In the Garden of Beasts

historian John Wheeler-Bennett put it, “Not until they had riveted the fetters upon their own wrists did they realize who indeed was captive and who captor.”
    Dodd too viewed Papen with distaste, but for reasons stemming from treachery of a more concrete variety. Shortly before the United States had entered the past world war, Papen had been a military attaché assigned to the German embassy in Washington, where he had planned and abetted various acts of sabotage, including the dynamiting of rail lines. He had been arrested and thrown out of the country.
    Once all were seated, conversation ignited at various points along the table. Dodd and Mrs. Papen talked about the American university system, which Mrs. Papen praised for its excellence: during the Papens’ tenure in Washington, their son had attended Georgetown University. Putzi was his usual boisterous self. Even seated he towered above the guests around him. A strained silence occupied thecleft of linen, crystal, and china that separated Schultz and Papen. That a chill existed between them was obvious to all. “When he arrived he was as suave and polite as his reputation required,” Schultz wrote, “but all through the first four courses of the dinner the gentleman ignored [me] with remarkable consistency.” She noted: “This was not easy to do because it was a narrow table and I sat just about three feet opposite him.”
    She did all she could to draw Papen into conversation, only to be rebuffed. She had promised herself that she would “try to be the perfect hostess and steer clear of controversial subjects,” but the more Papen ignored her, the less inclined she was to do so. Her resolve, she wrote, “wore thin in the face of Papen’s obvious bad manners.”
    After the fourth course, when she could resist no longer, she looked at Papen and, deploying what she described as “the most naive sounding tones” she could muster, said, “Mr. Chancellor, there is something in the Memoirs of President von Hindenburg which I am sure you can elucidate for me.”
    Papen gave her his attention. His eyebrows were flared upward at the ends like feathers and imparted to his gaze the cold focus of a raptor.
    Schultz kept her expression cherubic and continued: “He complains that in the last war, in 1917, the German High Command never heard anything about the peace suggestions of President Wilson and that if he had known about them the dangerous submarine campaign would not have been launched. How was that possible?”
    Despite the quiet of her voice, suddenly everyone at the table within eavesdropping distance became silent and intent. Dodd watched Papen; State Secretary Bülow leaned in toward the conversation with what Schultz described as “a gleam of wicked amusement in his eyes.”
    Papen said brusquely, “There never was such a thing as a peace suggestion by President Wilson.”
    A very foolish thing to say, Schultz knew, given the presence of Ambassador Dodd, an expert on Wilson and the period in question.
    Quietly but firmly, his voice bearing the lingual mists of North Carolina—“every bit the Southern gentleman,” Schultz recalled—Dodd looked at Papen and said, “Oh yes there was.” And gave the precise date.
    Schultz was delighted. “Papen’s long horsey teeth grew longer,” she wrote. “He did not even try to emulate the quiet tone of Ambassador Dodd.”
    Instead, Papen “just snarled” his reply: “I never understood anyhow why America and Germany got to grips in that war.” He looked at the faces around him “triumphantly proud of the arrogance of his tone,” Schultz wrote.
    In the next instant Dodd won Shultz’s “undying admiration and gratitude.”
    MEANWHILE, AT ANOTHER TABLE , Bella Fromm experienced an anxiety unrelated to the conversations around her. She had come to the ball because it was always great fun and very useful for her column on Berlin’s diplomatic community, but this year she arrived suppressing a deep uneasiness. Though she was enjoying herself, at odd moments her mind returned to her best friend, Wera von Huhn, also a prominent columnist, whom most everyone knew by her nickname, “Poulette,” French for “young hen,” derived from her last name, Huhn, which in German means “chicken.”
    Ten days earlier, Fromm and Poulette had gone for a drive through the Grunewald, an eleven-thousand-acre forest preserve west of Berlin. Like the Tiergarten, it had become a haven for diplomats and others