By now the turbulent, violent events of the thirties and forties must count as one of the most broadly recorded and studied periods in history. We’ve all watched the war films, remembered the history lessons, visited the museums. Mention that period and everyone can throw out a dozen, at least, of the defining events; Pearl Harbor, D-Day, The Battle of Britain. Or mention the people who lived through it all, and you’ll get back Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt, all of them with enough books to their names already, they seem more like mythical, archetypal characters than actual flesh and blood mortals. With a public so familiar with the period, authors have to become increasingly resourceful to dig into the corners of filing cabinets, just to come up with anything fresh to say.

So, with his new book, In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson admits to making ‘no effort at another grand history of the age,’ instead plumbing the back of said filing cabinet for the more personal, and little known, experiences of an American family in Berlin, 1933.
The family in question are the Dodd’s of Chicago. Frugal, homespun, typically American, likeable, and, surprisingly, Roosevelt’s ambassador to Berlin. Unlike the more well known figures, cherished and revered for their greatness, Erik Larson presents the normality of William Dodd, his wife, his son – neither wife nor son resembling more than a vague, almost forgotten about presence in the course of the narrative – and, crucially, his daughter Martha, against the terrifying loopiness of Nazi Germany. Larson knows the Dodd family well, and admiration, particularly at the ambassador’s quiet defiance, jumps off the page.

The Dodd’s are outsiders from the start. Virtually on the breadline when compared against the embassy staff, almost all uniformly rich and partial to expensive parties. And unsurprisingly despised by the Nazi administration for Dodd’s frequent, and extraordinarily undiplomatic, verbal attacks. There’s even a cruelty, borne out of snobbish pique, in the State Department’s referral to ambassador Dodd as ‘ambassador Dud.’ On the other hand, Martha has a ball ratcheting up lovers.
Larson is just as generous and appreciative of the variety of Berlin’s inhabitants, applying what surely must have been a monumental research period – even if you never normally read the Sources and Acknowledgement section, check his out simply for the depth of required reading behind the book – to vividly bring these people to life. Larson’s empathy with these brave, defiant, frequently terrified people is one of the book’s greatest pleasures.

Its also crucial in refusing to judge the Dodd’s, especially Martha, in their initial seduction by the beauty of Berlin and, Nazi’s aside, of the German people. Judging them would be easy, given hindsight, as Larson himself recognises and states, but it would also be unfair. The Dodd’s were no more complicit than the rest of the wary, Depression hit world, in waiting out Hitler’s brutality. Its how events spiralled completely out of control till the inevitable happened. As one of the book’s many incidental characters so succinctly described the situation, ‘looking back on it all is like seeing someone you love go mad – and do horrible things.’

The Dodd’s initial defensiveness about Germany soon gives way to a more sickening realisation, and with it, a courageous attempt to intervene in whatever small way the ambassador can. Its this journey which powers the book, helped along by Erik Larson’s short, snappy chapters, and liberal use of cliffhangers, which gives the book a sense of presence and urgency. It doesn’t feel like an account of events from nearly eighty years ago, but something more relevant.

Its the details which are the most telling. One, a particularly deft improvisation in espionage recounts ambassador Dodd keeping a cardboard box full of cotton around his office, the purpose of which was to cover the supposedly bugged telephone during sensitive conversations. Another one; a meeting was arranged between Martha and Hitler, on the sly, with the intention, never serious on her part, of a political marriage. Its details like these which show how much more of a rich history there still remains. Hopefully Erik Larson is already back at work, digging amongst some dusty archives.

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