In the Garden of Beasts

CODA “Table Talk”

Years after the war, a cache of documents came to light that proved to be transcripts of conversations between Hitler and his men, recorded by his deputy Martin Bormann. One of these transcripts concerned a conversation over dinner in October 1941 at Wolfsschanze, or Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s redoubt in East Prussia. The subject of Martha Dodd came up.

Hitler, who once had kissed her hand, said, “To think that there was nobody in all this ministry who could get his clutches on the daughter of the former American ambassador, Dodd—and yet she wasn’t difficult to approach. That was their job, and it should have been done. In short, the girl should have been subjugated…. In the old days when we wanted to lay siege to an industrialist, we attacked him through his children. Old Dodd, who was an imbecile, we’d have got him through his daughter.”

One of Hitler’s dinner companions asked, “Was she pretty at least?”

Another guest snorted, “Hideous.”

“But one must rise above that, my dear fellow,” Hitler said. “It’s one of the qualifications. Otherwise, I ask you, why should our diplomats be paid? In that case, diplomacy would no longer be a service, but a pleasure. And it might end in marriage!”