Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power (29 page)

There was, I must admit
, something mesmerizing about this ride. Only a seasoned movie star might have resisted the weird, vicarious sense that somehow some of the blind adulation of the crowds, who could have had no idea who was riding in the limousine directly behind Hitler, was meant for oneself. It was not difficult to imagine the feelings of the provincial Nazi Party functionaries in the cars that followed.

However much one loathed Nazis, and I certainly did, this was heady stuff. There could be no question about the German people’s intoxication with their leader. It is easy today to forget that in his prime—the word sticks on one’s tongue—Hitler was a masterful politician.

While many of the regular American correspondents in Berlin failed to get personal meetings with Hitler, Putzi Hanfstaengl was still in the business of trying to connect influential Americans with
Der Führer.
One person he targeted was Hearst, the powerful publisher, who traveled frequently to Europe and made a special point of declaring how much he liked Germany. He was particularly enchanted with Munich—“
the city, the surroundings
, the climate, the bright and happy Bavarian people, the
shops, the theaters, the museums—and the beer,” he told a reporter. “In fact, it is such a delightful place that one has to be careful not to want to live here instead of going home and attending to business.”

Catching up with Hearst, who was on another European trip during the summer of 1934, Hanfstaengl tried to convince him to come to Nuremberg to attend the Nazi Party rally. After the two men met in Munich, Putzi published an article in Germany that was cited in the
New York Times
on August 23. Putzi quoted the publisher as saying that the results of the plebiscite backing Hitler were “
a unanimous expression
of the popular will.” Hearst added: “Germany is battling for her liberation from the mischievous provisions of the Treaty of Versailles . . . This battle, in fact, can only be viewed as a struggle which all liberty-loving peoples are bound to follow with understanding and sympathy.” In his account, Putzi also reported that Hearst would attend the Nuremberg rally the following month.

Hanfstaengl had spoken too soon. Worried that his presence in Nuremberg could be viewed as an even stronger endorsement of Hitler’s movement, Hearst declined. Nonetheless, after some initial hesitation, he accepted Putzi’s invitation to meet the Nazi leader in Berlin on September 16, once the Nuremberg spectacle was over.

When they met in the Chancellery, Hitler—speaking through Hanfstaengl, who served as the translator—immediately asked: “
Why am I
so misrepresented, so misunderstood in America? Why are the people of America so antagonistic to my regime?”

Hearst reportedly explained that Americans “believe in democracy and are averse to dictatorship.”

Hitler replied that he had been elected by the German people, who had reaffirmed their support for his policies. “That is democracy, is it not?”

“That might be democracy, but it is also dictatorship in view of what those policies are,” Hearst said.

If accurate, that account, which was provided by his traveling secretary Harry Crocker, would indicate that Hearst wasn’t a completely uncritical admirer of Hitler as his critics back home were charging. But there’s no doubt that Hanfstaengl had achieved his goal of making Hearst see Hitler in a more positive light. Fromm noted in her diary that Putzi
had been “
bragging about
what he considers his latest achievements”—namely, orchestrating the Hearst-Hitler session at which the German leader “turned on all his charm to
impress
the great man.”

“
Hitler is certainly
an extraordinary man,” Hearst wrote to his friend and secretary Colonel Joseph Willicombe after their meeting. “We estimate him too lightly in America. He has enormous energy, intense enthusiasm, a marvelous facility for dramatic oratory, and great organizing ability.” He did throw in a note of caution, however: “Of course, all these qualities can be misdirected.”

“
Hitler needs a woman
,” Hanfstaengl declared to Martha Dodd during her early days in Berlin. “Hitler should have an American woman—a lovely woman could change the whole destiny of Europe.” Then, with his typical dramatic flourish, he proclaimed, “Martha, you are the woman!”

Martha recognized that “this sounded like inflated horse play as did most of Putzi’s schemes,” but she wasn’t sure he wasn’t serious. “I was quite satisfied by the role so generously passed on to me and rather excited by the opportunity that presented itself, to meet this strange leader of men,” she wrote. She was still convinced that Hitler was “a glamorous and brilliant personality who must have great power and charm.”

