This was my third Erik Larsen book (I’m reading number four right now) and he has not disappointed yet. Larsen is so good at weaving a large story into the life of one or two, to make it feel intimate and make you feel a part of it. On the other hand, it is hard to be a part of Hitler’s Germany, and I found myself avoiding picking up this book early on if I could be distracted by a magazine, or something more upbeat.
This was a tough read. We are not even in WWII yet in the year within which this book takes place, we are only in 1933-34, which makes it all the sadder that the atrocities of WWII were allowed to take place when it was so obvious five years earlier the nasty direction in which Germany’s government was turning. This true story was based on the experiences of the American Diplomat in Germany and his rather promiscuous daughter who dated many major players of the time.
“Change came to Germany so quickly and across such a wide front that German citizens who left the country for business or travel returned to find everything around them altered, as if they were characters in a horror movie who come back to find that people who once were their friends, clients, patients, and customers have become different in ways hard to discern. Gerda Laufer wrote that she felt “deeply shaken that people whom one regarded as friends, who were known for a long time, from one hour to the next transformed themselves”.”
That quote is frightening, as we see things progressed quickly, but the ambassadors from other countries saw these events and often their countries would ignore their reports. It’s not like no one on the outside knew what was happening. Here is a shocking reason why the United States were reluctant to protest:
“…(Roosevelt) might be involved in a very acrimoniuos discussion with that (German) Government which conceivably might, for example, ask him to explain why the negroes of this country do not fully enjoy the right of suffrage; why the lynching of negroes in Senator Tyding’s State and other States is not prevented or severely punished; and how the anti-Semitic feeling in the United States, which unfortunately seems to be growing, is not checked.” (on the failed resolution in the Senate to let Germany know how unhappy the U.S. is with it’s treatment of the Jewish people).
It seems to me that if the U.S was shocked by the treatment of the Jewish people and knew they were committing similar offenses on their own land, it would have been really nice if that was publicly acknowledged and dealt with back in 1933 instead of waiting until the 1960’s when millions of Jews and others were dead and we’d had 30 + more years of black oppression over here.
I think the hardest part of reading this book was the reaction of the people in Germany. I can understand why one might be afraid to stand up for others rights for fear of retribution on themselves, but I can’t understand why some people used the arrests to their advantage, and indeed were trying to get people in trouble with alarming ease and regularity. How could all these people report others, whether friends or enemies, when it was known that an arrest could result in torture and/or death??:
“…the existence of a populace eager not just to step in line and become co-ordinated but also to use Nazi sensitivities to satisfy individual needs and salve jealousies. One study of Nazi records found that of a sample of 213 denunciations, 37 percent arose not from heartfelt political belief, but from private conflicts, with the trigger often breathtakingly trivial. In October 1933, for example, the clerk at a grocery store turned in a cranky customer who had stubbornly insisted on receiving three pfennigs in change. The clerk accused her of failure to pay taxes. Germand denounced one another with such gusto that senior Nazi officials urged the populace to be more discriminating as to what circumstances might justify a report to the police. Hitler himself acknowledged, in a remark to his minister of justice, “we are living at present in a sea of denunciations and human meanness”.”
If Hitler himself, the personification of evil to many in the modern age, thought that people were being excessively mean, that’s pretty bad! Also, Ambassador Dodd was amazed by the ease with which the people accepted these radical changes:
“Throughout that first year in Germany (1933-34), Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and of the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest. It was as if he had entered the dark forest of a fairy tale where all the rules of right and wrong were upended. “I could not have imagined the outbreak against the Jews when everybody was suffering, one way or another, from declining commerce. Nor could one have imagined that such a terroristic performance as that of June 30 (many members of the government and others were rounded up and executed without trial) would have been permitted in modern times.””
A few other things:
“No realm was too petty: The Ministry of Posts ruled that henceforth when trying to spell a word over the telephone a caller could no longer say “D as in David,” because “David” was a Jerwish name.”
“…a study by the Berlin Jewish Community found that in 1932-34 there were 70.2 suicides per 100,000 Jews in Berlin.”
It really makes me so sad that this kind of thing could happen in modern times. I’m really glad racism has become so much less prevalent in today’s youth and I hope we continue to stamp it out. People are people, we are the same and hate gets us nowhere good. It’s a tough read, but it’s an eye opener, and I believe it’s good to read about atrocities in order to recognize them and not make the same mistakes.
Amazon Best Books of the Month, May 2011: In the Garden of Beasts is a vivid portrait of Berlin during the first years of Hitler’s reign, brought to life through the stories of two people: William E. Dodd, who in 1933 became America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s regime, and his scandalously carefree daughter, Martha. Ambassador Dodd, an unassuming and scholarly man, is an odd fit among the extravagance of the Nazi elite. His frugality annoys his fellow Americans in the State Department and Dodd’s growing misgivings about Hitler’s ambitions fall on deaf ears among his peers, who are content to “give Hitler everything he wants.” Martha, on the other hand, is mesmerized by the glamorous parties and the high-minded conversation of Berlin’s salon society—and flings herself headlong into numerous affairs with the city’s elite, most notably the head of the Gestapo and a Soviet spy. Both become players in the exhilarating (and terrifying) story of Hitler’s obsession for absolute power, which culminates in the events of one murderous night, later known as “the Night of Long Knives.” The rise of Nazi Germany is a well-chronicled time in history, which makes In the Garden of Beasts all the more remarkable. Erik Larson has crafted a gripping, deeply-intimate narrative with a climax that reads like the best political thriller, where we are stunned with each turn of the page, even though we already know the outcome.
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