I don't usually post in these threads, but I finally finished In the Garden of Beasts (Erik Larson) today, so I thought I'd post what I thought about it here.
I remember halfway through the book forming an opinion of Ambassador Dodd that wasn't nearly as positive as the one I finished with. I think it was his second meeting with Hitler where this opinion became my defining of him for awhile. I thought that Dodd was a good man, but one that was in completely over his head and one that was not at all ready or qualified to do the job he was doing as ambassador to the Third Reich, a job that was easily the most difficult and delicate position for a foreign ambassador at the time. I thought that him still thinking Hitler wanted peace was a sign that he was simply too naive and idealistic to do the job.
What I realized by the end of the book was that Dodd, frankly, was one of the first people in America to fully grasp and understand what Hitler and the Nazi regimes were planning by the time he left his post. I remember being struck by his prediction in 1937 (I believe) that if Hitler and Germany went unchecked for much longer, that Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia would be invaded. I came to see him as a much brighter and, frankly, much more courageous person by the end. To refuse to attend major Nazi rallies and political events of the sort were almost a death wish, even for a major foreign diplomat. My admiration for Dodd at the end was also mixed with disgust toward FDR's State Department, and how by the end they were refusing to take him seriously while he was issuing such forecasting that ended up being right on the mark. The ambassador they hired in his place was, appropriately enough after the State Department's treatment of Dodd, pretty much a Nazi propaganda mouthpiece.
This book also taught me a few things I didn't really realize about the Third Reich. Mainly, just how tumultuous everything was in the early years. All of the backstabbing and paranoia among these Nazis for their peers, and how that ultimately led to the Night of the Long Knives. Goes to show that Hitler's reign could have been quelled early on if other nations had looked at the picture and realized what was growing in Germany.
I really love, both in this book and in The Devil in the White City how Larson is able to create this foreshadowing and foreboding sense of dread, all with novelistic history. He's able to perfectly convey the decay of Germany into what it became by the end of Dodd's stay compared to the beginning (where it wasn't exactly spring roses to begin with).
Though I loved this book, I don't think I loved it quite as much as White City. I'd say the two reasons why are: 1. White City taught me about a time and place in history that I really knew nothing about. Funnily enough, I first learned who H.H. Holmes was...here on GAF of all places. I already knew about most of the major players here, though the story as seen through Dodd's eyes is certainly one I enjoyed. 2. White City had this amazing contrast every other chapter between Daniel Burnham and H.H. Holmes, two completely different people planning and doing very different things. This book goes for telling the story from the eyes of Dodd and his daughter Marsha, which didn't quite leave the same impression as the great contrast between Burnham and Holmes. Marsha's stories are interesting though and the book is better for having them.
White City and Garden of Beasts are the only books of Larson's that I've read, but he really has become one of my favorite authors through them. His writing style is one that so perfectly tows the line between fiction and non-fiction for me that I so vastly enjoy reading his works. I have Thunderstruck, and will certainly read that at some point.
