William Dodd (ambassador)
Encyclopedia
William Edward Dodd was an American historian who served as the United States Ambassador to Germany
from 1933 to 1937, during the Nazi era
.
. He earned his bachelor's degree from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute
in 1895 and a master's degree in 1897. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Leipzig
in 1900. He and his wife, Martha, married on December 25, 1901. They had two children, a daughter, Martha
, who became a Communist agent, and a son, William E. Dodd, Jr.
He learned a class-conscious view of Southern history from his family, which taught him that slaveholders were responsible for the Civil War. His semi-literate and impoverished father supported his family only through the generosity of wealthier relatives, whom Dodd came to view as "hard men, those traders and aristocratic masters of their dependents!". Dodd taught history at Randolph–Macon College from 1900 to 1908. His instruction there was at times controversial, because it included attacks on Southern aristocratic values. In 1902, he wrote an article in The Nation
in which he complained of pressure to flatter Southern elites and their view that slavery played no role in the onset of the Civil War. He criticized the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans
by name. Confederate societies called for his dismissal. Dodd explained that "To suggest that the revolt from the union in 1860 was not justified, was not led by the most lofty minded statesmen, is to invite not only criticism but an enforced resignation." University administrators supported him and he attacked his accusers and detailed their distortions of Southern history. When recruited by the University of Chicago
, he began his 25-year career as Professor of American History there in 1908.
Dodd was the first, and for many years the only, college or university professor fully devoted to the history of the American South. He produced many scholarly works, both articles and books, and won excellent reviews as a teacher. Though much of his scholarship was superseded in later years, he helped to model a new approach to regional history: sympathetic, judicious, and less partisan than the work of earlier generations. In a letter to President Theodore Roosevelt
, he described his approach: "The purpose of my studying and writing history is to strike a balance somewhat between the North and the South, but not to offer any defense of any thing."
Dodd wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson
in German
. Dodd was a Democrat, active in Chicago politics. In 1912 he wrote speeches for presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson
. He became a friend of President Wilson, visited him in the White House frequently, and authored a biography of him, Woodrow Wilson and his Work, that appeared in 1920. He was an early opponent of the theory that German imperialism was solely responsible for World War I
. He gave speeches on behalf of Wilson and U.S. participation in the League of Nations
, and in 1920 he reviewed the League-related parts of the speech Ohio Governor James M. Cox
gave when accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency. In the 1920s, following Wilson's death, Dodd lectured on his administration and its accomplishments, revised the biography he had written, and co-edited the six-volumes of The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson. He wrote in defense of Wilson for both scholarly journals and the popular press. Through these efforts, he developed connections to a number of figures in the Democratic Party establishment, including Josephus Daniels
, Daniel C. Roper, and Edward M. House
.
Dodd held several positions as an officer of the American Historical Association
and was named the organization's president for 1934.
Dodd long planned to write a multi-volume history of the American South. As he reached his sixties, he found the prospect of completing it increasingly unlikely, given his academic responsibilities.
and Newton D. Baker
, both of whom declined citing personal reasons. With the administration under pressure to act before the adjournment of Congress, Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper, a longtime friend of Dodd and his family, suggested his name after Dodd himself had made it clear he was seeking a diplomatic post that would allow him sufficient free time to complete his multi-volume history.
President Roosevelt
offered Dodd the position on June 8, 1933, and sent the Senate his nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to Germany on June 10, 1933. He was confirmed the same day. Before his departure, Dodd's old friend Carl Sandburg
told him he needed "to find out what this man Hitler is made of, what makes his brain go round, what his blood and bones are made of" and still "be brave and truthful, keep your poetry and integrity." He left for Germany on July 5, 1933, accompanied by his wife and two adult children. His departure statements said:
, a plumbing industry tycoon and philanthropist, expressed great admiration for Hitler. As for the Jews, Crane said: "Let Hitler have his way." Some of the State Department's most senior officials harbored an outright dislike of Jews, including William Phillips
, Undersecretary of State, the second highest-ranking man in the department. Dodd met with members of the Jewish-American community, including Stephen S. Wise and Felix Warburg, who asked him to seek a reversal of the Nazi's repressive anti-Jewish policies. Dodd promised he would "exert all possible personal influence against unjust treatment" of German Jews, but not in his official capacity.
