In the Garden of Beasts

attending a Republican or Democratic convention. Moreover, he feared that Goebbels and his propaganda ministry would seize on the fact of his attendance and portray it as an endorsement of Nazi policies and behavior.
    On Tuesday, August 22, Dodd cabled the State Department to ask for advice. “I received a non-committal reply,” he wrote in his diary. The department promised to support whatever decision he made. “I at once made up my mind not to go, even if all the other ambassadors went.” The following Saturday he notified the German foreign office that he would not be attending. “I declined it on the grounds of pressure of work, though the main reason was my disapproval of a government invitation to a Party convention,” he wrote. “I was also sure the behavior of the dominant group would be embarrassing.”
    An idea occurred to Dodd: if he could persuade his fellow ambassadors from Britain, Spain, and France also to rebuff the invitation, their mutual action would send a potent yet suitably indirect message of unity and disapproval.
    Dodd first met with the Spanish ambassador, a session that Dodd described as “very pleasantly unconventional” because the Spaniardlikewise had not yet been accredited. Even so, both approached the issue with caution. “I implied that I would not go,” Dodd wrote. He provided the Spanish ambassador with a couple of historical precedents for snubbing such an invitation. The Spanish ambassador agreed that the rally was a party affair and not a state event but did not reveal what he planned to do.
    Dodd learned, however, that he did at last send his regrets, as did the ambassadors from France and Britain, each citing an inescapable commitment of one kind or another.
    Officially the State Department endorsed Dodd’s demurral; unofficially, his decision rankled a number of senior officers, including Undersecretary Phillips and Western European affairs chief Jay Pierrepont Moffat. They viewed Dodd’s decision as needlessly provocative, further proof that his appointment as ambassador had been a mistake. Forces opposed to Dodd began to coalesce.

CHAPTER 12
Brutus
    I n late August, President Hindenburg at last returned to Berlin from his convalescence at his country estate. And so, on Wednesday, August 30, 1933, Dodd put on a formal grasshopper cutaway and top hat and drove to the presidential palace to present his credentials.
    The president was tall and broad, with a huge gray-white mustache that curled into two feathery wings. The collar of his uniform was high and stiff, his tunic riveted with medals, several of which were gleaming starbursts the size of Christmas-tree ornaments. Overall, he conveyed a sense of strength and virility that belied his eighty-five years. Hitler was absent, as were Goebbels and Göring, all presumably engaged in preparing for the party rally to begin two days later.
    Dodd read a brief statement that emphasized his sympathy for the people of Germany and the nation’s history and culture. He omitted any reference to the government and in so doing hoped to telegraph that he had no such sympathy for the Hitler regime. For the next fifteen minutes he and the Old Gentleman sat together on the “preferred couch” and conversed on an array of topics, ranging from Dodd’s university experience in Leipzig to the dangers of economic nationalism. Hindenburg, Dodd noted later in his diary, “stressed the subject of international relations so pointedly that I thought he meant indirect criticism of the Nazi extremists.” Dodd introduced his key embassy officers, and then all marched from the building to find soldiers of the regular army, the Reichswehr, lining both sides of the street.
    This time Dodd did not walk home. As the embassy cars drove off,the soldiers stood at attention. “It was all over,” Dodd wrote, “and I was at last a duly accepted representative of the United States in Berlin.” Two days later, he found himself confronting his first official crisis.
    ON THE MORNING of September 1, 1933, a Friday, H. V. Kaltenborn, the American radio commentator, telephoned Consul General Messersmith to express regret that he could not stop by for one more visit, as he and his family had finished their European tour and were preparing to head back home. The train to their ship was scheduled to depart at midnight.
    He told Messersmith that he still had seen nothing to verify the consul’s criticisms of Germany and accused him of “really doing