This is the true story of an American family who went to live in Berlin in 1933.
Seattle author Larson (Erik, not Stieg) is expert at writing non-fiction works which read like novels. And several of them have involved killers. Thunderstruck is about the convergence of wireless inventor Marconi’s efforts to establish transoceanic messaging, with the infamous wife-killer Dr. Crippen’s fleeing to America pursued by Scotland Yard. (The Crippen story is also told, without Marconi, in the wonderful novel, The False Inspector Dew, by Peter Lovesey Soho tp, $13.00.) My favorite earlier book by Erik Larson is Isaac’s Storm, about a killer hurricane in Galveston in 1900, which killed 10,000 people and effectively killed Galveston’s future as a major city. Larson’s best known book, until now anyway, is The Devil in the White City (Vintage tp, $15.95) which tells of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, and steps up from wife-killer or killer storm to serial killer, with “Dr. H. H. Holmes” lurking murderously around the Fair grounds.
Now Larson has moved up from serial killer to mass murderer, with a naïve but principled American college professor trying to practice diplomacy on Adolph Hitler.
William E. Dodd was a professor at the University of Chicago who was trying to write a heavy-weight book, and finding that his academic schedule wasn’t leaving him enough time to write. Thinking that the U.S. Foreign Service would offer more free time, he applied for a position there. He got more than he bargained for when FDR appointed him U.S. Ambassador to Germany. But he took the job, and moved to Berlin with his wife and grown son and daughter. On arrival there he quickly learned that conditions under the Nazi regime were much harsher than anyone in the U.S. or elsewhere outside Germany had realized. Treatment of Jews was already inhumane, and criticism of the government by any German citizen was punishable by confiscation of property, imprisonment, or death.
Ambassador Dodd was in an impossible position. As a diplomat, he was charged with creating amicable relations between America and Germany, even to press for payment of war debts owed to us from WWI. At the same time, as a principled man he felt compelled to increase American and world awareness of the Nazi excesses. In this he met significant resistance: within the Foreign Service, a natural rivalry between career officers and an outside appointee; in America, from strong feelings of isolationism and even anti-Semitism.
This book did much to further my understanding of the forces that enabled the Nazis to solidify their position of power. And as true-crime international intrigue, it’s a fascinating read
