Nice days were still nice.

The sun shines, wrote Christopher Isherwood in his Berlin

Stories, and Hitler is the master of this city. The sun shines, and dozens of my
friends . . . are in prison, possibly dead. The prevailing normalcy was seductive. I catch
sight of my face in the mirror of a shop, and am shocked to see that I am smiling,
Isherwood wrote. You cant help smiling in such beautiful weather. The trams moved as
usual, as did the pedestrians passing on the street; everything around him had an air of
curious familiarity, of striking resemblance to something one remembers as normal and
pleasant in the past---like a very good photograph. (56)
How a country as modern and democratic as Germany in the 1930s underwent such a
shocking fundamental change as it did under Adolf Hitler and the Nazis is still not
understood fully today. Looking back with our superior hindsight, we are able to see just
how evil the Nazi ideology was. We can see that Hitler was not a product of temporary
unrest, destined to collapse, but rather a cold, calculating monster, capable of addling
the minds of an entire nation. How could the Nazis, being so openly anti-semitic to the
point of having a song called When Jewish Blood Spurts from My Knife, have not
been condemned by the German people and the rest of the world?
This is ultimately a question of evil and why people tolerate evil. It is a question of how
evil can disguise itself until it is too late. It is an important concept to understand
because a civilized, modern country was somehow twisted by evil into starting World
War II and committing horrible atrocities, the foremost being the holocaust.
In the Garden of the Beasts, by Erik Larson, sheds light as to just what happened to
Germany in the 1930s. It tells how Germany underwent a slow but sure transformation
from the perspective of William Dodd, who was the U.S. ambassador to Germany
during the Nazi revolution, and his family. This American family had moved from
Chicago to Berlin in the midst of Germanys transformation, so they provide an
extremely unique perspective on the events that occurred during Hitlers early days in
power.
From the beginning, no one seemed to see Germany turning into what it became.
President Roosevelt needed an ambassador to Germany, but it shows Roosevelt did
not take the position seriously based on whom he chose. William Dodd was merely a
history professor at the University of Chicago whose real passion was writing his multivolume book series: The Rise and Fall of the Old South. Seeking more time to write,
Dodd asked a friend who had a position in Roosevelt's cabinet to suggest him for a
diplomatic position in a quiet post such as Belgium or the Netherlands. Roosevelt,
struggling to find anyone to accept the German ambassadorship, heard of Dodd and
offered him the position, despite Dodds lack of experience in diplomacy. The only
positive was that Dodd spoke fluent German, and had studied abroad in Leibniz while in
college. Larsons statement describes very well Roosevelts reasoning:
Berlin, moreover, was not yet the supercharged outpost it would
become within the year. There existed at this time a widespread
perception that Hitlers government could not possibly endure.
Germany's military power was limited---its army, the Reichswehr,

had only one hundred thousand men, no match for the military
forces of neighboring France, let alone the combined might of
France, England, Poland, and the Soviet Union. And Hitler himself
had begun to seem like a more temperate actor than might have
been predicted given the violence that had swept Germany the
previous year. (19)
Despite the book burnings, and violent attacks on Jews, socialists, and communists, a
simple claim that Hitler sought peace and disarmament across the world convinced
people there was no real danger in the Nazis. That is why Dodds primary task as
ambassador was to ensure Germany would pay back the $1.2 billion it owed to
Americans.
As Dodd and his family prepared to leave, they met with many important people, from
prominent Jews such as Rabbi Wise, who saw the danger of the Nazis anti-semetism,
to a Roosevelt advisor named Edward House, who said, The Jews should not be
allowed to dominate economic or intellectual life in Berlin as they have for a long time.
(38) This sentiment was surprisingly common in America. Dodd was even told by a
wealthy American philanthropist to Let Hitler have his way.
So, William Dodd and his family headed to Germany, leaving behind an America already
vastly sympathetic to Germany. It soon became even more clear that Roosevelt may
have picked the wrong person. Dodd was determined to live frugally on a small salary.
He even went as far as to bring the old family Chevy over from America to drive. This
was a time when the Nazis were living lavishly, driving expensive cars, living in
mansions, and attending outrageous parties. The Nazis respected wealth and power,
which Dodd wanted no part in.
Up to this point, we have seen the way America did not see Germanys radicalization as
a threat, and did not take Hitler and the Nazis seriously.
The Dodd familys early days in Germany gave them an impression that the extremism
of the Nazis had indeed been exaggerated. William Dodd barely believed the stories
George Messersmith, the American Consul General in Berlin, told him of beatings and
acts of violence against Jews, Communists, and even Americans. The fact was,
Germany did look great on the outside. The evil within the Nazi regime was able to hide
itself from foreigners. Williams daughter, Martha, said the following, I felt the press had
badly maligned the country and I wanted to proclaim the warmth and friendliness of the
people, the soft summer night with its fragrance of trees and flowers, the serenity of the
streets. (54)
Larson made it clear that the Dodds were not the only naive visitors to Germany. He
said that Marthas cheery view of things was widely shared by outsiders visiting
Germany and especially Berlin. the fact was that on most days in most neighborhoods
the city looked and functioned as it always had. (55)

