I saw an ad for this book in one of the magazines I read and knew I wanted to see it. We requested and received a review copy in short order. Although I recognized the author’s name, I haven’t read any of his other books. Until I actually picked it up, I also hadn’t quite registered that In the Garden of Beasts is non-fiction. Once I got used to that idea, I was most favorably impressed by Larson’s meticulous attention to detail and his writing style — highly readable without being at all breezy or superficial. (Imagine writing a breezy narrative about Nazi Germany — ugh!)
As luck would have it, I read In the Garden of Beasts in tandem with Joseph Kanon’s suspense novel The Good German, which I pursued after watching the movie of the same name. Although The Good German takes place after World War II, the main character, Jake Geismar, recalls episodes from his life in Berlin before the war that literally refer to historical characters who appear in Larson’s book. I found that both exciting and somewhat disquieting — the merging of fiction and fact.
In the Garden of Beasts chronicles the experiences of William Dodd, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from July 1933 to January 1938, and of his wife Mattie and adult children Bill and Martha, who accompanied him on this assignment. A soft-spoken professor of history at the University of Chicago with interests in the early history of the American South, Dodd was in many ways the wrong person for the position. He certainly didn’t have the kind of social and financial capital that most other members of the diplomatic corps took for granted. Perhaps his greatest asset was his fluency in German, a skill he acquired while doing doctoral studies at the University of Leipzig in the late nineteenth century. And he wasn’t, at least initially, a controversial candidate for the post.
Although this early on few observers were able to anticipate the trajectory of the Third Reich, even before Dodd left for Germany President Roosevelt and other high-ranking official in Congress and the U.S. government were aware of the appalling treatment of Jewish people under the regime that had come fully to power in Germany earlier in the year. Within days of their arrival in Berlin, the Dodds began to observe and to hear of incidents that gave them reason to be even more concerned about the ideology and intentions of the country’s rulers.
Partly as a reflection of the available documentary evidence and perhaps also as a reflection of their relative visibility, wife Mattie and son Bill make infrequent appearances in this telling. I would not be understating the case to suggest that daughter Martha upstaged her father both in In the Garden of Beasts and possibly during their tenure in Germany as well. While the male parent struggled to keep some kind of integrity as he went about his official duties in an increasingly hostile and unsupportive situation (his own staff routinely snitched on him to their cronies back in Washington), the daughter was free to mingle and did so with evident abandon.
Still in her early 20s and quite an attractive young woman, Martha Dodd was married to a wealthy New York banker whom she readily left behind to accompany her family to Germany. She quickly and easily made friends with a variety of people in Berlin, and had sexual liaisons with a number of men of widely differing political persuasions, including Armand Berard, third secretary of the French embassy; Boris Winogradov, first secretary of the Russian embassy; and Rudolf Diels, then chief of the Gestapo.
The title of the book refers to the Tiergarten, the park that runs through Berlin not far from the Spree River and includes the zoological garden. Members of the Dodd family experienced this park as a charming haven during the early months of their stay in Berlin. Not surprisingly, it took on a more ominous meaning for them as time passed.
I have read numerous works of fiction set in Berlin before the war—including Philip Kerr’s series featuring detective Bernie Gunther, David Downing’s series about the British journalist John Russell and Rebecca Cantrell’s series centered around the experiences of crime reporter Hannah Vogel. This is the first work of non-fiction I’ve read that focused on this particular period in history. They are all quite consistent in their mood and in their references to historical events. Why do I read this stuff? I think because I want to learn as much as I can about how easy it is for people to tolerate oppression when it arrives in slow, insidious stages.
A journalist rather than an academic historian by profession, Larson provides abundant references to his source materials, many of them primary — 45 pages of endnotes, an extensive bibliography and a decent index! Honestly, my only complaint is that the narrative makes a number of very detailed references to photographs that are not included. I always find this frustrating. But overall it’s a minor point.
I am reluctant to say that I enjoyed In the Garden of Beasts, because it’s not quite an enjoyable experience reading about this time and place. Let’s just say that the book has definitely earned a permanent home on my non-fiction bookshelf — coincidentally, right next to David Clay Large’s massive tome on Berlin.
Crown Publishers, 2011
Lovely review, Donna. I too have seen this in the local bookstores and have been intrigued. Will have to pick up a copy now; I’m definitely up for something I can sink my teeth into!