Berlin

No, nothing to do with Lou Reed.  Berlin, the capital of Germany, definitely ranks #1 in my bucket list of places to visit.  So far, I haven’t been able to manage it.  I did, however, read two books on the city.

 Intro.  Berlin is the capital of Germany, and was the capital of Prussia from 1307 (its birth) until 1871 when Germany was unified.  After WWII the city was split into East and West Berlin, with the infamous wall installed in 1961 and torn down by Roger Waters in 1990.  The city was large and cosmopolitan, always somewhat more liberal and tolerant than the rest of Germany; its nightlife sometimes disparaged as decadent and irreverent.  Jews prospered more in Berlin than in the rest of Germany, and its Jewish community, if not enjoying complete acceptance as equals, at least suffered less contempt and resentment from their German peers than they did elsewhere in the country.  Naturally Berlin suffered heavy bombing during WWII, but has recovered nicely.  The city is constantly changing, an urban microcosm of the most progressive elements of German society.  To quote Rush, “He knows changes aren't permanent, but change is.”

 The Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson.  Like Devil & The White City, this is non-fiction dressed up in a novelesque fashion; Larson has a rare ability to tell true stories in a way that sounds like fiction.  This particular “story” is about US Ambassador Dodd, who took over in Nazi Germany in summer 1933 and continued until early 1938.  Dodd wasn’t FDR’s first choice; he only got the job because all the prior candidates passed on it.  His wife seems to be nonexistent and his grown son was off cavorting elsewhere, so the primary focus is upon the ambassador himself and his daughter Martha, whose intimacies were somewhat…widely distributed.  Among her lovers were Rudolf Diels, the original head of the Gestapo; Boris, an NKVD agent at the Soviet embassy; and some other somewhat interesting but far less important people.  At one point she was even introduced to Adolf Hitler himself as a potential match (before he hooked up with Eva Braun), but that plan fell through.  She was married but separated at the time.  Back in Washington, the State Dept. was none too thrilled with Martha’s social life.  Dodd himself was unpopular at State – he was a North Carolina bumpkin, a U. Chicago scholar on the South, and very much a fish out of water among wealthy, extravagant diplomats who threw lavish parties with zero discretion as to cost, this amidst the Great Depression when millions were out of work and starving.  He was unsuccessful at persuading the Nazis to honor the debt obligations of their predecessors (back in Washington they called him “Ambassador Dud”), and equally unsuccessful at persuading them to leave the Jews alone.  They even blew him off when he complained about mistreatment of Jews who were actually U.S. citizens.  While many in the US were anti-Semitic and initially thrilled and impressed with Hitler, The Night of the Long Knives (June 1934) pretty much turned most of the right-thinking Westerners off the Nazis and convinced them, “Ok, we’re basically dealing with thugs and murderers here.”   

 Berlin At War, Roger Moorhouse.  I read this to complement the Garden book, and it did so fairly well. There is no overlap:  Garden effectively ends in early 1938 when Dodd returned home to the US, whereas this book starts on April 20, 1939, Hitler’s fiftieth birthday.  This is “WWII through the eyes of Berliners”.  The author warns that while the book is loosely chronologically organized, he does often deal with themes which straddle multiple years, so there is some back-and-forth.  Here are the phases:

            Early war:  Germany is kicking ass.  Soldiers come home occasionally on leave.  Rationing begins rather early and food gets harder to come by.  The English start bombing but this is really no big deal, far more of an occasional nuisance and inconvenience than a threat: “Is that all you got?”  The blackout rules caused far more damage and inconvenience than the bombing itself.  There’s a big discussion on “ersatz” substitutes for food and other items (never even close to being acceptable and always unpopular) and the black market.

            Middle war:  The news from the front is not quite as pleasant, and more men are not coming home at all.  The British begin a new wave of nighttime bombing which is considerably heavier and deadlier than the initial raids.  This is when Berliners learn about bomb shelters and such.

            Later war:  The Americans begin daylight bombing.  This, more than anything else, convinced the Germans that Goering was full of shit.  The nastiness bumped up considerably.  And when reports came back about Hamburg, the Berliners were even more terrified.  The fact that Berlin started catching it worse rather than better, and consistently bad news from the front, meant that Berliners really had nothing to look forward to anymore.

            1945: the Russians come.  The city was surrounded, so whoever didn’t make it out had to contend with Russian soldiers intent on looting and raping.  A last-ditch home defense militia, the Volkssturm was called up – but due to Germany’s already efficient system of conscription, they could only scrape up the oldest and youngest to fight.  There was no question of winning the war – it was now simply a matter of survival.  Rather than simply enduring unpleasant food substitutes, death by starvation became a real danger.