The next day, Martha dressed, fixed her hair, and studied her face in the mirror, frowning slightly. She had worn almost no makeup as befitted the Nazi ideal, and she was not happy about it. But she had no time for second thoughts about her appearance, for Putzi arrived fifteen minutes early to drive her to the Kaiserhof. He seemed even more anxious than she was for the date to go well.
Putzi escorted her to the elegant Kaiserhof tearoom, where they met another lunch guest, the famous Polish singer Jan Kiepura. “Where’s the chancellor?” Martha asked Putzi after they were seated and a quick glance around revealed that her date was not in the room.
“He’s coming,” Putzi replied. “Not to worry.”
The three chatted and drank tea for quite some time, and Martha was just beginning to wonder if she had been stood up when she heard a commotion near the front entrance, the scrape of chairs against the floor, and shouts of “Heil Hitler!” Moments later, Hitler entered the room with his usual entourage of Nazi Party men, bodyguards, and beloved chauffeur, a set of companions Boris contemptuously referred to as the Chauffeureska.
Martha smiled and tried to catch the chancellor’s eye, but to her surprise, he never glanced her way as the maître d’ led his group to a nearby table. As Hitler and the Chauffeureska seated themselves and began perusing their menus, Martha raised her eyebrows at Putzi in a significant glance and picked up her own menu.
The men at the chancellor’s table ordered lunch; Martha and her two companions ordered theirs. After the first course, one of Hitler’s aides came over to their table and invited Jan Kiepura to meet the chancellor. Martha feigned indifference, but she could not help feeling slighted as Hitler invited the singer to be seated and the two men conversed earnestly throughout the second course.
“Kiepura is a Jew on his mother’s side,” Putzi murmured. “I don’t think Hitler knows.”
“I hope you aren’t planning to tell him.”
“Of course not,” Putzi replied, wounded. “It’s none of my business.”
Martha managed a tight smile, wondering why she was there when her ostensible date seemed to have no interest in acknowledging her existence. The food was excellent, so at least there was that.
As the second course was cleared, Putzi excused himself, walked over to Hitler’s table, and spoke briefly, bending close to his ear. Soon he returned to Martha and said that Hitler had consented to be introduced to her.
Martha rose, hiding her surprise, for she had assumed consent had already been given. She followed Putzi to the other table and remained standing while he made a formal introduction. Hitler rose, took her hand, and kissed it politely. He murmured a few phrases in German that she did not quite catch, so she smiled and nodded in reply, wishing Putzi would translate for her.
It occurred to her that Hitler’s little mustache did not look as ridiculous in person as it did in photographs. His face was unexpectedly soft and weak, with pouches under his eyes and fleshy lips. His hands were small and surprisingly feminine. His only distinctive feature was his eyes, which Martha found startling—very pale blue, intense, unwavering, even hypnotic.
The chancellor spoke again in German, his tone polite and perhaps a bit embarrassed, and Martha smiled back, though she grasped only every third word or so and he could have been rudely propositioning her for all she knew. After a brief time he shook her hand, and raised it to his lips for another kiss, which Martha assumed was his way of bidding her goodbye, for as soon as he released her hand, Putzi escorted her back to their table.
“Are you going to translate any of that for me?” she murmured.
“Just the usual pleasantries,” he replied quietly, pulling out her chair. “He thinks you’re very pretty, sufficiently Aryan despite your dark hair.”
Martha bit back a derisive laugh and sat down. Over dessert and coffee, she and Putzi chatted idly, while at the other table, Hitler and Kiepura resumed their conversation, sober and intent.
“What are they talking about?” Martha asked Putzi in an undertone.
“Music,” Putzi replied. “What else?”
What else indeed. Martha muffled a sigh and finished her cake. From time to time, Hitler gave her a few curious, abashed stares, but they never exchanged another word, not even when the chancellor and his Chauffeureska rose and departed.
Martha watched him go, bemused. Most men she met tried a little harder to impress her. Considering his position, perhaps he thought the burden was upon her to impress him.
Putzi seemed jubilant as he drove her home, which Martha did not understand in the least, because she could not imagine that she had made a very good impression. She had no idea what sort of woman it would take to inspire romance from Chancellor Hitler.
It came as no surprise when the days passed without an invitation from Hitler to meet again, or even a perfunctory, impersonal note from the chancellor’s office acknowledging their meeting, which an ambassador’s daughter might have expected.
Putzi seemed disappointed at first, but he got over it by mid-November. The most enduring outcome of the date was the jealousy it provoked from Boris—which was quite thrilling, and added another element of excitement to their clandestine relationship. The United States officially recognized the Soviet Union on November 16, but even after Martha’s father paid his first official visit to the Soviet embassy, the couple remained utterly platonic in public. Their romance, if it became widely known, would displease Martha’s parents, Boris’s superiors, and the innumerable Nazi officials who spotted threats and conspiracy in every chance meeting between foreign diplomats—and their daughters too, apparently. Martha was certain the Gestapo shadowed her and Boris on walks through the Tiergarten to admire the autumn foliage, and at private dinners at discreet restaurants. Fortunately, Tiergartenstrasse 27a had many rooms, and her parents preferred to turn in early. How fortunate it was, too, that she had obtained a diaphragm back in Chicago during her brief stint as a married woman. It would have been all but impossible to get one as a single girl in Berlin.
The Dodds’ first Thanksgiving abroad passed, and winter followed swiftly after with starry nights and gentle snow showers. It seemed to Martha that no one celebrated Christmas more merrily than Germans. Even in those troubled times, candles shone in the windows of every home and electric lights in every storefront, their illumination reflected in the streets and sidewalks, wet from melted snow. Strings of electric bulbs adorned the tall evergreen trees in public parks and squares, and shoppers bustled about purchasing delicacies for neighborhood parties and family feasts.
“I find the German enthusiasm for Christmas absolutely extraordinary,” Martha’s father told his family a few days before the holiday. “Christmas trees at public squares and in every house I’ve entered. One might be led to think that Germans believe in Jesus and practice his teachings.”
When his wife gently reminded him that many Germans did, Martha’s father acknowledged that he was wrong to conflate all Germans and the Nazis.
“Never mind, Dad. We’ve all made that mistake,” said Martha, with a sudden flare of sympathy for the Harnacks, for Greta Lorke, for other Germans she knew who strongly opposed the regime, an increasingly shrinking minority in a country increasingly intolerant of dissent.
Chapter Twenty-two
January–June 1934
