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Overview
Robert Dallek, a luminary in the field of political biographyauthor of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Nixon and Kissinger and the New York Times bestselling biography of John F. Kennedyoffers here a look at the life of William Dodd, an American diplomat stationed in Nazi Germany. An insightful historical account, Democrat and Diplomat exposes the dark underbelly of 1930s Germany and explores the terrible burden of those who realized the horror that was to come.
Dodd was the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937, arriving in Berlin with his wife and daughter just as Hitler assumed the chancellorship. An unlikely candidate for the joband not President Roosevelt's first choiceDodd quickly came to realize that the situation in Germany was far grimmer than was understood in America. His early optimism was soon replaced by dire reports on the treatment of Jewish citizens and his pessimism about the future of Germany and Europe. Finding unwilling listeners back in the U.S., Dodd clashed repeatedly with the State Department, as well as the Nazi government, during his time as ambassador. He eventually resigned and returned to America, despairing and in ill-health.
Dodd's story was brought into public prominence last year by Erik Larsen's New York Times bestseller The Garden of Beasts. Dallek's biography, first published in 1968 and now in paperback for the first time, tells the full story of the man and his doomed years in the darkness of pre-War Berlin.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780199931729 |
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Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Publication date: | 10/31/2012 |
Edition description: | Reprint |
Pages: | 336 |
Product dimensions: | 9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author

Robert Dallek is an Emeritus Professor at Boston University. He has won the Bancroft Prize and numerous other awards for scholarship and teaching. He is the author of many books, including Nixon and Kissinger, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963.
Table of Contents
Preface to the Paperback Edition ix
Preface xiii
I A Race of Settlers and Farmers 3
II The Leipzig Adventure 12
III Scientific History 21
IV Toward a Double Life 30
V Somewhat of a Jeffersonian 42
VI The Only Thing Worth Fighting For 54
VII Public Service 71
VIII Unbroken Hope 90
IX Against the Tide 110
X Ambassador by Default 129
XI Peaceful Negotiations 148
XII War and Not Peace 176
XIII Roosevelt's Ambassador 194
XIV Four Years' Service Is Enough 216
XV Reaping the Whirlwind 240
Notes 254
Bibliographical Note 292
Index 297