In her recollection of the day of her encounter, Martha added a somewhat sardonic note, which nonetheless reveals her state of mind: “Since I was appointed to change the history of Europe, I decided to dress in my most demure and intriguing best—which always appeals to the Germans: they want their women to be seen and not heard, and then only as appendages of the splendid male they accompany.”

Putzi and Martha went to the Kaiserhof, Hitler’s favorite hotel, where they met Jan Kiepura, a Polish singer. They drank tea and chatted until Hitler, accompanied by his bodyguards and driver, sat down at a table nearby. Kiepura was called over to Hitler’s table and the two men talked for a few minutes. Then, Putzi walked over to
Der Führer
, bending his tall frame down to whisper something to him. Visibly excited, he returned to Martha, telling her that he had agreed to meet her. When Martha walked over to his table, Hitler stood up and kissed her hand, murmuring something
that she didn’t catch since her German was still rudimentary then. Their encounter was very short, with Hitler kissing her hand once again as she went back to her table. From time to time, she recalled, he cast “curious, embarrassed stares” her way.

That meeting left her “with a picture of a weak, soft face, with pouches under the eyes, full lips and very little bony facial structure.” She barely noticed his famous mustache, but she observed that his eyes were “startling and unforgettable—they seemed pale blue in color, were intense, unwavering, hypnotic.” Overall, she found the Hitler she met that afternoon to be “excessively gentle and modest” and “unobtrusive, communicative, informal.” She was struck by “a certain, quiet charm, almost a tenderness of speech and glance.”

When Martha returned home that evening and told her father about her meeting with Hitler, the ambassador didn’t hide his amusement at how easily she was impressed by him. He did admit that Hitler could turn on personal charm, and, teasingly, told her not to wash her hands for a long time since she should preserve the extraordinary blessing of Hitler’s kiss. If anything, he persisted, she should wash carefully around the spot where his lips had blessed her. Martha was irritated by this ribbing, but she tried not to show it.

Nothing more clearly demonstrated the difference in perceptions of Hitler up close than another even more fleeting encounter, this one with Robert Lochner, the teenage son of the AP bureau chief. Robert and his stepmother were at the opera in Berlin one evening, waiting for his father to arrive, when suddenly a phalanx of SS men burst in, clearing a path for Hitler. As the leader followed in their wake, there were shouts of “
Heil Hitler
,” and the Germans shot their right arms out in the obligatory right-handed salute. Instead of following suit, Robert lapsed into the pose of a surly American teenager. “
I ostentatiously kept
both of my hands in my pockets and demonstratively chewed gum, which the Nazis disapproved of,” he recalled. For a split second, this prompted Hitler to focus his attention on him, and the teenager was startled by the menacing intensity of his “piercing look.”

Angus Thuermer, a cub reporter who worked in the AP bureau where Robert’s father was the boss, recalled how the younger Lochner explained
his feelings after that short incident. “
Ever afterwards
, I could understand how young officers, or anyone else, for that matter, would be terrorized by Hitler’s eyes,” he said.

Young as he was, Robert Lochner certainly understood Germany better than Martha Dodd—and was more attuned to the atmosphere of fear and intimidation that accompanied Hitler and the Nazis. But this wasn’t only a difference in the views of two young Americans. It also underscored how Hitler succeeded in favorably impressing women on so many occasions, particularly when in their company for the first time. Louis Lochner recalled attending a reception hosted by Joseph and Magda Goebbels in 1935, with many theater and movie people in attendance. Hitler appeared to love the company, pressing the hand of famed actress Dorothea Wieck, who blushed as he greeted her. Inviting her over to his table, he laughed and told stories, even slapping his thigh as he did so. And there was one thing that Lochner heard women saying over and over: “
Once you look
into Hitler’s eyes, you are his devoted follower forever.”

