Page 159 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

146 The American Diplomats

Yet the american embassy in Berlin as well as the eleven consulates in
other German cities showed keen interest in the political, economic, and
social developments in Germany, and produced many impressive reports.
this interest is all the more surprising because two of the three ambassadors
during the Nazi era were not professional diplomats and knew little about
the political and economic situation in Germany, and not much more about
the tense relations between several european countries. Both had been suc-
cessful in their fields, one of them first in the law, then in business, and,
finally, for five years as a senator from Kentucky; and the other as a profes-
sor of american history. although they mastered at least the rudiments of
diplomacy, they did not acquire an acute understanding of Hitler and his
movement, which they held in contempt. the third ambassador to Berlin
assumed office early in 1938 and occupied the post for only ten months. His
strong support of appeasement handicapped him as an analyst of the crisis
in international relations simmering in europe, but even he sent reports
to the state department that accurately described the domestic turmoil in
Germany and the brutality of Nazism.
all three ambassadors were fortunate that the professional staff in the
embassy and consulates in Germany were, with few exceptions, remarkably
accomplished. Most knew German and had a good grounding in history
and political science, which enabled them to make astute analyses of the
New Order being created by Hitler. two of the sharpest critics of Hitler’s re-
gime, raymond Herman Geist and George Messersmith, were of German
descent, which probably helps explain both their passionate commitment to
their work and their sensitivity to the gruesome behavior of the Nazis.
Geist was so appalled by Nazi anti-semitism that he did his best in vari-
ous ways to facilitate the granting of american visas to German Jews, and,
according to richard Breitman and alan M. Kraut, the diplomat “could
perform wonders” to get Jews released from the clutches of the Gestapo.
“On occasion, Geist himself went into the [concentration] camps to get the
people out.” 2
the american diplomats began to pay serious attention to the National
socialist movement in 1930, and even at that early date they warned that the
emergence of Hitler’s party might be an ominous development. Over the
next nine years, the americans occasionally stumbled and came up with in-
terpretations that were off the mark, but on the whole their reports, which
concentrated on concrete policies and events rather than on ideology, were
comprehensive and incisive. Gerhard l. Weinberg, a leading specialist on
Hitler’s foreign policy, correctly suggests that the “american government