In The Garden Of Beasts

 

        Erik Larson's In The Garden Of Beasts is a narrative non-fiction account of William E. Dodds' tenure as Ambassador to Germany 1933-1937.  Dodds, a University of Chicago history professor was chosen as Ambassador by Roosevelt probably as an afterthought or perhaps without much thought at all.    In the summer of 1933 Roosevelt had pressing economic concerns, Congress was trying to adjourn, and Germany was a backwater with a government that all the experts knew could not last.  Roosevelt's instructions to Dodds were, "I want an American liberal in Germany as a standing example".

        Like Larson's The Devil in the White City the historical story is twinned with a spicier sub-plot, in this case the story of Dodds' wayward daughter Martha, a serial sexual collector of many Nazis and at least one Communist.  William Dodds arrived in Berlin in July 1933, initially inclined to be sympathetic to Germany having lived there as a student.  Although like most of the State Department he acknowledged a "Jewish problem",  in 1933 he believed that his Jeffersonian principles could be taught to the Nazis.  Over time Dodds came to see the state Germany was becoming, and he became more outspoken against the wishes of the old-boys network of the State Department.

        Martha, on the other hand was simply enthralled with the Nazis and the enthusiasm of the masses.  She bought the whole act, ate the caviar and was blind to the victims.   Contraria believes that Larson does the best he can to put a literary veneer on the arm-candy Martha, who ultimately died a tax fugitive in bleak communist Prague.

        Contraria takes the question of the book to be how things look at a point in time, how perceptions vary, how our imaginations are limited by experience and how clarifying is the lens of history.  The story is haunted by knowing what comes later.  What the Germans ultimately did had not happened before, so no one could foresee it or even imagine it.  The Jews were seen as alarmist.  Roosevelt had other matters to attend to.  By 1934 Dodds had the clearest prescience for which he was isolated in the State Department and eventually jettisoned.  Vox clamantis in deserto.