Aside from Hitler, Martha Dodd was initially attracted to many German men who showed up on the endless diplomatic social circuit. She wasn’t that taken with the young Reichswehr officers she met, whom she dismissed as “
extremely pleasant, handsome
, courteous, and uninteresting.” But aside from Putzi, she was happy to be in the company of the likes of Ernst Udet, the World War I flying ace who took her up in his plane (Martha later wrote
Sowing the Wind
, a mediocre novel about an Udet-like character); Prince Louis Ferdinand, the grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II and a frequent guest of the Dodds and the Lochners; and numerous young Foreign Ministry and SS men. One of these young men she dated, whom she at first considered to be part of the “
blond Aryan
wholesome-looking talent,” pressed her repeatedly for information about her father’s views on events in Germany. Finally recognizing what he was doing, she confessed that he was “one of the first disillusions I had in German official life.”

While she was still in what she characterized as her “
most violent
pro-Nazi period,” Martha met a young French diplomat, who began taking her out with her parents’ permission. Not that Martha cared much
about such formalities. Although her German male friends warned her that he was a French spy and she considered herself anti-French and pro-German, she was drawn to “the tall boy, romantic and perfect of feature.” When he denounced the militarism of the Nazis, she argued with him—but later she conceded that some of his arguments made her begin “to think a little.” Sylvia Crane, one of Martha’s friends, maintained that her political thinking was always guided by her love life. “
She just liked sleeping
with attractive men, and that’s how she learned about politics and history,” she said.

Martha was certainly eclectic in her tastes. Early in her stay, she met the Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels. He was a frequent visitor to the Dodds’ residence, often to assure the ambassador that he was doing what he could to prevent violence against Americans. Martha’s father and other diplomats viewed him as more sympathetic to their grievances than other German officials. Nonetheless, he was also presiding over the early concentration camps, and Martha admitted she heard from several people that “
at least twelve
people a day” were killed during that period. But none of that prevented Martha from going out with him, dancing in nightclubs and taking long drives in the country together. “
I was intrigued
and fascinated by this human monster of sensitive face and cruel, broken beauty,” she declared. Nor, of course, did it matter that Diels was married; Martha dismissed his wife as “
a pathetic
passive-looking creature.”

A young Jew who met Martha at several cocktail parties warned her that Diels was using her as protection, probably in some internal Nazi battles. “
Martha, you are
very silly, and you are playing with fire,” he said. But she wasn’t about to be dissuaded and kept seeing the Gestapo chief. “I was extremely interested in his type and his conversation,” she wrote. “He gave me, consciously and unconsciously, a picture of the backstage workings of espionage that I could have not got anywhere else.” It was a revealing comment that later could be read as an indirect admission about her own spying for a different regime.

Martha was soon infected by Diels’s evident nervousness about his rivals within the party, and in December 1933 even told Messersmith, the U.S. consul general, that he feared for his life.
He wanted
Messersmith to write a letter to the Nazi authorities praising him, suggesting that he was
doing a lot to keep U.S.-German relations on an even keel. Messersmith and Ambassador Dodd sympathized with him but didn’t feel they could write such a letter.

Martha worried both about inadvertently saying something to Diels about her German friends that might lead to their deaths, and about Diels himself. After one late night of dancing, Diels came into the Dodds’ residence for a drink in the library before going home. It was evident he wanted to talk about whatever latest intrigues he had on his mind. Martha grabbed a pillow from the sofa. When Diels asked her what she was doing, she indicated she was going to cover the phone. That prompted a fleeting sinister smile, as Martha recalled, and a nod of approval.

While Martha continued to take such measures, she admitted she got herself into “
a nervous state
that almost bordered on the hysterical.” She began replaying conversations in her head with various Germans, wondering if they were recorded or overheard. From her second-floor bedroom, she was suddenly prone to hear ominous footsteps on the gravel driveway, see moving shadows, and to assume any popping sound was a gunshot. As for Diels, in the period leading up to the Night of the Long Knives, he was like “
a frightened rabbit
,” Martha recalled, clinging to her. Diels survived the bloodletting of June 30, 1934, but earlier he lost his post of Gestapo chief, never attaining that prominent a position in the Nazi hierarchy again.