By Sunday evening, Martha’s father had confirmed that Captain Röhm was dead. Röhm had been confined at Stadelheim Prison since his arrest, as Hitler had struggled to give the order to execute his old friend. Eventually Röhm had been given a loaded gun, a newspaper describing recent events in order to crush his last vestiges of hope, and time alone in his cell, but he had refused to oblige his captors by taking his own life. According to one account, when the impatient SS men checked in on him, Röhm had declared, “If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself.” The officers relieved him of the gun and shot him on the spot.
Early the next morning, the Dodds learned that Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels had scheduled a radio address for that evening. “We expect him to offer an official account of the events of the past forty-eight hours,” said Martha’s father, his voice thin with strain, his face gray, his hands trembling from exhaustion. He had hardly slept since the purge began. “Although how anyone can justify such brutality, the outright murder of men and women who have been neither charged with a crime nor proven guilty is beyond my comprehension.”
As word of Goebbel’s radio address spread, another flurry of messages and phone calls arrived from American expatriates and foreign diplomats who urgently wished to listen to the speech at the American embassy. Perhaps they felt safer there, more able to speak freely. Martha certainly did. She had come to loathe and fear the Nazis as much as she had once admired them. How could she have been so blind?
The guests included several of her own friends, whom she hoped would have information about mutual acquaintances yet unaccounted for. As twilight fell, she welcomed friends with the new greeting that Berliners had swiftly adopted during those shocking, harrowing days—spoken ironically, with a slight smirk or an arched eyebrow to mask one’s fear: “Lebst du noch?”
Are you still among the living?
Chapter Twenty-four
July 1934
Mildred
On the afternoon of July 4, Mildred and Arvid were among the three hundred Americans, embassy and consulate staff, members of the press, German officials, and foreign diplomats invited to attend the American embassy’s annual Independence Day celebration.
“One might have expected Mr. and Mrs. Dodd to cancel the party in the aftermath of such horror,” said Arvid as they dressed.
“They wouldn’t.” Inspecting herself in the mirror, Mildred tucked a loose strand of golden hair back into her chignon. “It’s not just a party anymore but a reminder of American democracy and freedom, of the refuge our country offers to those fleeing oppression.”
“And the refuge it offers expatriates.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips, his gaze warm and understanding. “Whatever turmoil goes on outside the embassy doors, for a few hours you’ll be on American soil among your own people. Perhaps . . . perhaps you should enjoy that sense of belonging and security every day.”
“I don’t think Martha wants a roommate.”
“You know what I mean. You could go home to the U.S. and return when things are better here.”
It was true that the harrowing events had intensified Mildred’s homesickness for Wisconsin and her family, but she knew from experience that a prolonged separation from Arvid would be even more difficult to bear. “My home is wherever you are,” she said, kissing him, “and you and your family and our friends are my people.”
And yet, for the day at least, she welcomed the promised respite from Nazi rule. The bloody purge had left her badly shaken, weighed down by a heavy sense of dread. The killings had ceased, or so the public was told, but rumors and revelations about the extent of the carnage heightened her worry that the slaughter continued somewhere out of sight.
Only the day before, the chancellor’s cabinet had enacted a law retroactively making all executions carried out over the weekend legal, as actions conducted “in emergency defense of the state.” Mildred felt as if Germany had crossed into a dangerous shadowland where the letter of the law had never been more strictly enforced even as the rule of law had become arbitrary. The Independence Day celebration would be the first formal occasion after the purge where Americans and Germans would mingle socially. She could not imagine how they would be able to carry on as if their world had not fundamentally changed.
The afternoon was warm and overcast, but Tiergartenstrasse 27a was pleasantly