Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power

PRAISE FOR

HITLER
LAND

“Andrew Nagorski, a deft storyteller, has plumbed the dispatches, diaries, letters, and interviews of American journalists, diplomats, and others who were present in Berlin to write a fascinating account of a fateful era.”

—
Henry Kissinger

“Andrew Nagorski once again turns his perceptive, seasoned foreign correspondent’s eye to a dramatic historical subject. This eye-opening account of the Americans in 1920s and 1930s Berlin offers a totally new perspective on a subject we thought we already knew.”

—
Anne Applebaum
, author of
Gulag: A History

“Andrew Nagorski’s
Hitlerland
is a fresh, compelling portrait of Nazi Germany, as seen through the eyes of a fascinating array of Americans who lived and worked there during Hitler’s rise to power. The extraordinary saga of Putzi Hanfstaengl, a Harvard graduate who became Hitler’s court jester, is just one of the many page-turning stories that make
Hitlerland
a book not to be missed.”

—
Lynne Olson
, author of
Citizens of London

“The rise of Hitler and the Nazi state, one of the most consequential and profound narratives in all of world politics, receives compelling new treatment in Andrew Nagorski’s outstanding
Hitlerland
. By illuminating the disparate experiences of the era’s preeminent American diplomats, journalists, intellectuals, and others, Nagorski has created an engrossing, harrowing, and vividly drawn mosaic of eyewitness accounts to one of history’s most phenomenal catastrophes.”

—
Gordon M. Goldstein
, author of
Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam

“At times deliciously gossipy, at times thoroughly chilling,
Hitlerland
offers countless novel insights into Germany’s evolution from struggling democracy in the 1920s to totalitarian dictatorship in the 1930s. The intimate portraits from Hitler down add an almost tangible sense of the foibles, ambitions, insecurities, and perversities of the relatively small top Nazi elite whose actions plunged our world into a catastrophe from which we are yet fully to recover. The Americans themselves come alive as a group of intense, enterprising journalists and diplomats faced with the greatest challenge of their lives.”

—
Misha Glenny
, author of
The Balkans 1804–1999

Hitler’s rise to power, Germany’s march to the abyss, as seen through the eyes of Americans—diplomats, military, expats, visiting authors, Olympic athletes—who watched horrified and up close. By tapping a rich vein of personal testimonies,
Hitlerland
offers a gripping narrative full of surprising twists—and a startlingly fresh perspective on this heavily dissected era.

Some of the Americans in Weimar and then Hitler’s Germany were merely casual observers, others deliberately blind; a few were Nazi apologists. But most slowly began to understand the horror of what was unfolding, even when they found it difficult to grasp the breadth of the catastrophe.

Among the journalists, William Shirer, Edgar Mowrer, and Dorothy Thompson were increasingly alarmed. Consul General George Messersmith stood out among the American diplomats because of his passion and courage. Truman Smith, the first American official to meet Hitler, was an astute political observer and a remarkably resourceful military attaché. Historian William Dodd, whom FDR tapped as ambassador in Hitler’s Berlin, left disillusioned; his daughter Martha scandalized the embassy with her procession of lovers from her initial infatuation with Nazis she took up with. She ended as a Soviet spy.

On the scene were George Kennan, who would become famous as the architect of containment; Richard Helms, who rose to the top of the CIA; Howard K. Smith, who would coanchor the
ABC Evening News
. The list of prominent visitors included writers Sinclair Lewis and Thomas Wolfe, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, the great athlete Jesse Owens, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, and black sociologist and historian W.E.B. Dubois.

Observing Hitler and his movement up close, the most perceptive of these Americans helped their reluctant countrymen begin to understand the nature of Nazi Germany as it ruthlessly eliminated political opponents, instilled hatred of Jews and anyone deemed a member of an inferior race, and readied its military and its people for a war for global domination. They helped prepare Americans for the years of struggle ahead.

Andrew Nagorski
, award-winning journalist, is vice president and director of public policy at the EastWest Institute, a New York–based international affairs think tank. During a long career at
Newsweek,
he served as the magazine’s bureau chief in Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw, and Berlin. He is the author of four previous books and has written for countless publications. He lives in Pelham Manor, New York.

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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Birth of Freedom
Reluctant Farewell

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nagorski, Andrew.

Hitlerland : American eyewitnesses to the Nazi rise to power / by Andrew Nagorski.—1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed.

p.     cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Germany—Politics and government—1918–1933. 2. Germany—Politics and government—1933–1945. 3. Hitler, Adolf, 1889–1945. 4. Nazis—History. 5. Americans—Germany—Biography. 6. World War, 1939–1945—Personal narratives, American. 7. World War, 1939–1945—Social aspects—Germany. 8. Germany—Social conditions—1918–1933.
9. Germany—Social conditions—1933–1945. I. Title.

DD253.N225 2011

940.54’213—dc23                  2011017360

ISBN 978-1-4391-9100-2
ISBN 978-1-4391-9102-6 (eBook)

Photo credits.

For the youngest generation,
Christina, Kaia, Maia, Charles, Sydney, Caye, and Stella,
And, as always,
For Krysia

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Contents

Introduction

1
“Nervous Breakdown”

2
Up in the Air

3
Whale or Minnow?

4
“I Will Show Them”

5
“Get Out, and Fast”

6
“Like Football and Cricket”

7
Dancing with Nazis

8
“A Mad Hatter’s Luncheon Party”