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Book Recommendation: In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
This is one of those books that just gets better and better, until at the end I found myself gleaning the chapter notes for comments and anecdotes not included in the text. This is the story of William E. Dodd, a naive Chicago historian who became FDR's ambassador to Germany from 1933-1937, during Hitler's rise and consolidation of power. It's also the story of his feckless and promiscuous daughter Martha, who had lovers ranging from a Communist diplomat from the USSR to the head of the Gestapo. Dodd didn't fit the mold for diplomats of the time, preferring to live simply on his salary. He also was willing to speak out against the growing terror of the Nazi regime, rather than keep silent to observe the diplomatic niceties. This earned him the wrath of the foreign policy establishment, known as the Pretty Good Club. Dodd may have been naive, but he was able to discern that, no, indeed, we couldn't "do business" with Hitler, and spent the last years of his life speaking out to warn America of the danger of Nazi Germany, to the detriment of his health and scholarship. For those who are very familiar with WWII, but not the years that led up to it, this book will be eye opening. There are warnings here for our times, when too many people think that great evil cannot come on us, as it did in the 1930s. In 1934, New York Jews held a mock trial of Hitler, to the protests of Germany. Our government basically said, sorry, First Amendment and all that. One wonders what the government's reaction today would be to a mock trial of, say, Mohammad?
