It’s relatively rare that I read a book and wonder, “why was this book written?”, and yet that was the question I kept asking myself here. The thesis of this book appears to be, “the people who were around during the beginning of the Third Reich were complicated people.” I guess I can buy that, but… it appears to be such a low bar to jump, why bother? And fundamentally that is a question that underscores this book. Half of the book is about the various love affairs of Ambassador Dodd’s daughter Martha and, while there are some rather jaw-dropping scenes (Hitler flirted with her!), that is really not worth spending much time on.

The summary of Ambassador Dodd’s tenure in Berlin is historically interesting, but here again I think it can be summarized as: “a liberal fuddy-duddy wags his finger and… that’s about it”. Granted he was working within a political and bureaucratic context which did not allow much maneuvering. And granted he made a handful of brave and brazen statements in a place where standing out was not a good idea. All the same there was a lever he could have pulled - he could have pushed the State Department to issue a travel warning for Americans going to Germany, a move which may have helped push Hitler’s government a bit, and was fully warranted by the actions of the German government. The fact that he did nothing seems rather significant, and I wish Larson had spent a bit more time mulling that over.

There is one final note which I find interesting, and that is the description of day to day life in Germany at the time. Particularly the concept of “coordination” and “self-coordination” - the manner in which citizens willfully lined themselves up with Nazi ideology seems entirely creepy and scary to me. I would have been interested to read more about that, but I suppose a different kind of book could have explored that sort of effect much better.