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A Diplomat in Berlin
WHEN President Roosevelt had to choose an American Ambassador to the Third Reich in 1933, he had three alternatives : a rich ambitious contributor to Democratic funds; a career-diplomat, correct in formalities, precedence and tradition; or a person who knew and understood Germany and the Germans through personal experience and training. He chose William E. Dodd, an historian, who had studied at Leipzig. His action was intended as an appeal to the best in the old German culture. But, as events proved, it was a wasted gesture. Relations between the United States and Germany steadily deteriorated, and the Ambassador was withdrawn in December, 1937, at the express wish of the German Government. (He had intended to stay only until March, 1938.) , Dodd early saw where Nazi policy must end. On October 13th, 1933, he wrote: " If they (i.e., the Nazis) really believe a country can be economically independent and discard international codes of behaviour, as I suspect they do, real trouble will come." Nazism, in his opinion, contained a savagery and a barbarism which disappeared from England in 1688. As an historian, he interpreted the real cause of Germany's reign of terror as " the failure of the 1848 movement to resolve itself into a democratic parliamentary system and the failure of Bismarck to wean his Prussians away from the military brutalism hallowed by the successes of Frederick the Great. Bismarck had the chance at the end of the-1866 war, again in 1871 . . . No historian has seen this, not even in Republican Germany of 1919-1933." His criticism of a young German nobleman is also illuminating : " He is deeply patriotic, but like so many educated Germans does not know what real patriotism is."
During Dodd's stay in Berlin the principal problems between the United States and Germany were those of German debts, commercial treaties and international peace. It was natural, therefore, that he should have much to do with Dr. Schacht, the Reichbank President. Their conversations make interesting reading. Schacht ia represented as an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, but one whose courage never took him far enough to break with it entirely, mainly perhaps because he hoped through it to achieve his own very high ambitions. When asked how Mussolini got the money for his various enterprises, Schacht ironically replied: " Money does not have to be gotten now, we only issue paper and keep it circulating rapidly, thereby maintaining people at work. That is all."
There is also an illuminating reference on November 19th, 1937. After Schacht had stated that he had not been to a Cabinet meeting since September 5th, Dodd writes: " I asked him confidentially if he would accept an American bank presidency. He said : Yes, and I would be delighted to see the President often.'" His criticism of other German leaders is also interesting. Of von Neurath, then Foreign Minister, he writes : " I have never seen evidence that the Secretary ever resists the arbitrary conduct of the Fiihrer." Regarding Alfred Rosenberg : " There is no German official who thinks less clearly and indulges in more bunk."
The Ambassador saw clearly where appeasement was leading, and also how England was behaving at that time (April 4th, 1935). "I came away (from von Neurath) without any valid assurances, just as I had left the British Embassy without being convinced that England was doing anything but playing politics." Dodd was outstandingly a democrat, and his democracy was revealed both in his actions and in his reports. His principles forbadt. him to attend the Nuremberg Party Congress in September, 1937._ " I do not care to sit by quietly and listen to Hitler and Goebbels denounce democracies "—though scores of leading Britishers as well as the British Ambassador (Sir Nevile Henderson) were quite willing to do so. His democracy also led him to condemn strongly the influence of money in the American Diplomatic Service. " In his scale of values worth, not wealth, was the measure," as Professor Beard says in his Introduction. In fact, Dodd only accepted the Berlin Post on condition that he could live on his salary of $17,5oo. He condemned condetoried the extravagance of various diplomatic representatives, American and others, and often quoted ironically the estimated cost of a banquet given by the representative of a State which Pleaded it was too poor to pay its debts. Professor Beard sum- marises the situation very well when he writes that Dodd's dsimPlicity of living, directness and candour of speech, ingrained in of his thought and action, indignation of his spirit du lettered Germany, and his neglect of protocol rigidities pro- many critics in the diplomatic set." But it made no umerence to Dodd. He followed his own course convincingly. His closing words are also significant : " Democratic peoples must maintain their faiths at home ; their representatives must try to improve international co-operation ; and on proper occasions they must remind men of the importance of world-peace, easier commercial relations and the significance of democratic civilisation for which peoples have struggled since the sixteenth century." The author of Woodrow Wilson and the World War was a great admirer of President Roosevelt, of whom he wrote : " My hope is that he carries on until 1941, when he would be- able . . . to show . . . Big Business and European Autocrats that leader- ship through democratic processes is still possible in a world of mechanics and invention."
The reader who lived through these troublous days in Berlin will find a number of unimportant mistakes in this Diary, such as, for example, that (July 4th, 1934) " von Papen had been released from prison " when it was in reality " house-arrest "; Professor Sauerbruch is a surgeon and not a physician, &c. There are reported conversations and interpretations of actions which might come in for criticism. It is also questionable whether certain references to the expression of opinion, especially by Germans, should not have been excluded, if only because of the danger those named might run in Nazi Germany today. But the Diary will certainly serve as a valuable contribution to our knowledge of how the Diplomatic Corps in Berlin was thinking in those days, especially as it is written by a man who had access to so much and dared to write it. ROBERT POWELL.
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