President Roosevelt advised him on June 16, 1933:
Edward M. House
, a veteran in Democratic Party circles since the Wilson administration, told Dodd that he should do what he could "to ameliorate Jewish sufferings," but cautioned, "the Jews should not be allowed to dominate economic or intellectual life in Berlin as they have done for a long time." Dodd shared House's views and wrote in his diary that "The Jews had held a great many more of the key positions in Germany than their numbers or talents entitled them to." Based on this view of the proper role of Jews in society, he advised Hitler in March 1934 that Jewish influence should be retrained in Germany as it was in the United States. "I explained to him [Hitler]" wrote Dodd, "that where a question of over-activity of Jews in university or official life made trouble, we had managed to redistribute the offices in such a way as to not give great offense." Hitler ignored Dodd's advice and responded that "if they [the Jews] continue their activity we shall make a complete end of them in this country."
Dodd tried without success to save the life of Helmut Hirsch
, an German-American Jew who planned to bomb parts of the Nazi party rally grounds
at Nuremberg
.
On October 5, 1933, Dodd gave a speech in Berlin in which he described the New Deal
programs in the following way: "It was not revolution as men are prone to say. It was a popular expansion of governmental powers beyond all constitutional grants; and nearly all men everywhere hope the President may succeed."
, a reporter for the Chicago Daily News
and president of the Foreign Press Association in Berlin published a book-length attack on the Nazis, Germany Puts the Clock Back, and continued his critical coverage until the government demanded his resignation as head of the Association. The U.S. Department ignored the government's demand that it arrange for his return to the U.S. When Mowrer's employers arranged for him to leave and he sought to stay to cover the September 1933 Nuremberg rally, Dodd refused to support him, believing his reporting was so provocative that it made it difficult for other American journalists to work.
and Alfred Rosenberg
in attendance, and used an elaborate analogy based on Roman history to criticize the Nazis as "half-educated statesmen" who adopted the "arbitrary modes" of an ancient tyrant. His views grew more critical and pessimistic with the Night of the Long Knives
in June-July 1934, when the Nazis killed prominent political opponents many dissenters within the Nazi movement. Dodd was one of the very few in the U.S. and European diplomatic community who reported that the Nazis were too strongly entrenched for any opposition to emerge. In May 1935 he reported to his State Department superiors that Hitler intended "to annex part of the Corridor, part of Czechoslovakia, and all of Austria." A few months later he predicted a German-Italian alliance. Feeling ineffectual, Dodd offered to resign, but Roosevelt allowed him only a recuperative visit to the U.S. The President wrote to U.S Ambassador to Italy Breckinridge Long
in September 1935 that he and Dodd had been "far more accurate in you pessimism for the past two years than any of my other friends in Europe." In a note to Assistant Secretary of State R. Walton Moore
that same month, he wrote of Dodd: "we most certainly do not want him to consider resigning. I need him in Berlin." Dodd reported to Secretary of State Hull in September 1936 that Hitler's domestic economic policies, rearmament, and Rhineland initiatives had consolidated his support to the point that he could count on the support of the German people for a declaration of war "in any measure he might undertake."
Following a U.S. vacation of several months in 1936, Dodd devoted the fall to testing German reaction to a personal meeting between Roosevelt and Hitler, an initiative the President proposed, or a world peace conference. After a series of rebuffs, Dodd produced a report for the State Department dated November 28, 1936, that Assistant Secretary Moore commended and forwarded to Roosevelt. He decried the tendency of Europeans to refuse to believe that Hitler meant to carry out the expansionist plans he had outlined in Mein Kampf. He described Hitler's success in outmaneuvering France and Great Britain diplomatically and forging ties with Italy and Spain. Assessing the current situation he wrote: "there does not appear to be any vital force or combination of forces which will materially impede Germany in pursuit of her ambitions."
Early in his tenure as ambassador, Dodd decided to avoid attending the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg rather than appear to endorse Hitler's regime. In 1933, the State Department left the decision to him, and other ambassadors, including those of France and Great Britain, adopted a similar policy. As the Nazi Party became indistinguishable from the government, however, the State Department preferred that Dodd attend and avoid giving offense to the German government. State Department pressure increased each year until Dodd determined to avoid attending in 1937 by arranging a visit to the United States at the time of the rally. His advice against sending a representative of the U.S. embassy to attend the September 1937 Nazi Party congress in Nuremberg was overridden by his State Department superiors, and the State Department allowed its overruling of Dodd's position to became public. Hitler expressed his pleasure with the attendance of the U.S., Great Britain, and France for the first time, recognizing it as an "innovation" in policy.
