That was pure chance, but what happened the next day was something else. It is impossible to know whether Hitler was really about to shoot himself when he picked up his revolver in Helen Hanfstaengl’s house as the police were arriving to arrest him. But by grabbing the gun away from him and berating him for even thinking of such a thing, the American wife of Hitler’s propagandist Putzi Hanfstaengl may have played as pivotal a role as chance had the day before. If so, this was a clear case of the wrong person appearing at the wrong time.
All of which raises the biggest “what if” question of history: without Hitler, what would have happened to Germany after World War I? The Americans who lived through the collapse of the Weimar Republic, Hitler’s rise to power and the Nazi era did not explicitly address that question, which can never have a definitive answer. But the common thread that runs through so many of the Americans’ accounts is their fascination with Hitler. Their experiences and observations strongly suggest that, without Hitler, the Nazis never would have succeeded in their drive for absolute power. The country still might have embarked on an authoritarian course, possibly a military dictatorship. But whatever might have emerged would not have been on the terrifying scale of the Third Reich, with all its terrifying consequences.
Even those Americans who initially dismissed the Nazi leader as a clownish figure came to recognize that he possessed an uncanny ability to mesmerize his followers and attract new ones. He knew how to tap into his countrymen’s worst instincts by playing on their fears, resentments and prejudices more masterfully than anyone else. He possessed a combination of peculiar personal qualities and oratorical skills that fueled his movement’s rise. No other leading Nazi was as effective a mobilizing force as he was. Not Goering, not Goebbels, not his early rival Gregor Strasser. They, too, would have tried to exploit their countrymen’s anger and confusion following their defeat in World War I and the successive economic crises, but without the same results.
As the less than noble ending to their saga makes clear, the Americans in Hitler’s Germany were prone to all the normal human failings, including a certain amount of self-centered pettiness during a time of epic tragedy. Many were superficial in their observations, some were deliberately blind, and a few became Nazi apologists. But most of the Americans came to understand what was happening around them, even if they often found it hard to grasp the full implications. This was hardly surprising. After all, they came from a country that was democratic and pragmatic and were plunged into a society undergoing a horrific transformation in the name of a demented ideology.
Among the journalists, William Shirer stood out in terms of his ability to discern the meaning of events as they happened, avoiding the trap of wishful thinking. Little wonder that his Berlin Diary, published in 1941, propelled him to initial fame, and that he cemented his reputation as a distinguished author with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. First published in 1960, this masterful account was an immediate bestseller and continues to be essential reading for anyone trying to understand Hitler’s Germany.
Shirer was far from alone, however. Edgar Mowrer and Sigrid Schultz also were journalists who were rarely fooled. Consul General George Messersmith stood out among the American diplomats for the same reason, and for his passion and courage. Truman Smith, the first American official to meet Hitler, proved to be both an astute political observer and a remarkably able military attaché, taking the measure of Germany’s rapidly growing military might. Many others served in the Berlin embassy with distinction, including young staffers like William Russell and Jacob Beam.
Several of the Americans would reach the apogee of their careers long after they left Hitler’s Germany. Beam became a top-level diplomat, serving as U.S. ambassador to Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. George Kennan would not only become famous as the architect of containment and then ambassador to the Soviet Union, but also as a historian and frequent critic of American foreign policy during the later decades of the Cold War. Richard Helms rose to the top of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Howard K. Smith became the coanchor of ABC Evening News when network television reigned supreme.
All of the Americans—whether journalists, diplomats, academics or simply family members—were profoundly affected by their time there, and some far more than others.
After her return to the United States and marriage to the wealthy financier Alfred Stern in 1938, Martha Dodd continued as a Soviet agent, following the path that she had first embarked on in Berlin with her lover Boris Vinogradov, the Soviet diplomat. In 1953, when she heard that she was about to be summoned to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, she and Alfred fled to Mexico. They moved to Prague in 1957, the year they were indicted for espionage back home. The indictment was dismissed upon review in 1979 for lack of sufficient evidence, but the couple never returned to the United States. Long after his tenure as CIA director, Helms concluded from Soviet intelligence cables that came to light in the 1990s that they both were indeed part of a Soviet spy ring. “She continued to serve as a spy throughout her life,” he wrote, pointing out that her work in Berlin “was probably the peak of her spy career.” Alfred died in Prague in 1986, and Martha died there in 1990.
Putzi Hanfstaengl was among the Germans living in Britain who were rounded up as potential security threats at the beginning of World War II. Transferred to an internment camp in Canada, he managed to get a letter smuggled out that reached the desk “of my Harvard Club friend, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” as he grandiosely put it. In the summer of 1942, he was transferred to American custody. Arriving in Washington, he was met by his son Egon, who had been studying at Harvard but then dropped out to join the U.S. Army. Now a sergeant, he greeted his father in uniform.
