In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

                Imagine the year is 1933 and you have just been sent to Berlin as America’s Ambassador to Germany. You have brought your wife and two grown children. You have loved Germany since attending school there years prior and have looked forward to returning. You’ve heard rumors of Hitler’s regime and how they are dealing with the Jewish problem, but you don’t have any reason to believe that this is more than hearsay. You arrive and see the pomp and circumstance that surrounds Hitler and his followers. You grow to realize that everything is not as it seems. American civilians are being attacked and the German soldiers involved are not being punished. Other things also catch your attention like the incident your daughter witnessed where a woman was stripped of her clothing, beaten, and paraded in the streets for having a relationship with a Jewish man. Time passes and you become disenchanted but how do you communicate that to the President of the United States? How do you make him understand that if action isn’t taken now that there will be war? This is just a glimpse of the life of William Dodd and the years he spent in Germany during the rise of Hitler.

                I’ve asked myself before how in the hell Hitler was able to rise to power and commit the atrocities that would come to define him. The answer is denial. Time and time again the answer, to me at least, is denial and willful ignorance. No one believed that he would ever actually commit the heinous acts that he was committing. Dodd was in denial himself until it became evident that Hitler wanted complete control, would gain complete control and would go to war. No one wanted to believe Dodd so they didn’t. World War II was a result of everyone’s willful ignorance. Larson produced with this nonfiction novel an amazing portrait of what life was like for Dodd and his family, especially his daughter Martha whose relationships with people in Germany would cause controversy, in in 1930’s Berlin.

                In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Berlin is a biography of William Dodd but it is written as a nonfiction novel. It is dramatic, informative, moves well and the world of 1930’s Germany is very well crafted. I enjoyed this biography. This time in history is filled with so many different elements and so much depth that it’s easy to get lost in the details. That didn’t happen with Larson. He was able to keep me interested and involved in this story. The tense atmosphere was felt throughout the pages. As a reader knowing the worst was to come, I found myself looking for the aspects of Hitler’s regime that I knew were going to change. Larson alludes to all what is to come while revealing one page at a time that things were changing and that those changes would lead to devastation. I can easily recommend this novel and give it 4 out of 5 stars. Larson’s writing style is one I enjoy and I am looking forward to reading more from him.