Read More: In the Garden of Beasts

Update:

The first thing I learned reading this book was that I know nothing about history. There was a president of Germany who could have taken Hitler out, but didn't? News to me. I thought Hitler was president! It makes me pretty darned embarrassed that I didn't know something as basic as that! And from there I learned much more, but still not nearly enough. I think I'll have to look into getting a World War II book.

I'm not sure what sort of light Larson was trying to paint Ambassador Dodd in. I definitely didn't care for him. He didn't have sympathy for the Jewish people and that never changed. It seemed Americans in general at this time didn't care much for Jewish people either, so that was pretty gross to find out as well. The only thing that finally got Dodd to become aware of how bad Hitler was was when he turned on his own Nazis and had hundreds murdered. These had been people Dodd had over to dinners at his house, so that was when he realized things were unacceptable and could see Hitler's goal to start another war. But Larson quoted his German acquaintances saying that Dodd was a 'hero' for standing up to Hitler. I didn't see him like that one bit. Even though he eventually tried to warn the U.S. of the threat Hitler posed, they ignored him. So the second major thing I learned is that diplomats are useless.

- Megan Leigh



In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin was my second kindle library book. It's by Erik Larson, who wrote The Devil in the White City. So I had a feeling it was going to be good. And it was.

The book is about William Dodd, the US Ambassador to Germany in the years leading up to World War II, and his family. Dodd may have been a little slow on the uptake, but he was a man of integrity, and eventually he did his best to try and make his colleagues understand the threat that the Nazis posed--to German citizens and to the rest of the world. His family, similarly, began by being captivated by Berlin and, bit by bit, started to understand the horror that surrounded them. The tension builds as it becomes clear that many of their friends and colleagues will eventually succumb to the terrible events of that time. And though the Dodds leave before World War II really gets into full swing, there are plenty of terrible events to go around.

I didn't know a whole bunch about Nazi history before reading this book. I mean, I've read books like Night and the Periodic Table, but they are written from the perspective of the Nazi's victims later on. Not so much about how the party came to power and the events leading up to war and the concentration camps. So I learned a lot.

But mostly this was just a riveting and horrifying story about a country full of people that willingly submitted to a small group of insane and murderous men. It made me think a little more than usual about how precious human rights are, and how ready most of us seem to give them up in the United States... what with warrantless wiretaps, police brutalizing peaceful protesting college students, the now-normal practice of stopping and frisking without cause in New York City, and extraordinary rendition. When we think about WW2 era-Germans giving up their rights and consenting as a society to such awful things, it seems so foreign and unbelievable. But maybe we are not so distant from these types of moral and ethical disasters as we like to think. It scares me to think about it, and this book made me do just that. As I finished this book, I was reminded of David Foster Wallace's beautiful piece on the value of liberty, "Just Asking."

-Kristin