Serial Stupidity

As mentioned a few days ago, I am reading (and enjoying) In the Garden of Beasts, about FDR’s first ambassador to Germany, William Dodd. Much of the story is about his daughter, Martha, an attractive woman in her early twenties, who had many affairs before, during, and after the period of the story (including Carl Sandburg while still in Chicago, and Thomas Wolfe when he visited Berlin).

She was initially enamored of fascism and among her lovers were high-ranking Nazis, including Rudolph Diels, the first chief of the Gestapo.

It was through Diels that she began for the first time to temper her idealistic view of the Nazi revolution. “There began to appear before my romantic eyes … a vast and complicated network of espionage, terror, sadism and hate, from which no one, official or private, could escape.”

Good for her. Her initial failure to see Nazism as it was can be forgiven, both because many others (including many high State Department officials) did not recognize its full horror and because she was young.

But what became of her political views after having her eyes opened to the “espionage, terror, sadism and hate” of Hitler? She turned to Stalin, and began a lifelong devotion to communism, including betraying her own country (and her father’s trust).