Martha Dodd's Political Odyssey

The staff at Eichborn Verlag  was kind enough to send me a copy of literary historian Oliver Lubrich's latest project.  Lubrich's last work was a collection of pieces by foreign writers about their experiences and impressions in Nazi Germany.  Some of the best sections of that book were by Martha Dodd, the young daughter of William E. Dodd, the American ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937.  Now Eichborn has released a German edition of Martha Dodd's 1939 bestseller, Through Embassy Eyes: Meine Jahre in Deutschland 1933 bis 1937. Nice to meet you, Mr. Hitler!  English readers may still be able to find Martha Dodd's book in antiquarian bookstores or on the dusty shelves of research libraries. 

Dodd chronicles her four tumultuous years in Berlin and at the same time documents her own political awakening.  In the process we meet all of the leading Nazi luminaries (and their wives) , the diplomatic corps,  members of the nobility, the press corps. and even the last remaining writer of note (according to Dodd) in Germany: Hans Fallada.  Martha  Dodd was a free spirit  who was attracted to - and dated - Nazis as well as an attache with the Soviet embassy. 

She has very vivid portraits of Rudolf Diels, who organized the Gestapo, and Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, Hitler's press secretary who tried to fix Martha up with Der Führer.

Dodd arrives in Germany in 1933 with a somewhat naive sympathy for Hitler and the National Socialist "experiment".  The reality of the situation begins to sink in when she takes a road trip with her brother and encounters a crowd in Nuernberg brutally beating a girl, after shavi ng her head, for "consorting with Jews".  After that episode, a sense of dread pervades the book that climaxes with Dodd's gripping account of the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler's purge of the SA in June 1934.  By the end of Meine Jahre in Deutschland Dodd is a fervent anti-fascist  who sees it as her duty to warn America about the danger of National Socialist Germany.

As Oliver Lubrich points out in his useful Nachwort , Dodd employs several different genres in her book, such as travelogue, portraits, and political tract.  In probably the weakest section of the book, Dodd describes her trip to Soviet Russia. In contrast to her sharp and critical observations about Germany, Dodd paints Russia in idealized - even utopian - colors.  Understandable, when one considers that her audience was American readers who were constantly bombarded with news reports that depicted the Soviet Union as far worse that Nazi Germany.

There is not much new historical information in Meine Jahre in Deutschland , but the insightful close-ups and the spin on events by a young American woman who had access to many of the most important figures of the time is always interesting.  What is rather astonishing to me is that Dodd sees very clearly already in 1937 that Hitler was heading towards a global "total war" that would engulf Germany and ultimately destroy it.  Also, Martha Dodd clearly predicts the Endlösung - the Final Solution - against the Jews before Kristallnacht even occurred.  So if a young American woman with a shaky command of German could see this, why couldn't others?

It is almost with nostalgia that we read Martha Dodd's description of leading international journalists who were living and reporting from Berlin.  These included journalists like William Shirer who had a deep knowledge of Europe and Germany - a stark contrast to the ridiculous hacks who dominate our news media today.  At the opposite end of the spectrum from Shirer was Frederick Birchall of the New York Times. Here is how Martha Dodd describes him:

Er ist ein kleiner, schmächtiger Engländer, trägt einen weissen Spitzbart, spricht kein Wort Deutsch, obwohl er schn lange hier lebt, und ist imstande, ein so rosiges Bild Deutschlands zu zeichnen wie nur irgendwer! Er stand dem Nazismus kritisch gegenüber, bis er der Massenhysterie bei einem Parteitag zum Opfer fiel.  Seitdem bringt er es fertig, eine durchweg positive Berichterstattung über die Nazipolitik beizubehalten, obwohl siene Kollegen ihm zusetzen.

So some things never change. Seventy years later the Times prepared the way for the invasion of Iraq with false stories of WMDs. 

It is also with nostalgia that we read about the diplomatic corps of that period.  Woven throughout Dodd's book are moving and sensitive tributes to her mother and father, both of whom she admired greatly. Her father accepted the ambassadorship reluctantly at the urging of his friend President Roosevelt.  William Dodd had a deep knowledge and understanding of German history and the German language: he earned a doctorate at German universities.  And he was absolutely committed to the democratic ideals of the United States.  Here again we have a stark contrast with those chosen as ambassadors today soley because of their wealth and their commitment to the politics of greed.  Ambassador Dodd and his wife both died shortly after completing their time in Berlin; Martha Dodd attributes this to the stress they endured by standing up to Hitler (and his allies in the US) while serving the US Dept. of State. 

Publication of Meine Jahre in Deutschland should revive interest in Martha Dodd, whose own life is scarcely less fascinating than the events she describes in her book.  As Oliver Lubrich briefly sketches in his Nachwort, Dodd later got caught up in the anti-communist hysteria of Joseph McCarthy and his minions and was force to flee the US with her husband.  We know that Through Embassy Eyes was a best-seller in the US and UK when it was published in 1930.  It would be interesting to study the reception of the book and whether it had any impact on the isolationist tendencies of the US at the time.  My hope is that an American publisher will take note of the revived interest in Martha Dodd and put out a new edition of Through Embassy Eyes.