Don’t be confused, because RightBooks.in isn’t planning for a zoo trip. For Erik Larson, the research in which he delves and delights for each project more than rubs off in readership appeal and enticing and informative enjoyment with the absorbing yet unsettling “In The Garden of Beasts” Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. However, it’s the account of Berlin, starting in 1933, from the increasingly discerning eyes of two Americans, President Roosevelt's ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, an academic historian who hoped Nazism would somehow lose steam, and Dodd's daughter Martha, a 24-year-old free spirit who initially appreciated Nazism's vitality and the social life and love affair after love affair she soon garnered. At first this new world seemed full of novelty and new horizons for both of them, but slowly — until the calamitous weekend that changed them forever – disenchantment and dark clouds of intrigue and dread fell over the whole Dodd family (which included Dodd’s wife Mattie, and a son, Bill). The "Jewish problem" that Hitler's Germany was having was largely felt by State to be Hitler's problem and his alone; the State Department's chief concern was getting Dodd, their new Ambassador to Berlin, to keep the Hitler regime appeased until Germany's reparations to U.S. banks were paid off. Nothing else seemed to matter to them. Certainly reports from Dodd, Messersmith, and others about state-sanctioned terror and human-rights abuses in 1933-34 Germany were largely dismissed by the Secretary of State and others as naive or exaggerated. Time and again Dodd was reminded to keep his mouth shut about his criticisms of the Nazis and just get the money the banks wanted. Dodd is sometimes exasperatingly naive about what was going on in Germany, but at least he caught on. And he spoke out about the Nazis on their own turf, which infuriated them no end; and his Berlin residence became a retreat to many Germans who felt comfortable speaking candidly there. His daughter Martha couldn't keep her knickers on, but so what? She was young, beautiful, and intelligent. That she had affairs with Carl Sandberg, Thomas Wolfe, the head of the German Gestapo, and the Russian ambassador within just a few years of each other is quite an achievement. Best of all, everything's documented. Rudolf Diels, the head of the Gestapo, kept a journal. So did Dodd, his daughter Martha, and several of the fools at the State Department. Everyone wrote letters and kept the ones they received. Click www.rightbooks.in/product_details.asp?pid=9780857520432&In%20The%20Garden%20of%20Beasts to experience this piece of History.
1 comment:
His brief sojourn pretty much sucked the life from this well-meaning, but ill-equipped, sincere representative of the government. His prescient remarks, often laughed at, proved to have been correct, and if heeded, might have altered the turn of events and prevented the genocide that occurred as Hitler attempted to rule the world.
From the prologue, the author had me. I had assumed the history of Hitler's Nazi Germany might be a bit dry, but not so, this book is liquid, fluid, hot lava.igniting my thoughts and my interest. I think the writing style and organization will be less important, in the end, than the information and message delivered, however, both are superb.
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