In The Garden Of Beasts Part 8

First Dodd raised the subject of the many attacks against Americans. Hitler was cordial and apologetic and a.s.sured Dodd that the perpetrators of all such attacks would be "punished to the limit." He promised as well to publicize widely his prior decrees exempting foreigners from giving the Hitler salute. After some bland conversation about Germany's debts to American creditors, Dodd moved to the topic most on his mind, the "all-pervasive question of the German thunderbolt of last Sat.u.r.day"-Hitler's decision to withdraw from the League of Nations.

When Dodd asked him why he had pulled Germany from the League, Hitler grew visibly angry. He attacked the Treaty of Versailles and France's drive to maintain superiority in arms over Germany. He railed against the "indignity" of keeping Germany in an unequal state, unable to defend herself against her neighbors.

Hitler's sudden rage startled Dodd. He tried to appear unfazed, less a diplomat now than a professor dealing with an overwrought student. He told Hitler, "There is evident injustice in the French att.i.tude; but defeat in war is always followed by injustice." He raised the example of the aftermath of the American Civil War and the North's "terrible" treatment of the South.

Hitler stared at him. After a brief period of silence, the conversation resumed, and for a few moments the two men engaged in what Dodd described as "an exchange of niceties." But now Dodd asked whether "an incident on the Polish, Austrian or French border which drew an enemy into the Reich" would be enough for Hitler to launch a war.

"No, no," Hitler insisted.

Dodd probed further. Suppose, he asked, such an incident were to involve the Ruhr Valley, an industrial region about which Germans were particularly sensitive. France had occupied the Ruhr from 1923 to 1925, causing great economic and political turmoil within Germany. In the event of another such incursion, Dodd asked, would Germany respond militarily on its own or call for an international meeting to resolve the matter?

"That would be my purpose," Hitler said, "but we might not be able to restrain the German people."

Dodd said, "If you would wait and call a conference, Germany would regain her popularity outside."

Soon the meeting came to an end. It had lasted forty-five minutes. Though the session had been difficult and strange, Dodd nonetheless left the chancellery feeling convinced that Hitler was sincere about wanting peace. He was concerned, however, that he might again have violated the laws of diplomacy. "Perhaps I was too frank," he wrote later to Roosevelt, "but I had to be honest."

At 6:00 p.m. that day he sent a two-page cable to Secretary Hull summarizing the meeting and closed by telling Hull, "The total effect of the interview was more favorable from the point of view of the maintenance of world peace than I had expected."

Dodd also conveyed these impressions to Consul General Messersmith, who then sent Undersecretary Phillips a letter-at eighteen pages, a characteristically long one-in which he seemed intent on undermining Dodd's credibility. He challenged the amba.s.sador's appraisal of Hitler. "The Chancellor's a.s.surances were so satisfying and so unexpected that I think they are on the whole too good to be true," Messersmith wrote. "We must keep in mind, I believe, that when Hitler says anything he for the moment convinces himself that it is true. He is basically sincere; but he is at the same time a fanatic."

Messersmith urged skepticism regarding Hitler's protestations. "I think for the moment he genuinely desires peace but it is a peace of his own kind and with an armed force constantly becoming more effective in reserve, in order to impose their will when it may become essential." He reiterated his belief that Hitler's government could not be viewed as a rational ent.i.ty. "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."

He urged caution, in effect warning Phillips to be skeptical of Dodd's conviction that Hitler wanted peace. "I think for the present moment...we must guard against any undue optimism which may be aroused by the apparently satisfying declarations of the Chancellor."

ON THE MORNING of the rendezvous that Putzi Hanfstaengl had arranged for Martha with Hitler, she dressed carefully, seeing as she had been "appointed to change the history of Europe." To her it seemed a lark of the first order. She was curious to meet this man she once had dismissed as a clown but whom she now was convinced was "a glamorous and brilliant personality who must have great power and charm." She decided to wear her "most demure and intriguing best," nothing too striking or revealing, for the n.a.z.i ideal was a woman who wore little makeup, tended her man, and bore as many children as possible. German men, she wrote, "want their women to be seen and not heard, and then seen only as appendages of the splendid male they accompany." She considered wearing a veil. of the rendezvous that Putzi Hanfstaengl had arranged for Martha with Hitler, she dressed carefully, seeing as she had been "appointed to change the history of Europe." To her it seemed a lark of the first order. She was curious to meet this man she once had dismissed as a clown but whom she now was convinced was "a glamorous and brilliant personality who must have great power and charm." She decided to wear her "most demure and intriguing best," nothing too striking or revealing, for the n.a.z.i ideal was a woman who wore little makeup, tended her man, and bore as many children as possible. German men, she wrote, "want their women to be seen and not heard, and then seen only as appendages of the splendid male they accompany." She considered wearing a veil.