President Roosevelt, reacting to complaints about Dodd's effectiveness as well as his health, notified the State Department in April 1937 that he was prepared to see Dodd's tenure end September 1. Then Dodd, on his arrival in the U.S. in August said that "the basic objective of some powers in Europe is to frighten and even destroy democracies everywhere," provoking a formal protest on the part of the German Ambassador to the U.S. Given that exchange, the State Department determined that it was more important that Dodd return to Germany than to allow his resignation to appear a response to German protests. Dodd left a resignation letter and suggested the following March as a suitable date. In September, his dispute with the State Department over U.S. diplomatic presence at the Nuremberg rallies became public. The German government told the State Department that Dodd could no longer function in Berlin. Dodd was surprised when told in November to prepare to depart by the end of the year. His resignation was announced in December.
Dodd left Berlin without notifying the press. The New York Times reported that upon arriving in New York on January 6, 1938, he said that he "doubted if an American envoy who held his ideals of democracy could represent his country successfully among the Germans at the present time." The German government said his remarks demonstrated "the retiring ambassador's habitual lack of comprehension of the new Germany." Hitler said he felt "vivid satisfaction" with Dodd's replacement, career diplomat, Hugh R. Wilson
, and Time
magazine wrote:
In a speech at the Nuremberg Congress the following September, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
denounced Dodd by name for his "laments on the decay of German culture."
, Czechoslovakia
, and Poland
. Dodd, who was in failing health, traveled on a speaking tour of Canada and the US, establishing his reputation as a statesman who opposed the Nazis.
In 1938, Dodd wrote an assessment of Nazi ideology and the Third Reich's plan for Europe. He stated:
A volume of his planned four-volume history of the South appeared in 1938 as The Old South: Struggles for Democracy, covering the 17th century.
Dodd's wife died in May 1938.
In December of 1938, Dodd accidentally ran over a 4-year-old child and then fled the scene. The child, who was African-American, sustained severe injuries, but survived the ordeal. Dodd was subsequently charged with leaving the scene of an accident. Dodd was convicted, and the trial court fined Dodd $250 plus court costs. Dodd also paid over $1000 for the child’s medical bills.
After a year's illness, Dodd died on February 9, 1940, at his country home at Round Hill, Loudoun County, Virginia
.
In April 1946, during the Nuremberg trials
, Dodd's diaries were used as evidence against Hjalmar Schacht
, a liberal economist and banker, and a Nazi government official until the end of 1937. Schacht praised Dodd's character but suggested his views in the 1930s were tainted by his less than fluent German. He testified that Dodd was his friend and invited him to emigrate to the United States. Schacht's attorney described Dodd as "one of the few accredited diplomats in Berlin who very obviously had no sympathy of any sort for the regime in power".
Assessments of Dodd's service in Berlin vary considerably, colored by what another ambassador might have accomplished. Hull in his Memoirs described Dodd as "sincere though impulsive and inexperienced." Dodd felt himself a failure both during his ambassadorship and after, having set himself the impossible standard of "changing the Third Reich by example and persuasion." Historian Gerhard Weinberg
believes no other ambassador to Nazi Germany was more effective, "even if some were more popular and others better informed." He reports the assessment of George S. Messersmith
, the embassy's consul general who worked closely with Dodd, who wrote that "there were very few men who realized what was happening in Germany more thoroughly " than Dodd, who proved ineffective because he "was completely appalled by what was happening." Historian Franklin L. Ford faults Dodd for failing in to provide "concrete intelligence concerning immediate Nazi objectives and power" as his peers were providing their superiors in London and Paris. He faults as well Dodd's nostalgic view of the Germany of his student years and centuries past that enabled him to view German anti-Semitism as a Nazi phenomenon driven personally by Hitler without recognizing its deeper roots in German society. A harsh critic of FDR's foreign policy called Dodd "a tragic misfit", "a babe-in-the-woods in the dark forests of Berlin."
United States Ambassador to Germany
The United States has had diplomatic relations with the nation of Germany and its predecessor nation, the Kingdom of Prussia, since 1835. These relations were broken twice while Germany and the United States were at war...
from 1933 to 1937, during the Nazi era
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
.
Early years and academic career
Dodd was born on October 21, 1869, in Clayton, North CarolinaClayton, North Carolina
Clayton is a town in Johnston County, North Carolina, United States. A very small portion of the town extends into Wake County. As of 2010, Clayton's population was 9,676 people. Since 2000, it had a population growth of 38.80 percent. Much of that growth can be attributed to the town's close...
