Dodd that his frugality and his resolve to live only within his State Department income would prove a barrier to establishing a relationship with Hitler’s government. Dodd was no longer a mere professor, Gordon reminded him. He was an important diplomat up against an arrogant regime that respected only strength. Dodd’s approach to daily life would have to change.
The train raced through pretty towns and forested glens bladed with afternoon light and in about three hours reached greater Berlin. At last it steamed into Berlin’s Lehrter Bahnhof, at a bend in the Spree where the river flowed through the heart of the city. One of Berlin’s five major rail portals, the station rose above its surroundings like a cathedral, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and banks of arched windows.
On the platform, the Dodds encountered a crowd of Americans and Germans waiting to meet them, including officials from the German foreign office and reporters armed with cameras and flash apparatus known then as “flashlights.” An energetic-seeming man, midsized, about five feet six inches tall—“a dry, drawling, peppery man,” as historian and diplomat George Kennan later described him—stepped forward and introduced himself. This was George Messersmith, consul general, the Foreign Service officer whose lengthy dispatches Dodd had read while in Washington. Martha and her father liked him immediately, judging him to be a man of principle and candor and a likely friend, though this appraisal was destined for significant revision.
Messersmith returned this initial goodwill. “I liked Dodd from the outset,” Messersmith wrote. “He was a very simple man in his manner and in his approach.” He noted, however, that Dodd “gave the impression of being rather fragile.”
In the crowd of greeters the Dodds also encountered two women who over the next several years would play important roles in the family’s life, one a German, the other an American from Wisconsin who was married to a member of one of Germany’s loftiest scholarly dynasties.
The German woman was Bella Fromm—“Auntie Voss,” society columnist for a highly respected newspaper, the
Vossische Zeitung
, one of two hundred newspapers then still operating in Berlin and, unlike most of them, still capable of independent reportage. Fromm was full figured and handsome, with striking eyes—onyx under black gull-wing brows, her pupils partially curtained by upper lids in a manner that conveyed both intellect and skepticism. She was trusted by virtually all members of the city’s diplomatic community as well as by senior members of the Nazi Party, no small achievement considering that she was Jewish. She claimed to have a source high in Hitler’s government who gave her advance warning of future Reich actions. She was a close friend of Messersmith’s; her daughter, Gonny, called him “uncle.”
Fromm in her diary recorded her initial observations of the Dodds. Martha, she wrote, seemed “a perfect example of the intelligentyoung American female.” As for the ambassador, he “looks like a scholar. His dry humor attracted me. He is observant and precise. He learned to love Germany when he was a student in Leipzig, he said, and will dedicate his strength to build a sincere friendship between his country and Germany.”
She added: “I hope he and the President of the United States will not be too disappointed in their efforts.”
The second woman, the American, was Mildred Fish Harnack, a representative of the American Women’s Club in Berlin. She was Fromm’s physical opposite in every way—slender, blonde, ethereal, reserved. Martha and Mildred liked each other at once. Mildred wrote later that Martha “is clear and capable and has a real desire to understand the world. Therefore our interests touch.” She sensed that she had found a soul mate, “a woman who is seriously interested in writing. It’s a hindrance to be lonely and isolated in one’s work. Ideas
The train raced through pretty towns and forested glens bladed with afternoon light and in about three hours reached greater Berlin. At last it steamed into Berlin’s Lehrter Bahnhof, at a bend in the Spree where the river flowed through the heart of the city. One of Berlin’s five major rail portals, the station rose above its surroundings like a cathedral, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and banks of arched windows.
On the platform, the Dodds encountered a crowd of Americans and Germans waiting to meet them, including officials from the German foreign office and reporters armed with cameras and flash apparatus known then as “flashlights.” An energetic-seeming man, midsized, about five feet six inches tall—“a dry, drawling, peppery man,” as historian and diplomat George Kennan later described him—stepped forward and introduced himself. This was George Messersmith, consul general, the Foreign Service officer whose lengthy dispatches Dodd had read while in Washington. Martha and her father liked him immediately, judging him to be a man of principle and candor and a likely friend, though this appraisal was destined for significant revision.
Messersmith returned this initial goodwill. “I liked Dodd from the outset,” Messersmith wrote. “He was a very simple man in his manner and in his approach.” He noted, however, that Dodd “gave the impression of being rather fragile.”
In the crowd of greeters the Dodds also encountered two women who over the next several years would play important roles in the family’s life, one a German, the other an American from Wisconsin who was married to a member of one of Germany’s loftiest scholarly dynasties.
The German woman was Bella Fromm—“Auntie Voss,” society columnist for a highly respected newspaper, the
Vossische Zeitung
, one of two hundred newspapers then still operating in Berlin and, unlike most of them, still capable of independent reportage. Fromm was full figured and handsome, with striking eyes—onyx under black gull-wing brows, her pupils partially curtained by upper lids in a manner that conveyed both intellect and skepticism. She was trusted by virtually all members of the city’s diplomatic community as well as by senior members of the Nazi Party, no small achievement considering that she was Jewish. She claimed to have a source high in Hitler’s government who gave her advance warning of future Reich actions. She was a close friend of Messersmith’s; her daughter, Gonny, called him “uncle.”
Fromm in her diary recorded her initial observations of the Dodds. Martha, she wrote, seemed “a perfect example of the intelligentyoung American female.” As for the ambassador, he “looks like a scholar. His dry humor attracted me. He is observant and precise. He learned to love Germany when he was a student in Leipzig, he said, and will dedicate his strength to build a sincere friendship between his country and Germany.”
She added: “I hope he and the President of the United States will not be too disappointed in their efforts.”
The second woman, the American, was Mildred Fish Harnack, a representative of the American Women’s Club in Berlin. She was Fromm’s physical opposite in every way—slender, blonde, ethereal, reserved. Martha and Mildred liked each other at once. Mildred wrote later that Martha “is clear and capable and has a real desire to understand the world. Therefore our interests touch.” She sensed that she had found a soul mate, “a woman who is seriously interested in writing. It’s a hindrance to be lonely and isolated in one’s work. Ideas
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