Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power (53 page)

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.