In the Garden of Beasts

Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts, Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin is NOT a novel.  It is the true story of the American Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937. But truth can be stranger than fiction, and perhaps nothing was stranger than Germany in the 1930's.

William Dodd was the chairman of the history department at the University of Chicago, but his true love was writing.  He had political connections and believed that a diplomatic post in some quiet little country would allow him to write to his heart's content. But Germany was the post that none of the usual candidates wanted, so it was offered to Dodd. Hesitant but honored, Dodd agreed, soon realizing that he would have little time to call his own.

When Dodd, his wife and grown son and daughter arrived in Germany on July 13, 1933, they had every intention of remaining carefully neutral. In fact, Berlin at this time was beautiful and exciting, effectively lulling visitors into convenient denials and rationalizations of the horror hidden behind the rising prosperity. Dodd and his family found the reports of violence and persecution of Jews and many others hard to believe, but their first hand experiences would soon convince them.  The problem would now be to convince the isolation-loving American politicians that Germany was going to be a BIG problem for all.

Stepping off the boat in Hamburg at the start of Dodd's four year post could be compared to Alice falling down the rabbit hole.  Hitler was twisting logic and reason to fit his own sick agenda, in the process convincing millions of otherwise rational Germans that HE was the answer to all of their problems. Common sense had taken an extended vacation, and people all over the world were hiding their heads in the sand. Reading this book 80 years after the events is like watching a train wreck. You know how it is going to end, you know you can't stop it, but you can't turn away.  Through William Dodd, Erik Larson has given us the engineer's view of the tragedy.