Free In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson Page B

casual observers, partly because so few Jews lived in Germany. As of January 1933only about 1 percent of Germany’s sixty-five million people were Jewish, and most lived in major cities, leaving a negligible presence throughout the rest of the country. Nearly a third—just over 160,000—lived in Berlin alone, but they constituted less than4 percent of the city’s overall population of 4.2 million, and many lived in close-knit neighborhoods not typically included on visitors’ itineraries.
    Yet even many Jewish residents failed to grasp the true meaning of what was occurring. Fifty thousand did see, and left Germany within weeks of Hitler’s ascension to chancellor, but most stayed. “Hardly anyone thought that the threats against the Jews were meant seriously,” wrote Carl Zuckmayer, a Jewish writer. “Even many Jews considered the savage anti-Semitic rantings of the Nazis merely a propaganda device, a line the Nazis would drop as soon as they won governmental power and were entrusted with public responsibilities.” Although a song popular among Storm Troopers bore the title “When Jewish Blood Spurts from My Knife,” by the time of the Dodds’ arrival violence against Jews had begun to wane. Incidents were sporadic, isolated. “It was easy to be reassured,” wrote historian John Dippel in a study of why many Jews decided to stay in Germany. “On the surface, much of daily life remained as it had been before Hitler came to power. Nazi attacks on the Jews were like summer thunderstorms that came and went quickly, leaving an eerie calm.”
    The most visible marker of the Coordination campaign was the sudden appearance of the Hitler salute, or
Hitlergruss
. It was sufficiently new to the outside world that Consul General Messersmith devoted an entire dispatch to the subject, dated August 8, 1933.The salute, he wrote, had no modern precedent, save for the more narrowly required salute of soldiers in the presence of superior officers. What made the practice unique was that everyone was expected to salute, even in the most mundane of encounters. Shopkeepers saluted customers. Children were required to salute their teachers several times a day. At the close of theatrical performances, a newly established custom demanded that audiences stand and salute as they sang first the German national anthem, “Deutschland über Alles,” and second the Storm Trooper anthem, the “Horst Wessel Lied,” or “Horst Wessel Song,” named for its composer, an SA thug killed by communists but whom Nazi propaganda subsequently transformed into a hero. The German public had so avidly embraced the salute as to make the act of incessantly saluting almost comical, especially in the corridors of public buildings where everyone from the lowliestmessenger to the loftiest official saluted and
Heil
ed one another, turning a walk to the men’s room into an exhausting affair.
    Messersmith refused to salute and merely stood at attention, but he understood that for ordinary Germans that would not have sufficed. At times even he felt real pressure to conform. At the close of a luncheon he attended in the port city of Kiel, all the guests stood and with right arms extended sang the national anthem and the “Horst Wessel Song.” Messersmith stood respectfully, as he would have in America for the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Many of the other guests, including a number of Storm Troopers, glared at him and whispered among themselves as if trying to divine his identity. “I felt really quite fortunate that the incident took place within doors and among on the whole intelligent people,” he wrote, “for if it had been in a street gathering or in an outdoor demonstration, no questions would have been asked as to who I was, and that I would have been mishandled is almost unquestionable.” Messersmith recommended that American visitors try to anticipate when the songs and salute would be required and leave early.
    He did not think it funny when now