Hardcover, 448 pages
Published Sept. 5, 2011 by Crown.
The bestselling author of "Devil in the White City" turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler's rise to power. The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
A great read
It's an odd way to approach the subject but it does work. Larson describes Hitler's rise and the runup to the war exclusively through the experiences of one family, that of Ambassador Dodd.
This book tells the story of William Dodd and his family (wife, daughter and son), who is named ambassador to Germany in the 1930s, as Hitler is rising to power. Focusing on Dodd and his daughter Martha, it describes the escalating tensions and violence as Hitler settles into power. Dodd, who quickly becomes upset at the way Hitler is "ruining" his Germany (he went to school there as a college kid), is an early and vocal Hitler opponent, which runs afoul of the establishment, the "Pretty Good Club" of rich, Ivy League educated diplomats.They want him to be quiet and get Germany to do business.
I am a huge Erik Larson fan but this was, I think, one of his weakest. The biggest problem is there really wasn't a focus on a real interesting event, like the Galveston hurricane or the bombing of Britain. It was just the slow burn …
This book tells the story of William Dodd and his family (wife, daughter and son), who is named ambassador to Germany in the 1930s, as Hitler is rising to power. Focusing on Dodd and his daughter Martha, it describes the escalating tensions and violence as Hitler settles into power. Dodd, who quickly becomes upset at the way Hitler is "ruining" his Germany (he went to school there as a college kid), is an early and vocal Hitler opponent, which runs afoul of the establishment, the "Pretty Good Club" of rich, Ivy League educated diplomats.They want him to be quiet and get Germany to do business.
I am a huge Erik Larson fan but this was, I think, one of his weakest. The biggest problem is there really wasn't a focus on a real interesting event, like the Galveston hurricane or the bombing of Britain. It was just the slow burn of the awful Nazi rising. And much like reading about the Reconstruction, you know it is going to end badly and you just see how blind so many of the people going into it are going to be.
So things kind of meandered around. And oh, the purple prose! Maybe he felt like he need to brighten up an awful time in history, but he tried extra hard to write about glorious blue skies and trains looking like toys. I think he was bound and determined to make a book of this research but it really was kind of weak.
Martha, for all her weaknesses, I thought came across as unique. What I was most impressed with is her independence and, to be honest, sexual freedom it seems, which seems like it was so far in the future. I liked how proud she was, although misguided, but her own views and not those of the men around her or even her father. She fell for the Nazi "strength" and only slowly came around to how gross it was.
The other thing that was really gross about this whole time period was the casual antisemitism. I mean, you can believe the awful violent antisemitism of the Nazis, but the casual antisemitism of the US folks was gruesome. "Oh, don't feel bad, Mr. Nazi, we find the Jews to be awfully uppity ourselves but see we can handle it better" isn't really much of a defense. This came up time and time again, about how Dodd's bosses back in Washington were virulent antisemitic, although maybe Roosevelt himself wasn't. Just gross.
So not really great. I have covered this same time period in Shirer's classic "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and I think it is much better and much briefer. I don't think the two "heroes" of this book are that interesting, although Dodd was one of the few early leaders who railed against the Nazis from an early date. Too much appeasement and too much isolationism enabled Hitler's rise, much to all of our chagrin.
This book is terrific. I'd recommend it even to friends who don't typically read historical non-fiction. It's the (non-fictional) account of an American ambassador and his family who move from the Midwest to Berlin in 1933, told through their eyes, and sourced from memoirs, letters, and other meticulously-researched materials. Hitler had become chancellor about a year earlier, and so it was a historical moment when many ex-pats were gravely concerned about what they saw happening in Germany, while the German government was working very hard to assuage those fears and make it look like violent and troubling events were merely isolated incidents that could be easily dismissed, with the complainants just histrionic liars who had a personal stake in castigating Germany.
What's great about the book is that the protagonist and his family arrive in Berlin mostly believing that the negative stories have been overblown, and slowly realize, based on …
This book is terrific. I'd recommend it even to friends who don't typically read historical non-fiction. It's the (non-fictional) account of an American ambassador and his family who move from the Midwest to Berlin in 1933, told through their eyes, and sourced from memoirs, letters, and other meticulously-researched materials. Hitler had become chancellor about a year earlier, and so it was a historical moment when many ex-pats were gravely concerned about what they saw happening in Germany, while the German government was working very hard to assuage those fears and make it look like violent and troubling events were merely isolated incidents that could be easily dismissed, with the complainants just histrionic liars who had a personal stake in castigating Germany.
What's great about the book is that the protagonist and his family arrive in Berlin mostly believing that the negative stories have been overblown, and slowly realize, based on first-hand experience, that the signs they are seeing are more ominous than they realized. It's fascinating to see 1930s Germany as it looked to contemporary outsiders, without the benefit of knowing that Hitler would eventually become the most evil monster of the 20th century.
Erik Larson's storytelling style makes the subjects of the book feel like real characters (especially the ambassador's free-spirited, 20-something daughter), and his books are much more compelling than other historical accounts I have read. Highly recommended, both for the history lesson and for the page-turning story.
Larson does a great job of mining little-examined moments in history for nuggets of general wisdom and historical interest. This book, about the American ambassador to Weimar Berlin and his encounters with Hitler and the rest of the gang makes a scary and elucidating read with lots of fun anecdotes about the city. Great read to tuck in your bag for a trip to Germany.
Surprisingly disappointing. The book describes the first year after Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany from the perspective of the American ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, and his nontraditional daughter. I had a hard time figuring out WHY Larson thought this story was important to tell. Dodd's daughter is given a lot of the spotlight, and pretty much all she does is romance a lot of men (including Nazis). This simply was not as good or interesting as any of Larson's previous books.
