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  3. William E. Dodd was an academic historian, living a quiet life in Chicago, w

William E. Dodd was an academic historian, living a quiet life in Chicago, w

游客2023-12-03  22
问题     William E. Dodd was an academic historian, living a quiet life in Chicago, when Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him United States ambassador to Germany. It was 1933, Hitler had recently been appointed chancellor, the world was about to change.
    Had Dodd gone to Berlin by himself, his reports of events, his diary entries, his quarrels with the State Department, his conversations with Roosevelt would be source material for specialists. But the general reader is in luck on two counts: First, Dodd took his family to Berlin, including his young, beautiful and sexually adventurous daughter, Martha: second, the book that recounts this story, " In the Garden of Beasts," is by Erik Larson, the author of "The Devil in the White City." Larson has meticulously researched the Dodds’ intimate witness to Hitler’s ascendancy and created an edifying narrative of this historical byway that has all the pleasures of a political thriller: innocents abroad, the gathering storm.
    When the Dodds arrived in Germany in July 1933, storm troopers were beating American tourists bloody on the streets. Jews(1 percent of Germany’s population)were targets of brutal violence and ever tightening social restrictions.
    Martha Dodd found life in Berlin entirely charming. Many men courted her and found her eagerly responsive. She was enthralled with the Nazi movement: "I felt like a child, ebullient and careless, the intoxication of the new regime working like wine in me," she wrote in her memoir. To a friend she said, "We sort of don’t like the Jews anyway."
    In this last, at least, she echoed the general view at home. Public opinion was isolationist: the country would scarcely open its doors to German-Jewish refugees: the State Department was filled with anti-Semites, inclined to let Hitler have his way. American Jewish leaders were themselves divided on the best response to the crisis. As Roosevelt had instructed Dodd, Germany’s treatment of Jews was shameful, but it was not the business of the American government.
    At first, Dodd was optimistic that Hitler’s regime would change. But as the months passed, it became clear to him that a disaster was in process, that Hitler was bound for a war to dominate Europe. Dodd became a Cassandra: "What mistakes and blunders," he wrote, " and no democratic peoples do anything!"
    In her love affairs, Martha was ecumenical and prodigal: Rudolph Diels, for one, chief of the Gestapo: the writer Thomas Wolfe, when he came to town: a French diplomat: a German flying ace: and most important, Boris Winogradov, who was attached to the Soviet Embassy, and with whom she fell in love. Martha, now disillusioned with the Nazis, was recruited by the Soviet secret police.
    After almost five years in Germany, Dodd came home exhausted and ill. He continued to warn of the great danger ahead, but, as he wrote to Roosevelt in 1939, after Hitler’s invasion of Poland, "Now it is too late." A few months later, he was dead.
    Winogradov disappeared in Stalin’s purges, but Martha continued her connection with Soviet intelligence. When she returned to the United States, she was no longer useful as a agent. Nevertheless, in 1953, when Martha and her husband, Alfred Stern, were subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, they fled to Mexico, and from there to Prague, where Martha died in 1990 at the age of 82, disillusioned once again.
    The story of prewar Germany, of the Jews, of book burnings, of the Reichstag trial, of the Night of the Long Knives, of the Nuremberg rally, of the unfolding disaster is old news. But Larson has connected the dots to make a fresh picture of these terrible events. [br] According to the passage, which of the following groups of people might be viewed as being aggressive?
选项 A、Storm troopers.
B、American tourists.
C、Hitler.
D、Semites.
答案 A
解析 推断题。从文章第三段“storm trooperswere beating American tourists bloody on thestreets”可以推断“storm troopers”很具有侵略性，实际上了解二战历史并知道纳粹党突击队员的情况即可知道该选项答案。B和D没有任何侵略性。C具有侵略性但不符合题干groups of people。
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