. He earned his bachelor's degree from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, popularly known as Virginia Tech , is a public land-grant university with the main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia with other research and educational centers throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, and internationally.Founded in...
in 1895 and a master's degree in 1897. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Leipzig
University of Leipzig
The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...
in 1900. He and his wife, Martha, married on December 25, 1901. They had two children, a daughter, Martha
Martha Dodd
Martha Eccles Dodd and her husband spied for the Soviet Union against her native United States from before World War II until the height of the Cold War. She had lived in Berlin early in the Third Reich with her father, then United States Ambassador to Germany.-Biography:Martha Dodd was born in...
, who became a Communist agent, and a son, William E. Dodd, Jr.
William E. Dodd, Jr.
William Edward Dodd Jr. was an American political activist who ran unsuccessfully for Congress during the 1930s. While working for the Federal Communications Commission in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1940s, he became the target of an early congressional crusade against...
He learned a class-conscious view of Southern history from his family, which taught him that slaveholders were responsible for the Civil War. His semi-literate and impoverished father supported his family only through the generosity of wealthier relatives, whom Dodd came to view as "hard men, those traders and aristocratic masters of their dependents!". Dodd taught history at Randolph–Macon College from 1900 to 1908. His instruction there was at times controversial, because it included attacks on Southern aristocratic values. In 1902, he wrote an article in The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
in which he complained of pressure to flatter Southern elites and their view that slavery played no role in the onset of the Civil War. He criticized the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans
United Confederate Veterans
The United Confederate Veterans, also known as the UCV, was a veteran's organization for former Confederate soldiers of the American Civil War, and was equivalent to the Grand Army of the Republic which was the organization for Union veterans....
by name. Confederate societies called for his dismissal. Dodd explained that "To suggest that the revolt from the union in 1860 was not justified, was not led by the most lofty minded statesmen, is to invite not only criticism but an enforced resignation." University administrators supported him and he attacked his accusers and detailed their distortions of Southern history. When recruited by the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, he began his 25-year career as Professor of American History there in 1908.
Dodd was the first, and for many years the only, college or university professor fully devoted to the history of the American South. He produced many scholarly works, both articles and books, and won excellent reviews as a teacher. Though much of his scholarship was superseded in later years, he helped to model a new approach to regional history: sympathetic, judicious, and less partisan than the work of earlier generations. In a letter to President Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
, he described his approach: "The purpose of my studying and writing history is to strike a balance somewhat between the North and the South, but not to offer any defense of any thing."
Dodd wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. Dodd was a Democrat, active in Chicago politics. In 1912 he wrote speeches for presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
. He became a friend of President Wilson, visited him in the White House frequently, and authored a biography of him, Woodrow Wilson and his Work, that appeared in 1920. He was an early opponent of the theory that German imperialism was solely responsible for World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. He gave speeches on behalf of Wilson and U.S. participation in the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
, and in 1920 he reviewed the League-related parts of the speech Ohio Governor James M. Cox
James M. Cox
James Middleton Cox was the 46th and 48th Governor of Ohio, U.S. Representative from Ohio and Democratic candidate for President of the United States in the election of 1920....
gave when accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency. In the 1920s, following Wilson's death, Dodd lectured on his administration and its accomplishments, revised the biography he had written, and co-edited the six-volumes of The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson. He wrote in defense of Wilson for both scholarly journals and the popular press. Through these efforts, he developed connections to a number of figures in the Democratic Party establishment, including Josephus Daniels
Josephus Daniels
Josephus Daniels was a newspaper editor and publisher from North Carolina who was appointed by United States President Woodrow Wilson to serve as Secretary of the Navy during World War I...
, Daniel C. Roper, and Edward M. House
Edward M. House
Edward Mandell House was an American diplomat, politician, and presidential advisor. Commonly known by the title of Colonel House, although he had no military experience, he had enormous personal influence with U.S...
.
Dodd held several positions as an officer of the American Historical Association
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials...
and was named the organization's president for 1934.
Dodd long planned to write a multi-volume history of the American South. As he reached his sixties, he found the prospect of completing it increasingly unlikely, given his academic responsibilities.
Appointment as Ambassador to Germany
The Roosevelt administration had difficulty filling the post of U.S. Ambassador to Germany. The volatile political situation in Germany presented diplomatic challenges, but most observers expected German politics would stabilize before too long. The ambassadorship, normally a patronage position rather than one filled by a State Department professional, was offered to others, including James M. CoxJames M. Cox
James Middleton Cox was the 46th and 48th Governor of Ohio, U.S. Representative from Ohio and Democratic candidate for President of the United States in the election of 1920....
and Newton D. Baker
Newton D. Baker
Newton Diehl Baker, Jr. was an American politician who belonged to the Democratic Party. He served as the 37th mayor of Cleveland, Ohio from 1912 to 1915 and as U.S. Secretary of War from 1916 to 1921.-Early years:...