He then went on to say however, that things were not as nice in Germany as they were
made out to be. The government was rapidly instituting Gleichschaltung, or
coordination, which was bringing everything into the Nazi Doctrine. The ever-expanding
Gestapo secret police force was arresting anyone who disagreed. Jews were finding
themselves persecuted more and more by the day, even under the law. The Aryan
Clause was one law that stopped Jewish people from holding government jobs. The
Heil Hitler salute was becoming a mandatory greeting, and could result in beatings if not
observed. All of this went unchecked.
It took time for the Dodds to see what was really going on in Germany. Consul General
Messersmith, struggled to convince them. Messersmith had seen the case of an
American man named Philip Zuckerman who was touring Leipzig with his family. A
parade of Nazi Storm Troopers was marching by. Seeing that the Zuckermans were
Jewish, a group of the Storm Troopers attacked them and they had to be hospitalized.
Messersmith tried to write of incidents such as these, but they were too easily dismissed
as exaggerations. Part of the reason for this was because of a Nazi plan to influence
Americans coming to Germany in forming a favorable opinion concerning the
happenings in the country. (68) In one case, an American named Samuel Bossard was
attacked by Hitler Youth members and angrily reported it to the American embassy.
What happened next was strange. Larson says:
Then, suddenly, he stopped speaking. Messersmith called him just
before his return to America to ask how he was doing and found
him unwilling to discuss the incident. Suspicious, Messersmith
made inquiries and learned that the Ministry of Propaganda had
toured Bossard through Berlin and Potsdam and otherwise
showered him with courtesy and attention. (68)
The plan worked. When Bossard returned, he spoke fondly of Germany and blamed
attacks on Americans as misunderstandings. The Dodd family however, slowly began to
see the real Nazi Germany through various incidents. For William, one of these
incidents was his meeting with a brilliant German chemist named Fritz Haber. Haber
had developed a poison chlorine gas for German use during World War 1 and had won
a Nobel Prize for figuring out how to extract nitrogen from the air. However, because
Haber was Jewish, he resigned from his work due to persecution and the way he was
forced to fire all his Jewish workers. This, plus the increasing number of attacks on
Americans, and refusal of police to get involved, for not participating in the Heil Hitler
salute, began to change William Dodds views. The final straw was when Germany
decided to drop out of the League of Nations.
For his daughter, Martha, things took longer. She had a very positive view of the new
Germany, and had even been romantically involved with several high ranking Nazis
such as Rudolph Niels, the Gestapo Chief. However, when Martha traveled to
Nuremberg with some friends, they witnessed a huge mass of SA Storm Troopers
dragging a woman through the streets. She had a sign tied around her neck that said
she had offered herself to a Jew. Martha asked around and found out the woman had
agreed to marry a Jewish man. Another incident occurred when Martha held a party with

many high ranking Nazi officers. She played the Nazi hymn to Horst Wessel, which
was a Nazi anthem. One of the men grew angry and shut the music off saying it was
not the sort of music to be played for mixed gatherings and in a flippant manner. (147)
This shocked Martha, and she began to see the way the Nazis suppressed freedom of
expression.
So, Dodd, finally began to speak out against the Nazi extremism in a speech to the
Berlin branch of the American Chamber of Commerce on October 12, 1933. He didnt
directly criticize the regime, but used historical parallels to show the folly the German
people had come to believe in. He also met face to face with Adolf Hitler to try to
convince him to not rearm Germany.
But, as we know, it was too late. Adolf Hitler started World War II and caused the deaths
of millions of soldiers and millions of innocent civilians both in war zones and
concentration camps. Hitler had managed to hide the great evil working in Germany. No
one knew what was to come. It shows that even a great country can be gradually
changed and deceived. Things will look great on the outside, until it is too late. And that
is what happened in Germany.