In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin

By Erik Larson

At the start of one of the most critical periods in U.S.-German relations, President Franklin D. Roosevelt found himself unable to find a candidate willing to accept the role of ambassador to Germany in 1933.

Germany was volatile and the assignment oxymoronic: do what you can to protest Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany unofficially while maintaining cordial official diplomatic relations.

Wiser, more experienced men than Professor William E. Dodd, who ultimately accepted the position, turned the post down.


A University of Chicago history professor specializing in the American South, Dodd had almost no qualifications for position. Yet as a student of history and an outsider, he offered sound, if unheeded, advice to the Roosevelt government during his 1933 to 1937 tenure.

The son of an illiterate farmer, Dodd had earned his doctorate at the University of Leipzig, spoke German and was predisposed to like Germany. He had no diplomatic experience in an era when the U.S. State Department was filled with independently wealthy men from the right families who fully expected to foot the bills of their embassies or consulates.

In accepting the position, he expected to have time to finish writing his multi-volume history of the American South. As a poorly paid academic, he had to watch his pennies and ran the embassy like a Scotch housekeeper.

Author Erik Larson’s book, In the Garden of Beasts, provides a well-written, well-researched narrative that vividly lays out the complexities and contradictions that Dodd walked into as American ambassador.

To tourists, Germany was picturesque and fun. Few believed then-Chancellor Adolf Hitler would last in office. Only long-time Germany watchers observed the dark, violent undercurrents. American Jewish leaders themselves were divided between raising the alarm about Hitler’s policies and avoiding the appearance of being Jews first and Americans second.

Ambassador William Dodd is second from the right

Dodd came to his posting committed to keeping an open mind. In many ways, he and his family were innocents abroad. They live in a house owned by a Jew who lived on the top floor. Dodd’s wild daughter Martha plunges into the Berlin party circuit with extreme insensitivity to her position and national and international politics. She has an affair with the first Gestapo Chief Rudolf Diels, and later with a married Communist agent.

Within a year of his appointment, Dodd was ready to resign. He increasingly understood that Adolf Hitler was a threat to world peace and many of Germany’s own citizens, including the Jews. At the same time, Dodd undermined his own effectiveness by schoolmarmish insistence on penny-pinching and business hours for embassy staff.

Dodd stepped down in 1937. He returned home and campaigned against the dangers posed by Germany, Italy and Japan, detailing the racial and religious persecution he had observed in Germany. He predicted German aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Was he an effective ambassador at a critical time in world history? You decide.

About the Author: Erik Larson (1954 - )

Larson, whose previous books include Devil in the White City (2006) and Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time and the Deadliest Hurricane in History (1999), writes vivid, absorbing narrative nonfiction.

Larson's career began as a reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times in Levittown, PA. He went on to become a features writer for the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine, where he is still a contributing writer. His magazine stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and other publications.

He does all his own research for his nonfiction books and has stated that in his work "anything that appears in quote is something that came from a historical document." His work is inspired by writers David McCullough, Barbara Tuchman, David Halberstam and Walter Lord.

He and his wife have three daughters.  They live in New York City and have a home in Seattle.