, both of whom declined citing personal reasons. With the administration under pressure to act before the adjournment of Congress, Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper, a longtime friend of Dodd and his family, suggested his name after Dodd himself had made it clear he was seeking a diplomatic post that would allow him sufficient free time to complete his multi-volume history.
President Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
offered Dodd the position on June 8, 1933, and sent the Senate his nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to Germany on June 10, 1933. He was confirmed the same day. Before his departure, Dodd's old friend Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
told him he needed "to find out what this man Hitler is made of, what makes his brain go round, what his blood and bones are made of" and still "be brave and truthful, keep your poetry and integrity." He left for Germany on July 5, 1933, accompanied by his wife and two adult children. His departure statements said:
German debts
Before his departure for Berlin, State Department officials set as his priority the need to ensure that the German government did not default on its debts to American lenders. Dodd met with a group of bankers in New York City who recognized that economic conditions in Germany made full payment unlikely. They hoped he could argue against a German default and suggested they would agree to lower the interest on their loans form 7% to 4% to prevent it. National City Bank and Chase National Bank held over 100 million dollars in German bonds, which Germany later proposed to pay back at the rate of thirty-cents on the dollar. Dodd was not sympathetic to the bankers or the high interest rates they charged. He repeatedly registered protests with the German government when payments were suspended or debts to United States lenders were treated differently from debts owed to those in other countries. Yet he remained fundamentally in sympathy with Germany's request that interest rates be lowered. As Secretary of State Hull insisted that Dodd renew his requests for payment, Dodd expressed frustration in his diary: "What more can I say than I have said a score of times? Germany is in a terrible plight and for once she recognizes war is no remedy."Antisemitism
Before leaving to take up his post, Dodd consulted on the situation in Germany, and especially Nazi persecution of the Jews, with his own contacts and during interviews the State Department arranged for him. The opinions he heard covered a broad range. Charles Richard CraneCharles Richard Crane
Charles Richard Crane was a wealthy American businessman, heir to a large industrial fortune and connoisseur of Arab culture, a noted Arabist. His widespread business interests gave him entree into domestic and international political affairs where he enjoyed privileged access to many...
, a plumbing industry tycoon and philanthropist, expressed great admiration for Hitler. As for the Jews, Crane said: "Let Hitler have his way." Some of the State Department's most senior officials harbored an outright dislike of Jews, including William Phillips
William Phillips (diplomat)
William Phillips was a career United States diplomat who served twice as an Under Secretary of State....
, Undersecretary of State, the second highest-ranking man in the department. Dodd met with members of the Jewish-American community, including Stephen S. Wise and Felix Warburg, who asked him to seek a reversal of the Nazi's repressive anti-Jewish policies. Dodd promised he would "exert all possible personal influence against unjust treatment" of German Jews, but not in his official capacity.
President Roosevelt advised him on June 16, 1933:
Edward M. House
Edward M. House
Edward Mandell House was an American diplomat, politician, and presidential advisor. Commonly known by the title of Colonel House, although he had no military experience, he had enormous personal influence with U.S...
, a veteran in Democratic Party circles since the Wilson administration, told Dodd that he should do what he could "to ameliorate Jewish sufferings," but cautioned, "the Jews should not be allowed to dominate economic or intellectual life in Berlin as they have done for a long time." Dodd shared House's views and wrote in his diary that "The Jews had held a great many more of the key positions in Germany than their numbers or talents entitled them to." Based on this view of the proper role of Jews in society, he advised Hitler in March 1934 that Jewish influence should be retrained in Germany as it was in the United States. "I explained to him [Hitler]" wrote Dodd, "that where a question of over-activity of Jews in university or official life made trouble, we had managed to redistribute the offices in such a way as to not give great offense." Hitler ignored Dodd's advice and responded that "if they [the Jews] continue their activity we shall make a complete end of them in this country."
Dodd tried without success to save the life of Helmut Hirsch
Helmut Hirsch
Helmut Hirsch was a German Jew who was executed for his part in a bombing plot intended to destabilize the German Reich...
, an German-American Jew who planned to bomb parts of the Nazi party rally grounds
Nazi party rally grounds
The Nazi party rally grounds consist of about 11 square kilometres in the southeast of Nuremberg, Germany...
at Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
.
On October 5, 1933, Dodd gave a speech in Berlin in which he described the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
programs in the following way: "It was not revolution as men are prone to say. It was a popular expansion of governmental powers beyond all constitutional grants; and nearly all men everywhere hope the President may succeed."
