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

4/5 rating. 365 pages.

Book #11 of 2023. Read April 24, 2023.

This book follows William Dodd, America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s. It shows the much too accurate, but somewhat eerie, idea that history unfolds “slowly, then all at once” (the perfect quote from John Green).

This book was incredibly interesting seeing the things that led up to WWII and the Holocaust. As early as 1933, Jews began to have their rights taken away. They were attacked – sometimes by government-sanctioned groups, sometimes not. While nearly everyone had heard rumors, no one was quite ready to believe even a fraction of them, assuming that the things they heard couldn’t possibly be happening without anyone doing anything. (To which someone might reply if no one believed, who was supposed to do anything?)

As early as September 1933, Messersmith, the US Consulate head, believed Germany was a major threat to the world “which may disturb our peace for years to come.”

The incredible ambivalence to the growing undemocratic, and downright evil disregard for human life under Hitler’s regime was unbelievable within this book. The ease with which to discern the beginning of the rise of Nazism and future atrocities is so easy to see after the fact. Unfortunately, the truly important thing to take from this book is how to take its lessons and use them to learn how to disrupt and stop future despots and dictators from ruining so many people’s hopes for their futures and lives going forward.

I loved this book and would recommend it as an incredibly interesting and foreshadowing view into the atrocities to come in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s during Hitler’s attack on his own citizens (and beyond) during WWII and the Holocaust.

Quotes:

“Always there is nuance, albeit sometimes of a disturbing nature.”

“These were complicated people moving through a complicated time, before the monsters declared their true nature.”

“Germans denounced one another [in 1933] 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 ministry of justice, ‘we are living at present in a sea of denunciations and human meanness.’”

“The Dodds found many properties to choose from, though at first they failed to ask themselves why so many grand old mansions were available for lease so fully and luxuriously furnished, with ornate tables and chairs, gleaming pianos, and rare vases, maps, and books still in place.”

“Her father [Ambassador Dodd], she wrote, was ‘flourishing incredibly,’ and seemed ‘slightly pro-German.’ She added, ‘We sort of don’t like the Jews anyway.’”

“That afternoon [Dodd] told Messersmith [the US consulate head in Germany] that [the SA head] Ernst had delivered an appropriate apology [for one of his “troopers” attacking an American for not returning the Hitler salute]. Messersmith said: ‘The incidents will go on.’”

“Hitler looked like a suburban hairdresser on his day off.” – Putzi Hanfstaengl

“He who does not attach himself to us today, he who does not vote and vote ‘yes’ today, shows that he is, if not our blood enemy, at least a product of destruction and that he is no more to be helped… It would be better for him and it would be better for us if he no longer existed.” – Nazi statement in their newspaper in 1933

“If [the Jews] continue their activity, we shall make a complete end to all of them in this country.” – Hitler, 1934, to Dodd

“On the other hand, if [President Roosevelt] complied with [a resolution to send Germany a statement of profound surprise and pain at the oppression of Jews] he would not only incur the resentment of the German Government, but might be involved in a very acrimonious discussion with that Government which conceivably might, for example, ask him to explain why the benefits of this country do not fully enjoy the right of suffrage; why the lunching of negroes in Senator Tydings’ 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.”

“There is nobody among the officials of the National Socialist party who would not cheerfully cut the throat of every other official in order to further his own advancement.” – Bella Fromm

“‘At a time when hundreds of men have been put to death without trial or any sort of evidence of guilt, and when the population literally trembles with fear, animals have rights guaranteed them which men and women cannot think of expecting.’ He added, ‘One might easily wish he were a horse.’”

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