In the Garden of Beasts

and saw his drive for power as a threat to Göring’s own control of Germany’s new air force, his pride and joy, which he was now quietly but energetically working to construct.
    What remained unclear was where exactly Hitler stood on the matter. In December 1933, Hitler made Röhm a member of his cabinet. On New Year’s Eve he sent Röhm a warm greeting, published in the press, in which he praised his longtime ally for building so effective a legion. “You must know that I am grateful to destiny, which has allowed me to call such a man as you my friend and brother-in-arms.”
    Soon afterward, however, Hitler ordered Rudolf Diels to compile a report on the outrages committed by the SA and on the homosexual practices of Röhm and his circle. Diels later claimed that Hitler also asked him to kill Röhm and certain other “traitors” but that he refused.
    President Hindenburg, the supposed last restraint against Hitler, seemed oblivious to the pressures building below. On January 30, 1934, Hindenburg issued a public statement congratulating Hitler on the “great progress” Germany had made in the year since hisascension to chancellor. “I am confident,” he wrote, “that in the coming year you and your fellow workers will successfully continue, and with God’s help complete, the great work of German reconstruction which you have so energetically begun, on the basis of the new happily attained national unity of the German people.”
    And so the year began, with an outward sense of better times ahead and, for the Dodds, a fresh round of parties and banquets. Formal invitations arrived on printed cards in envelopes, followed as always by seating diagrams. The Nazi leadership favored an awkward arrangement in which tables formed a large rectangular horseshoe with guests arrayed along the inside and outside of the configuration. Those seated along the inside flank spent the evening in an abyss of social discomfort, watched from behind by their fellow guests. One such invitation arrived for Dodd and his family from their neighbor Captain Röhm.
    Martha later would have cause to save a copy of the seating chart.Röhm, the
Hausherr
, or host, sat at the top of the horseshoe and had full view of everyone seated before him. Dodd sat on Röhm’s right, in a position of honor. Directly across the table from Röhm, in the most awkward seat of the horseshoe, was Heinrich Himmler, who loathed him.

CHAPTER 29
Sniping
    I n Washington, Undersecretary Phillips called Jay Pierrepont Moffat into his office “to read a whole series of letters from Ambassador Dodd,” as Moffat noted in his diary. Among these were recent letters in which Dodd repeated his complaints about the wealth of Foreign Service officers andthe number of Jews on his staff, and one that dared to suggest a foreign policy that America should pursue. The nation, Dodd had written, must discard its “righteous aloofness” because “another life and death struggle in Europe would bother us all—especially if it was paralleled by a similar conflict in the Far East (as I believe is the understanding in secret conclaves).” Dodd acknowledged Congress’s reluctance to become entangled abroad but added, “I do, however, think facts count; even if we hate them.”
    Although Phillips and Moffat were disenchanted with Dodd, they recognized that they had limited power over him because of his relationship with Roosevelt, which allowed Dodd to skirt the State Department and communicate directly with the president whenever he wished. Now, in Phillips’s office, they read Dodd’s letters and shook their heads. “As usual,” Moffat wrote in his diary, “he is dissatisfied with everything.” In one letter Dodd had described two of his embassy officers as “competent but unqualified”—prompting Moffat to snipe, “Whatever that may mean.”
    On Wednesday, January 3, Phillips, his tone remote and supercilious, wrote to Dodd to address some of Dodd’s complaints, one of which centered on the transfer of Phillips’s nephew, Orme Wilson, to Berlin. Wilson’s arrival the previous November had caused anupwelling of competitive angst within the embassy. Phillips now chided Dodd for not managing the situation better. “I hope it will not be difficult for you to discourage any further talk of an undesirable nature amongst the members of your staff.”
    As to Dodd’s repeated complaint about the work habits and qualifications of Foreign Service men, Phillips