Anti-Americanism
The German government's treatment of United States citizens created a series of crises during Dodd's tenure as ambassador. Edgar Ansel MowrerEdgar Ansel Mowrer
Edgar Ansel Mowrer was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author best known for his writings on international events.Born in Bloomington, Illinois, Mowrer graduated from the University of Michigan in 1913...
, a reporter for the Chicago Daily News
Chicago Daily News
The Chicago Daily News was an afternoon daily newspaper published between 1876 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.-History:The Daily News was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty in 1875 and began publishing early the next year...
and president of the Foreign Press Association in Berlin published a book-length attack on the Nazis, Germany Puts the Clock Back, and continued his critical coverage until the government demanded his resignation as head of the Association. The U.S. Department ignored the government's demand that it arrange for his return to the U.S. When Mowrer's employers arranged for him to leave and he sought to stay to cover the September 1933 Nuremberg rally, Dodd refused to support him, believing his reporting was so provocative that it made it difficult for other American journalists to work.
Assessment of Nazi intentions
On October 12, 1934, Dodd gave a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, with Joseph GoebbelsJoseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
and Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
in attendance, and used an elaborate analogy based on Roman history to criticize the Nazis as "half-educated statesmen" who adopted the "arbitrary modes" of an ancient tyrant. His views grew more critical and pessimistic with the Night of the Long Knives
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives , sometimes called "Operation Hummingbird " or in Germany the "Röhm-Putsch," was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders...
in June-July 1934, when the Nazis killed prominent political opponents many dissenters within the Nazi movement. Dodd was one of the very few in the U.S. and European diplomatic community who reported that the Nazis were too strongly entrenched for any opposition to emerge. In May 1935 he reported to his State Department superiors that Hitler intended "to annex part of the Corridor, part of Czechoslovakia, and all of Austria." A few months later he predicted a German-Italian alliance. Feeling ineffectual, Dodd offered to resign, but Roosevelt allowed him only a recuperative visit to the U.S. The President wrote to U.S Ambassador to Italy Breckinridge Long
Breckinridge Long
Breckinridge Long was a diplomat and politician who served in the administrations of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.-Early life and career:...
in September 1935 that he and Dodd had been "far more accurate in you pessimism for the past two years than any of my other friends in Europe." In a note to Assistant Secretary of State R. Walton Moore
R. Walton Moore
Robert Walton "Judge" Moore was a Virginia lawyer, U.S. Representative from Virginia, Assistant Secretary of State, and one of the few Virginia politicians to embrace the New Deal....
that same month, he wrote of Dodd: "we most certainly do not want him to consider resigning. I need him in Berlin." Dodd reported to Secretary of State Hull in September 1936 that Hitler's domestic economic policies, rearmament, and Rhineland initiatives had consolidated his support to the point that he could count on the support of the German people for a declaration of war "in any measure he might undertake."
Following a U.S. vacation of several months in 1936, Dodd devoted the fall to testing German reaction to a personal meeting between Roosevelt and Hitler, an initiative the President proposed, or a world peace conference. After a series of rebuffs, Dodd produced a report for the State Department dated November 28, 1936, that Assistant Secretary Moore commended and forwarded to Roosevelt. He decried the tendency of Europeans to refuse to believe that Hitler meant to carry out the expansionist plans he had outlined in Mein Kampf. He described Hitler's success in outmaneuvering France and Great Britain diplomatically and forging ties with Italy and Spain. Assessing the current situation he wrote: "there does not appear to be any vital force or combination of forces which will materially impede Germany in pursuit of her ambitions."
Conflict with State Department
Many in the State Department, had reservations about Dodd's suitability for the job. He was neither a political figure of the sort normally honored with such a prestigious appointment, nor a member of the social elite that formed the higher ranks for the Foreign Service. In Berlin some of his subordinates were embarrassed by his insistence on living modestly, walking unaccompanied in the street, leaving formal receptions so early as to appear rude. Dodd considered his insistence on living on his $17,500 annual salary a point of pride and criticized the posh life style of other embassy officials.Early in his tenure as ambassador, Dodd decided to avoid attending the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg rather than appear to endorse Hitler's regime. In 1933, the State Department left the decision to him, and other ambassadors, including those of France and Great Britain, adopted a similar policy. As the Nazi Party became indistinguishable from the government, however, the State Department preferred that Dodd attend and avoid giving offense to the German government. State Department pressure increased each year until Dodd determined to avoid attending in 1937 by arranging a visit to the United States at the time of the rally. His advice against sending a representative of the U.S. embassy to attend the September 1937 Nazi Party congress in Nuremberg was overridden by his State Department superiors, and the State Department allowed its overruling of Dodd's position to became public. Hitler expressed his pleasure with the attendance of the U.S., Great Britain, and France for the first time, recognizing it as an "innovation" in policy.
