Podcast Challenge 9

In the Garden of the Beasts by Erik Larson was about the American ambassador to Germany from 1933-1937, William Dodd, and his family's time in Germany at the rise of Hitler. Hitler was chancellor when they got there, and things were already pretty bad for Jews, but Americans were pretty disinclined to believe it. Dodd got a sense that it was worse than most Americans believed pretty quickly, but his children experienced a different side of Germany and it took them a while to come around.

I found In the Garden of the Beasts to be an interesting look at pre-war Germany. Granted, I probably would've found any viewpoint interesting. I wasn't really familiar with the events in Germany leading up to invading Poland. To see it from an American ambassador's viewpoint, as well as his adult children, made for a good read. America had many issues with Germany, but primarily wanted Germany to repay debts and wanted to avoid another war. Dodd, however, realized early on that Hitler wasn't just going to go away (as many believed), and thought that he needed to show American values, which meant skipping diplomatic events when attendance would imply approval of Hitler's regime. He was a controversial figure in the state department for his lifestyle (having not been independently wealthy when appointed ambassador, Dodd was very frugal, and felt, during the depression, people representing American overseas should show some austerity) and his all-but-completely-transparent attacks on the Nazi regime when many Americans favored isolationism and keeping Germany happy to promote peace.

His daughter, Martha, was a quite different character. Having been newly divorced when arriving in Germany, she immediately took advantage of the chance to meet new people and start new relationships. She was romantically in linked to German officials, Soviet diplomats, and a whole assortment of intellectuals in Berlin at the time. She entered a particularly charged relationship with a member of the Soviet delegation and, after finally seeing that Nazi brutalities weren't just isolated incidents, started having communist leanings herself.