Hanfstaengl picked her up in his huge car and drove to the Kaiserhof, seven blocks away on Wilhelmplatz, just off the southeast corner of the Tiergarten. A grand hotel with a cavernous lobby and arched entrance portico, the Kaiserhof had been Hitler's home until his ascension to chancellor. Now Hitler often had lunch or tea in the hotel surrounded by his Chauffeureska.

Hanfstaengl had arranged that he and Martha would be joined for lunch by another party, a Polish tenor, Jan Kiepura, thirty-one years old. Hanfstaengl, well known and unmistakable, was treated with deference by the restaurant's staff. Once seated, Martha and the two men chatted over tea and waited. In time a commotion arose at the entrance to the dining room, and soon came the inevitable rumble of chairs shoved back and shouts of "Heil Hitler."

Hitler and his party-including, indeed, his chauffeur-took seats at an adjacent table. First, Kiepura was ushered to Hitler's side. The two spoke about music. Hitler seemed unaware that Kiepura under n.a.z.i law was cla.s.sified as Jewish, by maternal heritage. A few moments later Hanfstaengl came over and bent low to Hitler's ear. He barreled back to Martha with the news that Hitler would now see her.

She walked to Hitler's table and stood there a moment as. .h.i.tler rose to greet her. He took her hand and kissed it and spoke a few quiet words in German. She got a close look at him now: "a weak, soft face, with pouches under the eyes, full lips and very little bony facial structure." At this vantage, she wrote, the mustache "didn't seem as ridiculous as it appeared in pictures-in fact, I scarcely noticed it." What she did notice were his eyes. She had heard elsewhere that there was something piercing and intense about his gaze, and now, immediately, she understood. "Hitler's eyes," she wrote, "were startling and unforgettable-they seemed pale blue in color, were intense, unwavering, hypnotic."

Yet his manner was gentle-"excessively gentle," she wrote-more that of a shy teenager than an iron dictator. "Un.o.btrusive, communicative, informal, he had a certain quiet charm, almost a tenderness of speech and glance," she wrote.

Hitler now turned back to the tenor and with what seemed to be real interest rekindled their conversation about music.

He "seemed modest, middle cla.s.s, rather dull and self-conscious-yet with this strange tenderness and appealing helplessness," Martha wrote. "It was hard to believe that this man was one of the most powerful men in Europe."

Martha and Hitler shook hands once again, and for the second time he kissed hers. She returned to her table and to Hanfstaengl.

They remained a while longer, over tea, eavesdropping on the continuing conversation between Kiepura and Hitler. Now and then Hitler would look her way, with what she judged to be "curious, embarra.s.sed stares."

That night, over dinner, she told her parents all about the day's encounter and how charming and peaceful the Fuhrer Fuhrer had been. Dodd was amused and conceded "that Hitler was not an unattractive man personally." had been. Dodd was amused and conceded "that Hitler was not an unattractive man personally."

He teased Martha and told her to be sure to take note of exactly where Hitler's lips had touched her hand, and he recommended that if she "must" wash that hand, that she do so with care and only around the margins of the kiss.

She wrote, "I was a little angry and peeved."

Martha and Hitler never repeated their encounter, nor had she seriously expected they would, though as would become clear some years later, Martha did enter Hitler's mind on at least one more occasion. For her part, all she had wanted was to meet the man and satisfy her own curiosity. There were other men in her circle whom she found infinitely more compelling.

One of these had come back into her life, with an invitation for a most unusual date. By the end of October, Rudolf Diels had returned to Berlin and to his old post as chief of the Gestapo, paradoxically with even more power than before his exile to Czechoslovakia. Himmler had not only apologized for the raid on Diels's home; he had promised to make Diels a Standartenfuhrer Standartenfuhrer, or colonel, in the SS.

