In the Garden of Beasts

quietly that in America “nobody could suppress a private or public meeting,” a point the Germans seemed utterly unable to grasp. Dodd also hinted that Germany had brought these public relations troubles upon itself. “I reminded the Minister that many things still occur here shocking to foreign public opinion.”
    After the meeting, Dodd cabled Secretary Hull and told him the mock trial had made “an extraordinary impression” on the German government. Dodd ordered his staff to translate Neurath’s aide-mémoire and only then sent it to Hull, by mail.
    On the morning before the mock trial, German ambassador Luther tried again to stop it. This time he called on Undersecretary William Phillips, who also told him nothing could be done. Luther demanded that the department announce immediately “that nothing which was to be said at the meeting would represent the views of the Government.”
    Here too Phillips demurred. Not enough time remained to prepare such a statement, he explained; he added that it would be inappropriate for the secretary of state to attempt to anticipate what the speakers would or would not say at the trial.
    Luther made one last try and asked that the State Department at least issue such a disavowal on the morning after the trial.
    Phillips said he could not commit the department but would “take the matter under consideration.”
    The trial took place as planned, guarded by 320 uniformed New York City policemen. Inside Madison Square Garden, forty plain-clothes detectives circulated among the twenty thousand people in attendance. The twenty “witnesses” who testified during the trial included Rabbi Stephen Wise, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, and a former secretary of state, Bainbridge Colby, who delivered the opening remarks. The trial found Hitler guilty: “We declare that the Hitler government is compelling the German people to turn back from civilization to an antiquated and barbarous despotism which menaces the progress of mankind toward peace and freedom, and is a present threat against civilized life throughout the world.”
    At a press conference the next day Phillips stated that he had “no comment other than to re-emphasize the private nature of the gathering and that no member of the Administration was present.”
    Phillips and fellow officials turned their attention to other matters. As would soon become apparent, however, Germany was not yet willing to let the matter drop.
    THE SECOND DISTASTEFUL TASK that Dodd had to complete before his departure was to meet with Hitler. He had received an order from Secretary Hull directing him to convey to the chancellor America’s dismay at a burst of Nazi propaganda recently unleashed within the United States. Putzi Hanfstaengl arranged the meeting, which was to be private and secret—just Hitler and Dodd—and so, on Wednesday, March 7, shortly before one o’clock in the afternoon, Dodd once again found himself in the Reich chancellery making his way to Hitler’s office past the usual cadre of guards clicking and saluting.
    First Dodd asked Hitler whether he had a personal message for Roosevelt that Dodd might deliver in person when he met with the president in Washington.
    Hitler paused. He looked at Dodd a moment.
    “I am very much obliged to you,” he said, “but this takes me bysurprise and I wish you would give me time to think the subject over and let me talk with you again.”
    Dodd and Hitler conversed a few moments about innocuous things before Dodd turned to the matter at hand—“the unfortunate propaganda which has been made in the United States,” as Dodd recounted in a memorandum he composed after the meeting.
    Hitler “pretended astonishment,” Dodd wrote, and then asked for details.
    Within the last ten days, Dodd told him, a Nazi pamphlet had begun circulating in the United States that contained what Dodd described as “an appeal to Germans in other countries to think themselves always as Germans and owing moral, if not political, allegiance to the fatherland.” Dodd likened it to similar propaganda distributed in the United States in 1913, well before America entered the past war.
    Hitler flared.
“Ach,”
he snapped, “that is all Jewish lies; if I find out who does that, I will put him out of the country at once.”
    With this the conversation veered into a broader, more venomous discussion of the “Jewish problem.” Hitler condemned all Jews and blamed them for whatever bad feeling had arisen in