizing this offer to Washington, and noted optimistically in his diary, “It looked to me like a real move towards disarmament . . .”

But if the ambassador continued to hold out hope that Hitler might prove to be more reasonable than his rhetoric and program indicated, he was hardly at ease in his company—and sensed that the German leader was equally ill at ease with him.
On January 1, 1934
, Berlin’s diplomatic corps gathered in the Presidential Palace to pay their respects to eighty-six-year-old President von Hindenburg. When Hitler showed up, he and Dodd exchanged New Year’s greetings. Then, seeking to find a seemingly neutral subject of conversation, the American told him that he had recently spent a few very pleasant days in Munich, where Hitler had spent part of the holidays. Dodd mentioned that he had met “a fine German historian”—a Professor Meyer who had studied with him in Leipzig. When Hitler indicated he had no idea who Meyer was, Dodd mentioned
some other academics at Munich University. But, once again, Hitler didn’t display any signs of recognition, “leaving the impression that he had never had contacts with the people I knew and respected.”

“
I was afraid
he thought I was trying to embarrass him a little,” Dodd wrote in his diary. “I was not. There was, however, no diplomatic or political subject we could mention these touchy times.” Hanfstaengl, who had made a point of cultivating his ties with both the ambassador and his daughter Martha, would later claim that there was another reason for the awkwardness between the chancellor and the American envoy. “
Der gute
Dodd, he can hardly speak German and made no sense at all,” Hitler told Putzi. In the eyes of
Der Führer
, Dodd’s earnestness left almost no impression. The German leader was only too happy to dismiss him as an inconsequential figure representing a country that was “
hopelessly weak
and could not interfere in any way with the realization of . . . [his] plans.”

Hanfstaengl shared his leader’s scorn for Dodd. “
He was a modest
little Southern history professor, who ran his embassy on a shoe-string and was probably trying to save money out of his pay,” he wrote in his postwar memoir. “At a time when it needed a robust millionaire to compete with the flamboyance of the Nazis, he teetered round self-effacingly as if he was still on a college campus.”

The notion that a flashier, wealthier envoy could have “competed” with the Nazis is, to put it mildly, a bizarre argument that says more about Hanfstaengl than it does about Dodd. Putzi still proudly strutted about town as Hitler’s propagandist, while Dodd was at least trying to push back against the Nazi tide—even if it was proving to be a futile effort.

In the first year of Hitler’s rule, there was at least one American visitor who had come to a quick judgment about what was happening and decided to issue a blunt warning to the Nazis. He was Sherwood Eddy, a Protestant missionary and YMCA national secretary who had traveled and taught in Asia, Russia and Germany, writing several books about his experiences and views. The Carl Schurz Society, named after a German-American politician and journalist who had served as a general in the Union Army during the Civil War and then become the first German-American
elected to the U.S. Senate, was hosting a reception for the annual American Seminar in July 1933, and Eddy was the leader of the visiting delegation. In fact, as he pointed out to his hosts, this was his twelfth visit to Germany.

The continuation of such meetings was supposed to send a signal of reassurance that the new regime was committed to peace. At the reception, the German speakers praised Hitler’s recent Reichstag speech on international relations. According to reporter Bella Fromm, who as usual was present at such social events, they delivered a double-edged message: “
Any possible concern
in foreign countries as to the aggressive intentions of Germany should disappear. After all, the
Führer
principle is also represented in America under Roosevelt.”

Eddy responded with a polite profession of his love for Germany and delicately edged into the subject of the new regime. “I noted the unity of enthusiasm and zeal in what you call the ‘New Germany.’ I have always approved of enthusiasm and zeal.” But then he quickly made his point. “Besides my love for Germany, I have another, even stronger love in my heart: the love for humanity.” And that love, he continued, made him into a firm proponent of “impartial justice; freedom of speech, press, and assembly; fundamental moral and economic principles.” In case anyone didn’t get the point, he added, “These freedoms have to be accepted by all nations who claim cultural integrity.”

Eddy mentioned that he had upheld the same principles in Russia and refused to remain silent about the blatant violations of them there. “As a friend of Germany, I state that you are acting against the principles of justice,” he continued, making the Nazis in the audience “gasp in consternation,” as Fromm noted. “There is no room for a twofold justice, one for ‘Aryans’ and ‘Nordics,’ and another one for Social Democrats, Communists, Liberals, Jews, and Pacifists. Don’t say it’s your affair. It concerns the whole world when we in the United States conduct a lynching . . . The world is also concerned when you commit similar injustice.”

As he warmed to his topic, Eddy addressed the Germans even more bluntly: “In your country, injustice is committed every day, every hour. What are you doing to Catholics, Communists, Social Democrats, Jews?
What atrocities are committed behind the wall of your horrible concentration camps? I see your papers.”

With that, Eddy held up that day’s edition of the Nazi daily
Völkischer Beobachter
with the headline “70,000 Jews Immigrated into Germany Within the Last 15 Years.” He called the statement not only wrong but “an instigation of youth, a kindling of race-hatred, a signal for cruel and wanton destruction.” Mentioning that he had heard the “Jew baiting” at meetings in Germany, he warned: “This must lead to a massacre . . . I am deeply worried about this country, which I love.”