Diels sent him a fawning thank-you: "By promoting me to the Obersturmbannfuhrer der SS Obersturmbannfuhrer der SS, you have brought so much joy to me that it cannot be expressed in these short words of thanks."

Safe at least for the time being, Diels invited Martha to attend an upcoming session of the Reichstag arson trial, which had been under way in the Supreme Court in Leipzig for nearly a month but was about to reconvene in Berlin, at the scene of the crime. The trial was supposed to have been a short one and to conclude with convictions and, ideally, death sentences for all five defendants, but it was not proceeding as. .h.i.tler had hoped.

Now a special "witness" was scheduled to appear.

CHAPTER 21.

The Trouble with George With in Germany, a great flywheel had been set in motion that drove the country inexorably toward some dark place alien to Dodd's recollection of the old Germany he had known as a student. As the autumn advanced and color filled the Tiergarten, he came more and more to realize just how correct he had been back in Chicago, in the spring, when he had observed that his temperament was ill suited to "high diplomacy" and playing the liar on bended knee. He wanted to have an effect: to awaken Germany to the dangers of its current path and to nudge Hitler's government onto a more humane and rational course. He was fast realizing, however, that he possessed little power to do so. Especially strange to him was the n.a.z.i fixation on racial purity. A draft of a new penal code had begun to circulate that proposed to make it a key b.u.t.tress of German law. The American vice consul in Leipzig, Henry Leverich, found the draft an extraordinary doc.u.ment and wrote an a.n.a.lysis: "For the first time, therefore, in German legal history the draft code contains definite suggestions for protection of the German Race from what is considered the disintegration caused by an intermixture of Jewish and colored blood." If the code became law-and he had no doubt it would-then henceforth "it shall be considered as a crime for a gentile man or woman to marry a Jewish or colored man or woman." He noted also that the code made paramount the protection of the family and thus outlawed abortion, with the exception that a court could authorize the procedure when the expected offspring was a mix of German and Jewish or colored blood. Vice Consul Leverich wrote, "Judging from newspaper comment, this portion of the draft will almost certainly be transacted into law."

Another newly proposed law caught Dodd's particular attention-a law "to permit killing incurables," as he described it in a memorandum to the State Department dated October 26, 1933. Seriously ill patients could ask to be euthanized, but if unable to make the request, their families could do so for them. This proposal, "together with legislation already enacted governing the sterilization of persons affected by hereditary imbecility and other similar defects, is in line with Hitler's aim to raise the physical standard of the German people," Dodd wrote. "According to n.a.z.i philosophy only Germans who are physically fit belong in the Third Reich, and they are the ones who are expected to raise large families."

Attacks against Americans continued, despite Dodd's protests, and the prosecution of past cases seemed languid at best. On November 8 Dodd received notice from the German foreign office that no arrest would be made in the a.s.sault on H. V. Kaltenborn's son, because the senior Kaltenborn "could remember neither the name nor the number of the Party identification card of the culprit, and as no other clues which might be useful in the investigation could be found."

Perhaps because of his mounting sense of futility, Dodd s.h.i.+fted his focus from the realm of international affairs to the state of affairs within his own emba.s.sy. Dodd found himself-his frugal, Jeffersonian self-drawn more and more to concentrate on the failings of his staff and the extravagance of emba.s.sy business.

He intensified his campaign against the cost of telegrams and the length and redundancy of dispatches, all of which he believed to be consequences of having so many rich men in the department. "Wealthy staff people want to have c.o.c.ktail parties in the afternoon, card parties in the evening and get up next day at 10 o'clock," he wrote to Secretary Hull. "That tends to reduce effective study and work...and also to cause men to be indifferent to the cost of their reports and telegrams." Telegrams should be cut in half, he wrote. "Long habit here resists my efforts to shorten telegrams to the point where men have 'fits' when I erase large parts. I shall have to write them myself...."

What Dodd had failed as yet to fully appreciate was that in complaining about the wealth, dress, and work habits of emba.s.sy officers, he was in fact attacking Undersecretary Phillips, Western European Affairs Chief Moffat, and their colleagues, the very men who sustained and endorsed the foreign-service culture-the Pretty Good Club-that Dodd found so distressing. They saw his complaints about costs as offensive, tedious, and confounding, especially given the nature of his posting. Were there not matters of greater importance that demanded his attention?