Resignation
Dodd considered resigning several times, beginning as early as July 1934. His health declined seriously by 1936 and his clear antagonism to the German government increased his personal sense of defeat. During the 1936 U.S. election campaign, Dodd wrote a public letter warning that the defeat of Roosevelt's programs would produce a fascist dictatorship financed by an American billionaire: "There are individuals of great wealth who wish a dictatorship....There are politicians who think they may gain powers like those exercised in Europe. One man, I have been told by friends, who owns nearly a billion dollars, is ready to support such a program and, of course, control it." Several Senators called for him to be recalled from Germany and Senator William Borah called him "an irresponsible scandalmonger." He supported Roosevelt's attempt to enlarge the membership of the Supreme Court, arguing that courts need to be responsive to popular wishes if the United States were to avoid totalitarian impulses. Consistent in interpreting American institutions in terms of their place on the aristocratic-democratic continuum, he viewed the Supreme Court as an aristocratic institution in need of an infusion of democracy. When he expressed these views in letters to senators, they reacted angrily and newspapers called for Dodd's resignation. Roosevelt told Dodd he was "frankly delighted" with the letter, but the public dispute embarrassed President Roosevelt and gave Dodd's enemies in the State Department an opportunity to press for his removal.President Roosevelt, reacting to complaints about Dodd's effectiveness as well as his health, notified the State Department in April 1937 that he was prepared to see Dodd's tenure end September 1. Then Dodd, on his arrival in the U.S. in August said that "the basic objective of some powers in Europe is to frighten and even destroy democracies everywhere," provoking a formal protest on the part of the German Ambassador to the U.S. Given that exchange, the State Department determined that it was more important that Dodd return to Germany than to allow his resignation to appear a response to German protests. Dodd left a resignation letter and suggested the following March as a suitable date. In September, his dispute with the State Department over U.S. diplomatic presence at the Nuremberg rallies became public. The German government told the State Department that Dodd could no longer function in Berlin. Dodd was surprised when told in November to prepare to depart by the end of the year. His resignation was announced in December.
Dodd left Berlin without notifying the press. The New York Times reported that upon arriving in New York on January 6, 1938, he said that he "doubted if an American envoy who held his ideals of democracy could represent his country successfully among the Germans at the present time." The German government said his remarks demonstrated "the retiring ambassador's habitual lack of comprehension of the new Germany." Hitler said he felt "vivid satisfaction" with Dodd's replacement, career diplomat, Hugh R. Wilson
Hugh R. Wilson
Hugh Robert Wilson was a member of the United States Foreign Service, who headed the U.S. mission to Switzerland for ten years beginning in 1927. He became Assistant Secretary of State in 1937 and served for several months in 1938 as U.S...
, and Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine wrote:
In a speech at the Nuremberg Congress the following September, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
denounced Dodd by name for his "laments on the decay of German culture."
Later years
In 1937, Dodd stepped down as Ambassador in Berlin and President Roosevelt appointed a senior professional diplomat to replace him. After leaving his State Department post, he campaigned to warn against the dangers posed by Germany, Italy, and Japan, and detailed racial and religious persecution in Germany. He predicted German aggression against AustriaAustria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. Dodd, who was in failing health, traveled on a speaking tour of Canada and the US, establishing his reputation as a statesman who opposed the Nazis.
In 1938, Dodd wrote an assessment of Nazi ideology and the Third Reich's plan for Europe. He stated:
[S]everal policies were adopted during the first two years of the Nazi regime. The first was to suppress the Jews.... They were to hold no positions in University or government operations, own no land, write nothing for newspapers, gradually give up their personal business relations, be imprisoned and many of them killed.... [The Primer] betrays no indication of the propaganda activities of the Nazi government. And of course there is not a word in it to warn the unwary reader that all the people who might oppose the regime have been absolutely silenced. The central idea behind it is to make the rising generation worship their chief and get ready to "save civilization" from the Jews, from Communism and from democracy -- thus preparing the way for a Nazified world where all freedom of the individual, of education, and of the churches is to be totally suppressed.
A volume of his planned four-volume history of the South appeared in 1938 as The Old South: Struggles for Democracy, covering the 17th century.
