Hitlerland

by Andrew Nagorski

  On her way back to the office, Schultz spotted three men, who looked familiar from her earlier encounters with the secret police, heading toward her home. Stepping in front of them, she told them not to bother going there since she had burned the envelope. As they stood speechless, she hailed a cab and loudly instructed the driver to take her to the American Embassy.

  Schultz was convinced that Goering was behind that effort to set her up because they had had several tense exchanges earlier about the country’s expanding concentration camps. At a lavish lunch in the Adlon Hotel for him and his new bride, Emmy Sonnemann, on May 2, the feisty reporter told him quietly but firmly what happened, blaming his agents provocateurs. Startled, Goering kept saying, “You are imagining things.” When Schultz stuck to her story and added that she had informed the embassy of the details, he snapped angrily: “Schultz, I’ve always suspected it: you’ll never learn to show proper respect for state authorities. I suppose that is one of the characteristics of people from that crime-ridden city of Chicago.” An amused acquaintance in Goering’s Air Ministry later told her that around his offices she became known as “that dragon from Chicago.” But no more attempts were made to set her up.

  Despite such incidents, the Nazis still sought to impress as much as to intimidate, particularly with the displays of adulation of their leader. For most correspondents, the best chance to observe Hitler and his followers up close came during the annual Parteitag, the weeklong Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. The party leaders, from Hitler on down, were only too happy to have the foreign press observe these lavishly orchestrated demonstrations of their popularity and power.

  “Like a Roman Emperor Hitler rode into this medieval town at sundown today past solid phalanxes of wildly cheering Nazis who packed the narrow streets… The streets, hardly wider than alleys, are a sea of brown and black uniforms,” Shirer wrote in his diary on September 4, 1934. The new correspondent got his first glimpse of Hitler as he drove past the Württemberger Hof, where the reporters were staying. Der Führer stood up in his open car, wearing a worn trench coat, fumbling with his cap and “acknowledging the delirious welcome with somewhat feeble Nazi salutes from his right arm.”

  Shirer was struck by Hitler’s lack of expression—“though there is something glassy in his eyes, the strongest thing in his face.” But he had expected something more powerful and theatrical, prompting him to observe that “for the life of me I could not quite comprehend what hidden springs he undoubtedly unloosed in the hysterical mob which was greeting him so wildly.” And hysterical they were. That evening, Shirer found himself “caught in a mob of ten thousand hysterics” in front of the Deutscher Hof, Hitler’s hotel, shouting: “We want our Führer.” He wasn’t prepared for the faces he saw in the crowd, especially those of the women when they caught sight of Hitler as he stepped out briefly on the balcony.

  “They reminded me of the crazed expressions I saw once in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers who were about to hit the trail,” he wrote. “They looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman. If he had remained in sight for more than a few moments, I think many of the women would have swooned from excitement.”

  The next day, Shirer began to understand how Hitler was generating such fanatical admiration. At the opening meeting of the Party Congress in Luitpold Hall, he noted that the Nazis were putting on “more than a gorgeous show; it also had something of the mysticism and religious fervour of an Easter or Christmas Mass in a great Gothic cathedral.” There were brightly colored flags, a band that fell silent when Hitler made his dramatic entrance and then struck up a catchy marching tune, and the roll call of the “martyrs”—the Nazis who had died in the failed Beer Hall Putsch. “In such an atmosphere no wonder, then, that every word dropped by Hitler seemed like an inspired Word from on high,” Shirer recorded. “Man’s—or at least the German’s—critical faculty is swept away at such moments.”

  By the end of the Nuremberg festivities, Shirer confessed he was “dead tired and rapidly developing a bad case of crowd-phobia.” But he was pleased that he had come. “You have to go through one of these to understand Hitler’s hold on the people, to feel the dynamic of the movement he’s unleashed and the sheer, disciplined strength the Germans possess,” he noted.

  To be sure, the foreign correspondents took a more jaundiced view of the proceedings than the Germans in attendance. Shirer, Knickerbocker and a couple of British reporters were in a room overlooking the moat of Nuremberg’s castle when they saw Hitler driving by again. “Though Hitler is certainly closely guarded by the S.S., it is nonsense to hold that he cannot be killed,” Shirer wrote. He and the other correspondents in the room agreed that it would be simple to throw a bomb from the room onto Hitler’s car, and then escape by running into the crowd.

  Along with four other reporters, the AP’s Lochner was invited to join Hitler’s motorcade as it made a triumphal tour of the city before going up to the Burg, Nuremberg’s medieval castle. The reporters were put in the car directly behind Hitler’s so that they could see the reaction of the crowds. “His followers were simply beside themselves with hysteric joy when they see him, and they actually think of him as a God-sent superman whom they do not hesitate to liken to Christ,” Lochner explained in a letter to his daughter Betty back in Chicago, echoing Shirer’s observations.

  When the motorcade reached the castle courtyard, Hitler got out of his car and approached the reporters to greet them. But before he could reach out his hand to Lochner, the AP correspondent declared: “Mr. Chancellor, I welcome you here in the city of my forebears.”

  Hitler was startled. “How come?” he asked. “You’re an American, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Lochner replied. “I am an American, but my family for centuries lived continuously in this city until my grandfather and father emigrated to the United States. I think therefore I have the right to greet you here.”

  Lochner hadn’t considered how this declaration would be received. As the reporter recalled, “Hitler blushed in anger, turned on his heel, and stalked into the castle.” It was then that Lochner realized that he had inadvertently reminded Der Führer that he wasn’t a born German. “I had struck an exceedingly sensitive nerve,” he concluded. And he blamed this incident for the fact that Hitler never invited him for a personal meeting again, although he would remain in Germany until their two countries went to war with each other seven years later.

  The Nuremberg rallies became a standard event for reporters from many countries, often with special seats in the motorcade that were meant to ensure that they reached the right conclusions. Two years later, in 1936, a young United Press correspondent, Richard Helms—the future director of the Central Intelligence Agency—was one of the chosen ones. After sitting in the back seat of a car alongside Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and a Polish reporter, Helms offered this evocative description of his experience as they followed right behind Hitler’s car:

  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 fl
ying 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.