Phillips in particular took umbrage and commissioned a study by the State Department's communications division to compare the volume of cables from Berlin with that of other emba.s.sies. The chief of the division, one D. A. Salmon, found that Berlin had sent three fewer telegrams than Mexico City and only four more messages than the tiny legation at Panama. Salmon wrote, "It would seem that in view of the acute situation existing in Germany the telegraphing from the American Emba.s.sy at Berlin had been very light since Amba.s.sador Dodd a.s.sumed charge."

Phillips sent the report to Dodd with a three-sentence cover letter in which, with an aristocratic sniff, he cited Dodd's recent mention of "the extravagance in the telegraphic business in the Emba.s.sy at Berlin." Phillips wrote: "Thinking it would be of interest to you, I enclose a copy of it herewith."

Dodd replied, "Do not think that Mr. Salmon's comparison of my work with that of my friend Mr. Daniels in Mexico in any sense affects me. Mr. Daniels and I have been friends since I was 18 years old; but I know that he does not know how to condense reports!"

DODD BELIEVED THAT one artifact of past excess-"another curious hangover," he told Phillips-was that his emba.s.sy had too many personnel, in particular, too many who were Jewish. "We have six or eight members of the 'chosen race' here who serve in most useful but conspicuous positions," he wrote. Several were his best workers, he acknowledged, but he feared that their presence on his staff impaired the emba.s.sy's relations.h.i.+p with Hitler's government and thus impeded the day-to-day operation of the emba.s.sy. "I would not for a moment consider transfer. However, the number is too great and one of them"-he meant Julia Swope Lewin, the emba.s.sy receptionist-"is so ardent and in evidence every day that I hear echoes from semi-official circles." He also cited the example of the emba.s.sy's bookkeeper, who, while "very competent," was also "one of the 'Chosen People' and that puts him at some disadvantage with the Banks here." one artifact of past excess-"another curious hangover," he told Phillips-was that his emba.s.sy had too many personnel, in particular, too many who were Jewish. "We have six or eight members of the 'chosen race' here who serve in most useful but conspicuous positions," he wrote. Several were his best workers, he acknowledged, but he feared that their presence on his staff impaired the emba.s.sy's relations.h.i.+p with Hitler's government and thus impeded the day-to-day operation of the emba.s.sy. "I would not for a moment consider transfer. However, the number is too great and one of them"-he meant Julia Swope Lewin, the emba.s.sy receptionist-"is so ardent and in evidence every day that I hear echoes from semi-official circles." He also cited the example of the emba.s.sy's bookkeeper, who, while "very competent," was also "one of the 'Chosen People' and that puts him at some disadvantage with the Banks here."

In this respect, oddly enough, Dodd also had concerns about George Messersmith. "His office is important and he is very able," Dodd wrote to Hull, "but German officials have said to one of the staff here: 'he is also a Hebrew.' I am no race antagonist, but we have a large number here and it affects the service and adds to my load."

For the moment, at least, Dodd seemed unaware that Messersmith was not in fact Jewish. He had fallen, apparently, for a rumor launched by Putzi Hanfstaengl after Messersmith had publicly chastised him during an emba.s.sy function for making an unwelcome advance on a female guest.

Dodd's a.s.sumption would have outraged Messersmith, who found it hard enough to listen to the speculation of n.a.z.i officials as to who was or was not Jewish. On Friday, October 27, Messersmith held a lunch at his house at which he introduced Dodd to a number of especially rabid n.a.z.is, to help Dodd gain a sense of the true character of the party. One seemingly sober and intelligent n.a.z.i stated as fact a belief common among party members that President Roosevelt and his wife had nothing but Jewish advisers. Messersmith wrote the next day to Undersecretary Phillips: "They seem to believe that because we have Jews in official positions or that important people at home have Jewish friends, our policy is being dictated by the Jews alone and that particularly the President and Mrs. Roosevelt are conducting anti-German propaganda under the influence of Jewish friends and advisers." Messersmith reported how this had caused him to bristle. "I told them that they must not think that because there is an anti-Semitic movement in Germany, well-thinking and well-meaning people in the United States were going to give up a.s.sociating with Jews. I said that the arrogance of some of the party leaders here was their greatest defect, and the feeling that they had that they could impose their views on the rest of the world, was one of their greatest weaknesses."

