Page 199 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

186 The American Diplomats

uniforms. true, he conceded that the worst institutions would not have
been shown to foreigners, and yet he wrote a laudatory report on the camp.
He was not known to be sympathetic to appeasement, let alone Nazism.
the best explanation is that he was simply very unsophisticated. 103
it is likely that he changed his mind about the Nazi regime a year and
a half later, when his wife had an “unpleasant experience” that was more
revealing of Nazi attitudes than those displayed to foreigners at the Moor-
land Penal Colony. On June 28, 1938, Mrs. adams did some shopping at
rosenhain’s, a store on the fashionable Kurfürstendamm, and when she ap-
proached the exit with her purchases she learned that a small group of Nazis
was picketing the store because it was owned by Jews. they blocked the exit
and would not allow shoppers to leave the store. every time Mrs. adams
made an effort to go into the street, the Nazis “forcefully pushed [her]
back.” she showed her diplomatic identity card to the young Nazi in charge
of the crowd, and he replied, “this only makes it worse.” and when she
told him that she could not believe that he would want to “cause unfriend-
liness with america,” he replied, “Why not?” the Nazis now made some
“derisive remarks,” putting her in a “very humiliating” situation. Finally, the
director of the store persuaded the crowd to let her leave, and even then she
had to “force [her] way through.” Mrs. adams reported the incident to two
policemen, who took some notes and recorded her name as well as that of
the leader of the Nazi crowd. the american ambassador forwarded Mrs.
adams’s account of the incident to Washington and noted that the chief
of the american section at the German Foreign Office expressed “regrets”
for the unpleasant experience. the ambassador did not indicate how Mr.
adams reacted to the incident. 104

the departure of dodd

By this time, dodd had retired from his post. intensely disliked by Nazi
officials for his unconcealed hatred of Hitlerism, out of favor with the state
department, and, according to Messersmith, no longer mentally capable
of performing his duties effectively, dodd had begun to think of retiring
in mid-1937, although he hoped to remain on the job until March 1938. in
august 1937, he left for a prolonged stay in the United states, and it became
clear to him that President roosevelt did not intend to send him back to
Berlin. 105 His replacement, Hugh r. Wilson, who arrived in January 1938,
was in many ways quite different from dodd. a career Foreign service of-