In the Garden of Beasts

Mrs. Roosevelt are conducting anti-German propaganda under the influence of Jewish friends and advisers.” Messersmith reported how this had caused him to bristle. “I told them that they must not think that because there is an anti-Semitic movement in Germany, well-thinking and well-meaning people in the United States were going to give up associating with Jews. I said that the arrogance of some of the party leaders here was their greatest defect, and the feeling that they hadthat they could impose their views on the rest of the world, was one of their greatest weaknesses.”
    He cited such thinking as an example of the “extraordinary mentality” that prevailed in Germany. “It will be hard for you to believe that such notions actually exist among worthwhile people in the German Government,” he told Phillips, “but that they do was made clear to me and I took the opportunity in no uncertain language to make clear how wrong they were and how much such arrogance injured them.”
    Given Phillips’s own dislike of Jews, it is tantalizing to imagine what he really thought of Messersmith’s observations, but on this the historical record is silent.
    What is known, however, is that among the population of Americans who expressed anti-Semitic leanings, a common jibe described the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt as the “Rosenberg administration.”
    DODD’S WILLINGNESS TO BELIEVE that Messersmith was Jewish had little do with his own rudimental anti-Semitism but seemed rather to be a symptom of deeper misgivings that he had begun to harbor with regard to the consul general. Increasingly he wondered whether Messersmith was wholly on his side.
    He never questioned Messersmith’s competence or his courage in speaking out when American citizens and interests were harmed, and he acknowledged that Messersmith “has many sources of information which I do not have.” But in two letters to Undersecretary Phillips, composed two days apart, Dodd suggested that Messersmith had outstayed his assignment in Berlin. “I must add that he has been here three or four years in the midst of very exciting and troublous times,” Dodd wrote in one of the letters, “and I think he has developed a sensitiveness, and perhaps even an ambition, which tend to make him restless and discontented. This may be too strong, but I think not.”
    Dodd gave little evidence for his appraisal. He isolated only one flaw with any clarity, and that was Messersmith’s penchant for writing dispatches of great length on all things, grave or mundane. Doddtold Phillips that the size of Messersmith’s dispatches could be halved “without the slightest injury” and that the man needed to be more judicious in his choice of subject. “Hitler could not have left his hat in a flying machine without an account of it.”
    The reports, however, were for Dodd merely a target of convenience, a proxy for sources of displeasure that were harder for him to isolate. By mid-November, his dissatisfaction with Messersmith had begun to veer toward distrust. He sensed that Messersmith coveted his own job, and he saw his unceasing production of reports as a manifestation of his ambitions. “It occurs to me,” Dodd told Phillips, “that he feels that a promotion is due and I think that his services demand it; but I am not sure but that the most useful period of his work here has passed. You know as well as I do that circumstances and conditions and sometimes disappointments make it wise to transfer even the ablest of Government officials.” He urged Phillips to discuss the matter with consular-service chief Wilbur Carr “and see whether some such thing can not be done.”
    He closed, “I need hardly say that I hope all this will be kept entirely confidential.”
    That Dodd imagined Phillips would retain this confidence suggests he was unaware that Phillips and Messersmith maintained a regular and frequent exchange of correspondence outside the stream of official reportage. When Phillips replied to Dodd in late November, he added his usual dash of irony, the tone light and agreeable to an extent that suggested he was merely humoring Dodd, responsive yet at the same time dismissive. “The letters and dispatches of your Consul General are full of interest, but should be cut in half—as you say. More strength to your elbow! I look to you to spread this much needed reform.”
    ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, at about noon, Dodd was walking along Tiergartenstrasse, on his way