He cited such thinking as an example of the "extraordinary mentality" that prevailed in Germany. "It will be hard for you to believe that such notions actually exist among worthwhile people in the German Government," he told Phillips, "but that they do was made clear to me and I took the opportunity in no uncertain language to make clear how wrong they were and how much such arrogance injured them."

Given Phillips's own dislike of Jews, it is tantalizing to imagine what he really thought of Messersmith's observations, but on this the historical record is silent.

What is known, however, is that among the population of Americans who expressed anti-Semitic leanings, a common jibe described the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt as the "Rosenberg administration."

DODD'S WILLINGNESS TO BELIEVE that Messersmith was Jewish had little do with his own rudimental anti-Semitism but seemed rather to be a symptom of deeper misgivings that he had begun to harbor with regard to the consul general. Increasingly he wondered whether Messersmith was wholly on his side. that Messersmith was Jewish had little do with his own rudimental anti-Semitism but seemed rather to be a symptom of deeper misgivings that he had begun to harbor with regard to the consul general. Increasingly he wondered whether Messersmith was wholly on his side.

He never questioned Messersmith's competence or his courage in speaking out when American citizens and interests were harmed, and he acknowledged that Messersmith "has many sources of information which I do not have." But in two letters to Undersecretary Phillips, composed two days apart, Dodd suggested that Messersmith had outstayed his a.s.signment in Berlin. "I must add that he has been here three or four years in the midst of very exciting and troublous times," Dodd wrote in one of the letters, "and I think he has developed a sensitiveness, and perhaps even an ambition, which tend to make him restless and discontented. This may be too strong, but I think not."

Dodd gave little evidence for his appraisal. He isolated only one flaw with any clarity, and that was Messersmith's penchant for writing dispatches of great length on all things, grave or mundane. Dodd told Phillips that the size of Messersmith's dispatches could be halved "without the slightest injury" and that the man needed to be more judicious in his choice of subject. "Hitler could not have left his hat in a flying machine without an account of it."

The reports, however, were for Dodd merely a target of convenience, a proxy for sources of displeasure that were harder for him to isolate. By mid-November, his dissatisfaction with Messersmith had begun to veer toward distrust. He sensed that Messersmith coveted his own job, and he saw his unceasing production of reports as a manifestation of his ambitions. "It occurs to me," Dodd told Phillips, "that he feels that a promotion is due and I think that his services demand it; but I am not sure but that the most useful period of his work here has pa.s.sed. You know as well as I do that circ.u.mstances and conditions and sometimes disappointments make it wise to transfer even the ablest of Government officials." He urged Phillips to discuss the matter with consular-service chief Wilbur Carr "and see whether some such thing can not be done."

He closed, "I need hardly say that I hope all this will be kept entirely confidential."

That Dodd imagined Phillips would retain this confidence suggests he was unaware that Phillips and Messersmith maintained a regular and frequent exchange of correspondence outside the stream of official reportage. When Phillips replied to Dodd in late November, he added his usual dash of irony, the tone light and agreeable to an extent that suggested he was merely humoring Dodd, responsive yet at the same time dismissive. "The letters and dispatches of your Consul General are full of interest, but should be cut in half-as you say. More strength to your elbow! I look to you to spread this much needed reform."

ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, at about noon, Dodd was walking along Tiergartenstra.s.se, on his way to the Hotel Esplanade. He spotted a large procession of Storm Troopers in their telltale brown s.h.i.+rts marching toward him. Pedestrians stopped and shouted the Hitler salute. 29, at about noon, Dodd was walking along Tiergartenstra.s.se, on his way to the Hotel Esplanade. He spotted a large procession of Storm Troopers in their telltale brown s.h.i.+rts marching toward him. Pedestrians stopped and shouted the Hitler salute.

Dodd turned and walked into the park.

CHAPTER 22.

