William Edward Dodd
William Edward Dodd (born October 27, 1869 in Clayton , North Carolina , † February 9, 1940 in Round Hill , Virginia ) was an American historian and diplomat . He became known through various historical works about the southern states , but above all through the publication of his diary, which he kept during his time as US ambassador to the Third Reich from 1933 to 1937.
Live and act
Dodd came from an old Virginia family. After his teenage years on his parents' farm, he graduated from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute . This was followed by a period of study in Germany at the University of Leipzig , where Dodd received his doctorate in 1900 after successfully defending a thesis on Thomas Jefferson . Back in the USA he was a professor of history, from 1900 to 1908 at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland , Virginia and from 1908 to 1933 at the University of Chicago . In 1933 he was sent as ambassador to Berlin by President Franklin D. Roosevelt , a post he held until the end of 1937. Upon returning to America, Dodd retired and died on his Virginia farm in 1940. His wife died shortly after returning from Germany in 1938.
His son William E. Dodd Jr. and his daughter Martha Dodd got involved in anti-fascist movements because of their experiences in Germany and the reports of their father. After the Second World War they were suspected of being Soviet spies, and Martha Dodd-Stern eventually emigrated to Prague .
historian
The focus of his work was the "old south" and the civil war . He published the biographies of Nathaniel Macon (1903) and Jefferson Davis (1907). Other works were Statesmen of the Old South (1911), and The Old South: Struggles for Democracy (1937). Dodd was unable to finish a second volume of The Old South ; the stressful stay in Berlin had undermined his health. Dodd also published the public papers of former US President Woodrow Wilson as editor .
In 1936 he became an elected member of the American Philosophical Society .
diplomat
Dodd was a career changer in the diplomatic service. With Dodd, Roosevelt appointed a proven liberal and democrat who, due to his studies in Leipzig, spoke fluent German and was considered an admirer of German culture. In Berlin, however, Dodd soon became a vehement opponent of the Nazi regime. He campaigned for those politically persecuted, such as Carl von Ossietzky , and refused to participate in the Nuremberg Nazi party rallies . Both because of the apparent hopelessness of his efforts and because of resistance to his work within the State Department , where Dodd saw Sumner Welles as an opponent of his work, he resigned himself in the course of 1937 and asked for his post to be removed.
literature
- William E. Dodd Jr., Martha Dodd (Eds.): William E. Dodd. Diplomat on hot ground. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1962. (English original title: Ambassador Dodd's Diary 1933–1938. Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York 1941)
- Robert Dallek : Democrat and Diplomat. The Life of William E. Dodd. Oxford Univ. Press, New York 1968.
- Dietrich Herrmann: Warnings and Hopes. The reports of American diplomats from Nazi Germany 1933–1938. State examination thesis . University of Heidelberg, 1989.
- Martha Dodd: My years in Germany 1933–1937. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Hitler!” Translated by Ursula Locke-Gross and Sabine Hübner, afterword Oliver Lubrich . Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-8218-0762-8 . (Original English title: My years in Germany. )
- Martha Dodd: From the embassy window. Publishing house of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, Berlin 1946. (From the Russian Iz okna posol'stva. )
- Erik Larson : In the Garden Of Beasts . Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. Random House.
- Zoo. In the Garden of Beasts . An American ambassador to Nazi Germany. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2013.
Web links
- Literature by and about William Edward Dodd in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about William Edward Dodd in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ^ Member History: William E. Dodd. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 19, 2018 .
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Frederic M. Sackett |
US Ambassador to Berlin August 30, 1933 to December 29, 1937 |
Hugh Robert Wilson |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Dodd, William Edward |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American historian and diplomat |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 27, 1869 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Clayton , North Carolina |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 1940 |
| Place of death | Round Hill , Virginia |