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pippa_w 's review for:
In the Garden of Beasts
by Erik Larson
"The world seems in such a mess now, I don't know what will happen. Too bad that maniac was allowed to go his way so long uncurbed. We may be, sooner or later, involved, God forbid."
It may be somewhat surprising that this quote is not contemporary to now... It was, of course, written about the state of the world pre-World War II by Mattie Dodd, whose husband was the American ambassador to Berlin from 1933 to 1937. The maniac to whom she refers, utterly unsurprisingly, is Adolf Hitler. The fact that this quote could come from the modern day is part of what makes In the Garden of Beasts so enthrallingly terrifying.
"As a historian, he (Dodd) had come to view the world as the product of historical forces and the decisions of more or less rational people, and he expected the men around him to behave in a civil and coherent manner. But Hitler's government was neither civil nor coherent, and the nation lurched from one inexplicable moment to another."
This is one of the books that so effectively lands you in the centre of horror that it's entirely uncomfortable to read. That Larson does so while running you through all the alarms Nazi Germany was setting off that the rest of the world ignored makes it entirely necessary to read.
"They spread terror. That is a wholesome thing." - Rudolf Diels, head of the Gestapo when he becomes American ambassador Dodd's daughter Martha's lover
Here, Larson essentially flawlessly strings together acres of source material and somehow makes sense of how atrocities and persecution were allowed to prevail - largely with the help of warped logic, preexisting prejudices (most notably, of course, antisemitism), and plain terror. He highlights this particular all-too-familiar and toxic concoction with his own commentary, explanations, and descriptions - they serve as a very well-written connective tissue that gives compelling narrative structure to a lively and sickening history.
"The uninvited guest was fear, and it haunted the gathering."
The story of American ambassador William E. Dodd that Beasts follows is devastating in retrospect and discouraging in the modern context. In many ways, he is the ambassador the United States needed in Germany at the time. He was diplomatic, but committed enough to his morals to not allow himself to be bowled over. Reading as he realizes in horror what he is truly dealing with, and then again and again tries to warn his colleagues back home only to be undercut because of snobbery, prejudice, and the all too common priority of debt over human life is so, so frustrating.
"Dodd had been struck again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and of the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest. It was as if he had entered the dark forest of a fairy tale where all the rules of right and wrong were upended."
Faced with an ambassador forced into "the delicate work of watching and carefully doing nothing," you eventually just feel grateful on his behalf that he was out of Germany before he had to watch Kristallnacht happen first-hand. Which... well... what an awful thing to find yourself feeling grateful for.
This brings me to my warning for reading this book: despite its strong moral centre, this book very aptly brings you into a prewar 1930s version of common sense. Read this book, absolutely, but read carefully. A saving grace in this world is a terror in another. A good man in this book is often a brutal man, even a war criminal. It took more than 13 years and more than 6 million innocent lives to stop Adolf Hitler - Erik Larson will make you understand why. And it won't be comfortable.
George S. Messersmith, at the time US Consul General for Berlin: "There are so many pathological cases involved that it would be impossible to tell from day to day what will happen any more than the keeper of a madhouse is able to tell what his inmates will do in the next hour or during the next day."
It may be somewhat surprising that this quote is not contemporary to now... It was, of course, written about the state of the world pre-World War II by Mattie Dodd, whose husband was the American ambassador to Berlin from 1933 to 1937. The maniac to whom she refers, utterly unsurprisingly, is Adolf Hitler. The fact that this quote could come from the modern day is part of what makes In the Garden of Beasts so enthrallingly terrifying.
"As a historian, he (Dodd) had come to view the world as the product of historical forces and the decisions of more or less rational people, and he expected the men around him to behave in a civil and coherent manner. But Hitler's government was neither civil nor coherent, and the nation lurched from one inexplicable moment to another."
This is one of the books that so effectively lands you in the centre of horror that it's entirely uncomfortable to read. That Larson does so while running you through all the alarms Nazi Germany was setting off that the rest of the world ignored makes it entirely necessary to read.
"They spread terror. That is a wholesome thing." - Rudolf Diels, head of the Gestapo when he becomes American ambassador Dodd's daughter Martha's lover
Here, Larson essentially flawlessly strings together acres of source material and somehow makes sense of how atrocities and persecution were allowed to prevail - largely with the help of warped logic, preexisting prejudices (most notably, of course, antisemitism), and plain terror. He highlights this particular all-too-familiar and toxic concoction with his own commentary, explanations, and descriptions - they serve as a very well-written connective tissue that gives compelling narrative structure to a lively and sickening history.
"The uninvited guest was fear, and it haunted the gathering."
The story of American ambassador William E. Dodd that Beasts follows is devastating in retrospect and discouraging in the modern context. In many ways, he is the ambassador the United States needed in Germany at the time. He was diplomatic, but committed enough to his morals to not allow himself to be bowled over. Reading as he realizes in horror what he is truly dealing with, and then again and again tries to warn his colleagues back home only to be undercut because of snobbery, prejudice, and the all too common priority of debt over human life is so, so frustrating.
"Dodd had been struck again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and of the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest. It was as if he had entered the dark forest of a fairy tale where all the rules of right and wrong were upended."
Faced with an ambassador forced into "the delicate work of watching and carefully doing nothing," you eventually just feel grateful on his behalf that he was out of Germany before he had to watch Kristallnacht happen first-hand. Which... well... what an awful thing to find yourself feeling grateful for.
This brings me to my warning for reading this book: despite its strong moral centre, this book very aptly brings you into a prewar 1930s version of common sense. Read this book, absolutely, but read carefully. A saving grace in this world is a terror in another. A good man in this book is often a brutal man, even a war criminal. It took more than 13 years and more than 6 million innocent lives to stop Adolf Hitler - Erik Larson will make you understand why. And it won't be comfortable.
George S. Messersmith, at the time US Consul General for Berlin: "There are so many pathological cases involved that it would be impossible to tell from day to day what will happen any more than the keeper of a madhouse is able to tell what his inmates will do in the next hour or during the next day."