Dodd's wife died in May 1938.
In December of 1938, Dodd accidentally ran over a 4-year-old child and then fled the scene. The child, who was African-American, sustained severe injuries, but survived the ordeal. Dodd was subsequently charged with leaving the scene of an accident. Dodd was convicted, and the trial court fined Dodd $250 plus court costs. Dodd also paid over $1000 for the child’s medical bills.
After a year's illness, Dodd died on February 9, 1940, at his country home at Round Hill, Loudoun County, Virginia
Round Hill, Loudoun County, Virginia
Round Hill is a town in Loudoun County, Virginia, United States. Its population was estimated at 639 in 2005 by the U.S. Census Bureau. The town is located at the crossroads of Virginia routes 7 and 719 , approximately 50 miles northwest of Washington, D.C...
.
In April 1946, during the Nuremberg trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
, Dodd's diaries were used as evidence against Hjalmar Schacht
Hjalmar Schacht
Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht was a German economist, banker, liberal politician, and co-founder of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic...
, a liberal economist and banker, and a Nazi government official until the end of 1937. Schacht praised Dodd's character but suggested his views in the 1930s were tainted by his less than fluent German. He testified that Dodd was his friend and invited him to emigrate to the United States. Schacht's attorney described Dodd as "one of the few accredited diplomats in Berlin who very obviously had no sympathy of any sort for the regime in power".
Assessments of Dodd's service in Berlin vary considerably, colored by what another ambassador might have accomplished. Hull in his Memoirs described Dodd as "sincere though impulsive and inexperienced." Dodd felt himself a failure both during his ambassadorship and after, having set himself the impossible standard of "changing the Third Reich by example and persuasion." Historian Gerhard Weinberg
Gerhard Weinberg
Gerhard Ludwig Weinberg is a German-born American diplomatic and military historian noted for his studies in the history of World War II. Weinberg currently is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been a member of the...
believes no other ambassador to Nazi Germany was more effective, "even if some were more popular and others better informed." He reports the assessment of George S. Messersmith
George S. Messersmith
George Strausser Messersmith was a United States ambassador to Austria, Cuba, Mexico and Argentina. Messersmith also served as the head of the U.S. Consulate in Nazi Germany during the rise of the Nazi party....
, the embassy's consul general who worked closely with Dodd, who wrote that "there were very few men who realized what was happening in Germany more thoroughly " than Dodd, who proved ineffective because he "was completely appalled by what was happening." Historian Franklin L. Ford faults Dodd for failing in to provide "concrete intelligence concerning immediate Nazi objectives and power" as his peers were providing their superiors in London and Paris. He faults as well Dodd's nostalgic view of the Germany of his student years and centuries past that enabled him to view German anti-Semitism as a Nazi phenomenon driven personally by Hitler without recognizing its deeper roots in German society. A harsh critic of FDR's foreign policy called Dodd "a tragic misfit", "a babe-in-the-woods in the dark forests of Berlin."
Sources
- Fred Arthur Bailey, "A Virginia Scholar in Chancellor Hitler's Court: The Tragic Ambassadorship of William Edward Dodd," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 100, no. 3 (July 1992), 323-42
- Fred Arthur Bailey, "Free Speech and the Lost Cause in the Old Dominion," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 103, no. 2 (April 1995), 237-66
- Fred Arthur Bailey, William Edward Dodd: The South's Yeoman Scholar (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of VirginiaUniversity of Virginia PressThe University of Virginia Press , founded in 1963, is a university press that is part of the University of Virginia.-External links:*...
, 1997) - William E. Dodd, Jr. and Martha Dodd, eds., Ambassador Dodd's Diary 1933-1938, with an introduction by Charles A. BeardCharles A. BeardCharles Austin Beard was, with Frederick Jackson Turner, one of the most influential American historians of the first half of the 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science...
(NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941) - Franklin L. Ford, "Three Observers in Berlin: Rumbold, Dodd, and Francois-Poncet," in Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert, eds., The Diplomats, 1919-1939 (Princeton University Press, 1953)
- Erik Larson, In The Garden Of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (Crown, 2011)
- Arnold A. Offner, American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933-1938 (Harvard University PressHarvard University PressHarvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
, 1969) - Wendell Holmes Stephenson, The South Lives in History: Southern Historians and their Legacy (Baton Rouge, 1955)
- Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-1941 (Henry Regnery, 1952)
- Allen Weinstein and Aleksander Vasiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America-The Stalin Era (NY: Modern LibraryModern LibraryThe Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
, 1999)