Back in January I wrote about what I was reading. Since January I've read some excellent books, all of which I recommend. Here's what I've read since January:
The Circle by Dave Eggers
Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess
To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild
Everything Must Change by Brian D. McClaren
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
If I get around to it, I'll try to write some brief thoughts on each of the above titles. Last night I finished In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson. It was one of those "wow" books. When I put it down after reading the last page, that was my reaction. I read a lot of books and many of them are great. But there are very few "wow" books. I put Beasts down and just had to sit and reflect for a few minutes.
Erik Larson is an amazing writer, historian and journalist. I first encountered his work in Devil in the White City. Devil in the White City, about the Chicago's World's Fair, was such a great work that when I saw he had written a book about Nazi Germany I had to give it a look.
"Garden of beasts" is the literal translation of the great park in central Berlin called the Tiergarten. It was around this central park like district of Berlin where you found the Reichstag, many embassies and German government buildings. The book follows the story of the American ambassador and his family stationed in Berlin in 1934, months after Hitler was named chancellor.
The narrative traces the early rise of Hitler's government and the personal stories of the ambassador and his family. The book reads like a novel. The twenty-eight year old daughter of the American ambassador had numerous affairs with high ranking Nazis, including the head of the Gestapo. She also had a long relationship with the head Soviet NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) agent in Berlin. Larson's research is extremely thorough and unsettling.
Ambassador Christopher Dodd did everything he could to warn the United States of the dangers of Hitler's rise. He was stymied by the state department who was only interested in not offending Germany so the Nazis would not be inclined to default on their post World War I debts. The book makes it clear that Hitler could have easily been destabilized and overthrown with minimal effort if the United States and Western Europe had taken early action. Hitler was very weak and his grip on power tenuous in the first two or three years of his reign.
The book has an obviously tragic aspect knowing how terrible things would become in Europe due to the inaction of the appeasers and the psychotic world view of Hitler's regime. I was always taught that America didn't really know what Hitler was up to at the beginning of his reich and that's why we didn't speak up earlier. Turns out, our nation knew full well how Hitler felt about Jews. Hitler didn't try to hide his world view. In 1934, a mock trial of Hitler was held in Madison Square Garden in New York. 20,000 people packed the arena. Another one was planned for Chicago. Under Nazi pressure, the United States government encouraged the Chicago mock trial to be cancelled. The U.S. wanted Germany to pay back their loans.
The book is a cautionary tale. It's an excellent history about a strange and tumultuous time before the great tragedy of World War II. It's a story we don't often hear in the United States. It's also a sobering story of appeasement, weird love triangles and tragic losses of opportunity. Great read.
