In the Garden of Beasts

guards were fully indoctrinated, as one of his trainees, Rudolf Höss, would later attest. Höss became a guard at Dachau in 1934 and recalled how Eicke repeatedly drummed home the same message. “Any pity whatsoever for ‘enemies of the State’ was unworthy of an SS-man. There was no place in the ranks of the SS for men with soft hearts and any such would do well to retire quickly to a monastery. He could only use hard, determined men who ruthlessly obeyed every order.” An adept pupil, Höss went on to become commandant at Auschwitz.
    AT FIRST GLANCE , persecution of Jews seemed also to have eased. “Outwardly Berlin presented during my recent stay there a normal appearance,” wrote David J. Schweitzer, a senior official with the American Joint Distribution Committee, nicknamed the Joint, a Jewish relief organization. “The air is not charged, general courtesy prevails.” Jews who had fled during the previous year now actually had begun returning, he wrote.Some ten thousand Jews who had left in early 1933 had returned by the start of 1934, though outbound emigration—four thousand Jews in 1934—continued as well. “So much is this the actual situation or so well masked is it that I heard an American, one who has just spent a week passing on to aneighboring country, remark that he could not see that anything has actually happened that so stirred the outside world.”
    But Schweitzer understood this was in large part an illusion. Overt violence against Jews did appear to have receded, but a more subtle oppression had settled in its place. “What our friend had failed to see from outward appearances is the tragedy that is befalling daily the job holders who are gradually losing their positions,” Schweitzer wrote. He gave the example of Berlin’s department stores, typically owned and staffed by Jews. “While on the one hand one can observe a Jewish department store crowded as usual with non-Jews and Jews alike, one can observe in the very next department store the total absence of a single Jewish employee.” Likewise the situation varied from community to community. One town might banish Jews, while in the next town over Jews and non-Jews continued “to live side by side with their neighbors and pursue their occupations as best they can unmolested.”
    Likewise Schweitzer detected divergent outlooks among Berlin’s Jewish leaders. “The one tendency is that there is nothing to hope for, that things are bound to get worse,” he wrote. “The other tendency, however, is quite the opposite but just as definite, namely a tendency resulting from thinking in terms of March 1934 instead of March 1933, reconciling themselves to the present situation, accepting the status of the inevitable, adjusting themselves to move in their own restricted circles and hoping that just as things have changed from March 1933 to March 1934 they will continue to improve in a favorable manner.”
    HITLER’S CONTINUED PROTESTATIONS of peace constituted the most blatant official deception. Anyone who made an effort to travel the countryside outside Berlin knew it at once. Raymond Geist, acting consul general, routinely made such journeys, often on a bicycle. “Before the end of 1933, during my frequent excursions, I discovered outside of Berlin on nearly every road leaving from the city new large military establishments, including training fields, airports, barracks, proving grounds, anti-aircraft stations and the like.”
    Even the newly arrived Jack White recognized the true realityof what was occurring. “Any one motoring out in the country of a Sunday can see brown shirts drilling in the woods,” he told his brother-in-law, Moffat.
    White was astonished to learn that the young daughter of a friend was required to spend every Wednesday afternoon practicing the art of throwing hand grenades.
    THE SUPERFICIAL NORMALCY of Germany also masked the intensifying conflict between Hitler and Röhm. Dodd and others who had spent time in Germany knew full well that Hitler was intent on increasing the size of the regular army, the Reichswehr, despite the explicit prohibitions of the Treaty of Versailles, and that Captain Röhm of the SA wanted any increase to include the incorporation of entire SA units, part of his campaign to gain control of the nation’s military. Defense Minister Blomberg and the army’s top generals loathed Röhm and disdained his uncouth legions of brown-shirted Storm Troopers. Göring hated Röhm as well