Putzi provided information on Hitler and other Nazi leaders along with analysis of German radio broadcasts for American intelligence. In 1944, the Americans transferred him back to Britain. After the war ended, he was sent to an internment camp in Germany and finally released on September 3, 1946. He spent the rest of his life in Munich. While Putzi proclaimed his disillusionment with Hitler, he left the impression that the years in his company were the high point of his life. His grandson Eric, who was born in New York in 1954 but grew up in Germany, recalls that Putzi was endlessly telling people about the old days, effectively boasting about how close he was to Hitler. While he could be jovial and entertaining, Eric said, “most of the time he was on the Hitler trip—it was terrible.” In an interview with an American scholar in 1973, a year before his death at age eighty-eight, Putzi declared that Hitler was “still in his bones.”
Helen, who had moved back to the United States in 1938 after their divorce, returned to Munich in the mid-1950s and died there in 1973. She, too, never completely lost her sense of wonderment about Hitler, or about the fact that she had once been so close to the Nazi leader and an object of his awkward affection.
To be sure, most Americans had far less personal involvement with Hitler—and played a far more positive role. Their overall record, not just of the final group that made it to Lisbon but also of many of their predecessors, was impressive. They served as America’s eyes and ears in Germany, and they helped produce the proverbial first draft of history. Like all first drafts, it isn’t always on the mark, but it offers highly unusual, very personal perspectives on Hitler’s rise and Germany’s march to the abyss.
By and large, these Americans helped their countrymen begin to understand the nature of Nazi Germany: how it ruthlessly eliminated its political opponents; how it instilled hatred of Jews and anyone else deemed a member of an inferior race; and how it was preparing its military and its people for a war for global domination. The best of them, listening closely to this drumbeat of German militarism, recognized the looming danger. By so doing, the Americans in Germany gradually eroded isolationist sentiments and prepared their countrymen psychologically for the years of bloodshed and struggle ahead. This was the real contribution of the Americans in Hitler’s
Germany.
On August 17, 1932, three American correspondents interviewed Hitler at Berchtesgaden. From left on the porch of his Alpine retreat: Hearst’s Karl von Wiegand; famed broadcaster H. V. Kaltenborn; Hitler; AP Berlin bureau chief Louis Lochner.
Wiegand had a separate interview and quickly emerged complaining: “I get nothing out of him.” After the two others had a longer session, Kaltenborn concluded that Hitler “has no capacity for logical consecutive thought.” He added: “I could not see how a man of his type, a plebeian Austrian of limited mentality, could ever gain the allegiance of a majority of Germans.”
Less than six months later, Hitler took power.
At Hoboken’s City Hall in 1912 or 1913, Helen Niemeyer, the daughter of German immigrants, dressed up as “Liberty” holding the American flag. She later married Ernst Hanfstaengl. The couple then moved to Munich, where they befriended Hitler. Hitler developed a particular fascination with Helen. After the Beer Hall putsch of 1923, he took refuge in her home. As the police closed in to arrest him, he despaired that all was lost and picked up a revolver. Helen grabbed it from him, possibly preventing his suicide. He went on trial in early 1924.
General Erich Ludendorff, center, Hitler and the other defendants on April 1, 1924.
Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, who had an American mother and a German father, became Hitler’s propagandist. Hitler and Putzi (right) on a campaign swing during the 1930 elections.
Putzi at his 25th reunion at Harvard in 1934. Those who protested his presence for political reasons, the Crimson wrote, were exhibiting “childish” behavior.
In 1922, Karl von Wiegand was the first American correspondent to interview and write about Hitler, describing him as the leader of a rising “Fascisti” movement and as “a magnetic speaker having also exceptional organizing genius.” But in the mid-1920s when Germany appeared to be recovering and the Nazis faded from prominence, readers were far more interested in stories like the ones Wiegand and fellow Hearst correspondent Lady Drummond-Hay (above) filed about the first trans-Atlantic flight of the Zeppelin, issued in a special booklet by The Chicago Herald and Examiner (below).
Chicago Daily News correspondent Edgar Mowrer sounded the alarm about Hitler and the Nazis early and often.
Correspondent Dorothy Thompson, here with Sinclair Lewis in 1928 after they were married, totally misjudged Hitler during her interview with him in November 1931. She was struck by his “startling insignificance.” Later, she radically revised her views.
The Brownshirts (in 1926) were soon a rising force. After Hitler took power, Mowrer was threatened and driven out of Germany on September 1, 1933.
On July 13, 1933, William Dodd took the train from Hamburg to Berlin to take up his post as U.S. ambassador. President Roosevelt had tapped the University of Chicago history professor for the job, telling him: “I want an American liberal in Germany as a standing example.” Here Dodd is shown arriving in the German capital with his wife and daughter Martha (right). Martha quickly scandalized the embassy with her procession of lovers.
From left, publisher Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt, Martha Dodd, Mildred Harnack and German novelist Hans Fallada at the Fallada farm on May 27, 1934. Initially enchanted by Hitler, Martha would end up spying for Moscow. Her friend Mildred, along with her German husband Arvid Harnack, would become members of the “Red Orchestra” spy ring. Harnack was the only American woman executed by the Gestapo.