The Witness Wore Jackboots The weather chilled and with each day the northern dusk seemed to make a noticeable advance. There was wind, rain, and fog. That November the weather station at Tempelhof Airport would record periods of fog on fourteen of thirty days. The library at Tiergartenstra.s.se 27a became irresistibly cozy, the books and damask walls turned amber by the flames in the great hearth. On November 4, a Sat.u.r.day at the end of an especially dreary weak of rain and wind, Martha set out for the Reichstag building, where a makes.h.i.+ft courtroom had been constructed for the Berlin session of the great arson trial. She carried a ticket provided by Rudolf Diels.

Police with carbines and swords ringed the building-"swarms" of them, according to one observer. Everyone who tried to enter was stopped and checked. Eighty-two foreign correspondents crammed the press gallery at the back of the chamber. The five judges, led by presiding judge Wilhelm Bunger, wore scarlet robes. Throughout the audience were men in SS black and SA brown, as well as civilians, government officials, and diplomats. Martha was startled to find that her ticket placed her not just on the main floor but at the front of the courtroom among various dignitaries. "I walked in, my heart in my throat, as I was seated much too close to the front," she recalled.

The day's installment was scheduled to begin at nine fifteen, but the star witness, Hermann Goring, was late. For possibly the first time since testimony had begun in September there was real suspense in the room. The trial was supposed to have been short and to have provided the n.a.z.is with a world stage upon which they could condemn the evils of communism and at the same time challenge the widely held belief that they themselves had set the fire. Instead, despite clear evidence that the presiding judge favored the prosecution, the trial had proceeded like a real trial, with both sides presenting great ma.s.ses of evidence. The state hoped to prove that all five defendants had played a role in the arson, despite Marinus van der Lubbe's insistence that he alone was responsible. Prosecutors brought forth innumerable experts in an attempt to demonstrate that the damage to the building was far too extensive, with too many small fires in too many places, to have been the work of a single arsonist. In the process, according to Fritz Tobias, author of the seminal account of the fire and its aftermath, what was to have been an exciting, revealing trial instead became "a yawning abyss of boredom."

Until now.

Goring was due at any moment. Famously volatile and outspoken, given to flamboyant dress and always seeking attention, Goring was expected to add spark to the trial. The chamber filled with the wheeze of s.h.i.+fting flannel and mohair as people turned to look back toward the entrance.

A half hour pa.s.sed, and still Goring did not appear. Diels too was nowhere in sight.

To pa.s.s the time, Martha watched the defendants. There was Ernst Torgler, a Communist Party deputy to the Reichstag before Hitler's ascension, looking pale and tired. Three were Bulgarian communists-Georgi Dimitrov, Simon Popov, and Va.s.sili Tanev-who "looked wiry, tough, indifferent." The key defendant, van der Lubbe, presented "one of the most awful sights I have yet seen in human form. Big, bulky, sub-human face and body, he was so repulsive and degenerate that I could scarcely bear to look at him."

An hour elapsed. The tension in the room grew still greater as impatience and expectation merged.

A clamor arose at the back of the room-boots and commands, as Goring and Diels entered amid a spearhead of uniformed men. Goring, forty years old, 250 pounds or more, strode confidently to the front of the room in a brown hunting jacket, jodhpurs, and gleaming brown boots that came to his knees. None of it could mask his great girth or the resemblance he bore to "the hind end of an elephant," as one U.S. diplomat described him. Diels, in a handsome dark suit, was like a slender shadow.

"Everyone jumped up as if electrified," a Swiss reporter observed, "and all Germans, including the judges, raised their arms to give the Hitler salute."

Diels and Goring stood together at the front of the chamber, very near Martha. The two men spoke quietly.

The presiding judge invited Goring to speak. Goring stepped forward. He appeared pompous and arrogant, Martha recalled, but she sensed also a subcurrent of unease.

Goring launched into a prepared harangue that lasted nearly three hours. In a voice hard and coa.r.s.e, rising now and then to a shout, he raged against communism, the defendants, and the act of arson they had perpetrated against Germany. Cries of "Bravo!" and loud applause filled the chamber.

"With one hand he gestured wildly," wrote Hans Gisevius in his Gestapo memoir; "with the perfumed handkerchief in his other hand he wiped the perspiration from his brow." Attempting to capture a sense of the moment, Gisevius described the faces of the three most important actors in the room-"Dimitrov's full of scorn, Goring's contorted with rage, Presiding Judge Bunger's pale with fright."

