William E. Dodd

William E. Dodd was an American historian and diplomat who served as United States ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937. He witnessed the consolidation of Nazi power and increasingly warned Washington about the regime’s violence and expansionism.

Dodd’s position was weakened by conflict with professional diplomats and by his family’s social entanglements in Berlin. His diaries and correspondence provide an important contemporary account of foreign diplomacy in the early Nazi state. Dodd comes from the connection between this individual life and the larger political, social or cultural changes of the period, rather than from the headline episode alone.

In Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, in 1933, historian William E. Dodd becomes United States ambassador to Germany and moves to Berlin with his wife, son and daughter Martha. Dodd expects conventional diplomacy but encounters a regime rapidly dismantling civil liberties, persecuting Jewish citizens and replacing law with intimidation. Martha is initially captivated by the energy and social glamour of the new Germany, forming relationships with figures including Rudolf Diels while meeting Nazi leaders whose charm and theatricality disguise the violence supporting their power.