George Messersmith, U.S. Consul General in Berlin from 1930 to 1934, went on to become the ambassador to Austria (left, with Austrian State Secretary General Wilhelm Zehner in Vienna). Messersmith was a fervent opponent of the Nazis, issuing increasingly dire warnings about their intentions.
Truman Smith served twice as a military attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. In 1922, he became the first American diplomat to meet Hitler, recording his astute impressions in a notebook.
On his second tour, he came up with the plan to have Hermann Goering’s Air Ministry invite Charles Lindbergh (above, with General Erhard Milch) to Germany. As Smith hoped, Lindbergh was granted access to the Luftwaffe’s airfields and factories, providing valuable intelligence that he freely shared with the military attaché. This part of the Lindbergh story was soon overshadowed by the aviator’s pro-German leanings and his campaign to keep the U.S. out of the war.
Kätchen, the daughter of Truman and Kay Smith, with Hermann Goering’s lion after the Luftwaffe commander dispatched the animal to the Berlin Zoo. Its offense, as witnessed by both the Lindberghs and the Smiths: urinating on Goering’s white uniform when he was showing his pet off to his guests. Kätchen recalls that she was “scared to death” while holding the lion, and wore gloves so she wouldn’t touch it. Today, the photo still hangs on her refrigerator door in Connecticut.
Thomas Wolfe in Berlin in 1935. The writer was treated like a literary superhero, and initially he reciprocated the warm feelings of the Germans. But by his next visit in 1936, he became much more aware of the horrors of the Nazi regime, vividly describing them in his novella I Have a Thing to Tell You.
At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, track star Jesse Owens was the most popular athlete, despite the Nazis’ racist ideology.
After the Anschluss, the annexation and occupation of Austria in March 1938, a triumphant Hitler received a hero’s welcome in Vienna on April 9. Here he is led by the Lord Mayor; Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels are walking behind Hitler. American journalists like William Shirer were stunned by how quickly Vienna was decked out in Nazi flags and took on the look of “any German city in the Reich.”
In March 1938, former President Herbert Hoover visited Berlin (top, with Reichsbank President Hjalmer Schacht and U.S. Ambassador Hugh Wilson on right). Meeting Hitler, he was subjected to Hitler’s usual tirades. Nonetheless, Hoover continued to argue that “we must live with other nations.” Wilson, the last American ambassador to Nazi Germany, agreed with those sentiments.
Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is greeted by Hitler on September 15, 1938.
His visit produced the infamous Munich agreement that doomed Czechoslovakia.
On November 9, 1938, Germany erupted in the frenzy of anti-Semitic violence known as Kristallnacht. Jews flocked to the U.S. Embassy, begging for visas, as consular official Charles Thayer recalled, in the hopes that they could be saved “from the madness that had seized the city.” Above, smashed windows of Jewish shops in Magdeburg.
German troops search the rubble in Danzig after Hitler launched World War II by invading Poland on September 1, 1939.
On September 16, 1940, while Hitler’s armies were on the march in Europe, President Roosevelt signed America’s first peacetime draft legislation (with Secretary of War Henry Stimson on left and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall second from right).
American correspondents in Germany were already covering the war. From right, the AP’s Louis Lochner, the Propaganda Ministry’s Karl Boehmer and the International News Service’s Pierre Huss.
William Shirer (broadcasting for CBS in 1940) was one of the most discerning American correspondents, anti-Nazi from the beginning.
After Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, U.S. diplomats and reporters based in Berlin were interned in a deserted spa hotel in Bad Nauheim, outside of Frankfurt. The AP’s Angus Thuermer reads in his room, while other Americans pass the time in the main lobby.
On May 12, 1942, the Americans were released from Bad Nauheim in exchange for the release of the German diplomats and journalists who had been interned in far more luxurious conditions at the Greenbrier, the plush resort hotel in West Virginia. Here, the Americans are arriving at the Bad Nauheim train station where they would begin their journey to Lisbon—and freedom.
Acknowledgments
Sometimes a book idea seems so obvious after the fact that it’s hard to recall where it originated. But I have no such problem in the case of Hitlerland. Christina, or Krysia as family and friends call her, and I wer
e driving back to New York after visiting my parents in Washington when we began discussing what I might write about next. I mentioned that when I had worked on The Greatest Battle, I had particularly enjoyed exploring the activities and perceptions of the foreign community in Moscow as the German forces mounted their drive that nearly reached the Soviet capital. Krysia then asked the question: “Has anyone written about Americans in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s?” She pointed out that so much was written about Americans in Paris and London, but she hadn’t seen a book that recounted the experiences of their counterparts in Germany.
We had lived in Berlin and Bonn when I was reporting for Newsweek, and I thought I was reasonably familiar with the major books depicting the 1920s and 1930s, but I had never thought about that question. I knew of a few individual memoirs and histories written by Americans in Germany but couldn’t think of a book that examined their lives and perceptions in a comprehensive way. I was intrigued and soon confirmed that no such book existed. The next question was whether there would be enough sources of information to tell their story; in fact, I quickly ascertained that there were far more published and unpublished accounts, correspondence and other documents providing firsthand impressions and recollections of Americans than I had imagined.
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