And there was Diels, sleek, dark, his expression unreadable. Diels had helped interrogate van der Lubbe on the night of the fire and concluded that the suspect was a "madman" who had indeed set the fire all by himself. Hitler and Goring, however, had immediately decided that the Communist Party was behind it and that the fire was the opening blow of a larger uprising. On that first night Diels had watched Hitler's face grow purple with rage as he cried that every communist official and deputy was to be shot. The order was rescinded, replaced by ma.s.s arrests and impromptu acts of Storm Trooper violence.

Now Diels stood with one elbow against the judge's bench. From time to time he changed position as if to get a better view of Goring. Martha became convinced that Diels had planned Goring's performance, perhaps even written his speech. She recalled that Diels had been "especially anxious to have me present on this day, almost as if he were showing off his own craftsmans.h.i.+p."

Diels had warned against holding a trial of anyone other than van der Lubbe and had predicted the acquittal of the other defendants. Goring had failed to listen, although he did recognize what lay at stake. "A botch," Goring had acknowledged, "could have intolerable consequences."

NOW DIMITROV ROSE TO SPEAK. Wielding sarcasm and quiet logic, he clearly hoped to ignite Goring's famed temper. He charged that the police investigation of the fire and the initial court review of the evidence had been influenced by political directives from Goring, "thus preventing the apprehension of the real incendiaries."

"If the police were allowed to be influenced in a particular direction," Goring said, "then, in any case, they were only influenced in the proper direction."

"That is your opinion," Dimitrov countered. "My opinion is quite different."

Goring snapped, "But mine is the one that counts."

Dimitrov pointed out that communism, which Goring had called a "criminal mentality," controlled the Soviet Union, which "has diplomatic, political and economic contacts with Germany. Her orders provide work for hundreds of thousands of German workers. Does the Minister know that?"

"Yes I do," Goring said. But such debate, he said, was beside the point. "Here, I am only concerned with the Communist Party of Germany and with the foreign communist crooks who come here to set the Reichstag on fire."

The two continued sparring, with the presiding judge now and then interceding to warn Dimitrov against "making communist propaganda."

Goring, unaccustomed to challenge from anyone he deemed an inferior, grew angrier by the moment.

Dimitrov calmly observed, "You are greatly afraid of my questions, are you not, Herr Minister?"

At this Goring lost control. He shouted, "You will be afraid when I catch you. You wait till I get you out of the power of the court, you crook!"

The judge ordered Dimitrov expelled; the audience erupted in applause; but it was Goring's closing threat that made headlines. The moment was revealing in two ways-first, because it betrayed Goring's fear that Dimitrov might indeed be acquitted, and second, because it provided a knife-slash glimpse into the irrational, lethal heart of Goring and the Hitler regime.

The day also caused a further erosion of Martha's sympathy for the n.a.z.i revolution. Goring had been arrogant and threatening, Dimitrov cool and charismatic. Martha was impressed. Dimitrov, she wrote, was "a brilliant, attractive, dark man emanating the most amazing vitality and courage I have yet seen in a person under stress. He was alive, he was burning."

THE TRIAL SETTLED back into its previous bloodless state, but the damage had been done. The Swiss reporter, like dozens of other foreign correspondents in the room, recognized that Goring's outburst had transformed the proceeding: "For the world had been told that, no matter whether the accused was sentenced or acquitted by the Court, his fate had already been sealed." back into its previous bloodless state, but the damage had been done. The Swiss reporter, like dozens of other foreign correspondents in the room, recognized that Goring's outburst had transformed the proceeding: "For the world had been told that, no matter whether the accused was sentenced or acquitted by the Court, his fate had already been sealed."

CHAPTER 23.

Boris Dies Again As winter neared, Martha focused her romantic energies primarily on Boris. They logged hundreds of miles in his Ford convertible, with forays into the countryside all around Berlin.

On one such drive Martha spotted an artifact of the old Germany, a roadside shrine to Jesus, and insisted they stop for a closer look. She found within a particularly graphic rendition of the Crucifixion. The face of Jesus was contorted in an expression of agony, his wounds garish with blood. After a few moments, she glanced back at Boris. Though she never would have described herself as terribly religious, she was shocked by what she saw.

Boris stood with his arms stretched out, his ankles crossed, and his head drooping to his chest.