The Berlin Mission: The American Who Resisted Nazi Germany From Within by Richard Breitman

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Berlin Mission: The American Who Resisted Nazi Germany From Within by Richard Breitman Martin Kitchen The Berlin Mission: The American Who Resisted Nazi Germany From Within. By Richard Breitman. New York: Public Affairs, 2019. 336 pages. $27.52 (cloth). That the State Department, in spite of some indifferent ambassadors in Berlin, was relatively well informed about Nazi Germany was in large part due to a junior consular officer, Raymond Geist, who was posted to Berlin in 1929. In The Berlin Mission, Richard Breitman gives in sympathetic detail an account of this relatively minor figure, whose considerable influence, both in helping Jewish emigrants and in advising the State Department, has hitherto been overlooked. At first, Geist and his superior, George S. Messersmith, were able to do very little to help potential immigrants to the United States, due to the Hoover administration's stringent restrictions. When the SA and SS went on the rampage after the Reichstag fire, Geist and Messersmith were virtually powerless to help US citizens caught up in this mindless violence. They received no support from the ambassador, William E. Dodd, a man justifiably described as "a trivial, pedantic professor" by the colourful "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, one of Martha Dodd's many lovers. During these early years, Geist played second fiddle to Messersmith, but as early as 1934 he voiced the eccentric opinion that Germany was bent on creating an empire "similar to that maintained by the Caesars." Both men were now caught between a mounting demand for visas to the United States and a State Department determined to curb immigration, using the cruel and preposterous argument that American Jews were deliberately exaggerating the extent of Nazi persecution to enable more immigration. In 1934, Messersmith was appointed Assistant Secretary of State to Sumner Welles, both of whom listened to Geist's reports from Berlin. He was replaced by Douglas Jenkins, who deferred to Geist, his intellectual superior. In 1936, Geist began to send a series of jeremiads directly to the State Department, warning that Hitler was bent on war, that the Wehrmacht preached a doctrine of "world power or ruin," that Adolf Hitler would never surrender, and that only his death would remove him. At the same time, he bearded the lion and negotiated directly with Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard [End Page 435] Heydrich in an effort to promote immigration to the US. He also cultivated a close relationship with the intriguing Werner Best, who was then a key figure in the Gestapo. Geist was by now in effect the chief US intelligence analyst in Germany, often reporting directly to the President. He sent a trenchant analysis of the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair and was one of the first to suspect that Hitler was bent on attacking the Soviet Union. Geist was adamant in insisting that Jews found guilty of "racial defilement" by having sexual intercourse with an "Aryan" should not be barred from immigration to the US on the grounds that they had a criminal record. After the Anschluss, he negotiated directly with Werner Best and Karl Haselbacher, the Gestapo boss in Vienna, to protect US citizens from Nazi thugs. He then had a tough battle to increase the immigration quota from Austria, but his success was at the expense of the German quota. Among those whom he was able to assist were Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Geist worked closely with the British passport control officer and secret intelligence officer, Frank Foley, an admirable character who became known as the "British Schindler" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel." According to Raymond Geist, Werner Best told him that Hitler had ordered the pogrom on November 9, 1938 and that he intended to "annihilate" the Jews. Haselbacher repeated this assessment. Ambassador Wilson noted on Geist's report that this was "real eventual genocide." Never afraid to go directly to the top, Geist introduced a delegation of Quakers on a mission to rescue Jews to Heydrich, who proved to be remarkably cooperative. Geist also worked closely with George Rublee, President Roosevelt's special envoy for political refugees, but they were now in a frantic race between the outbreak of war and finding a solution, however inadequate, to the chronic refugee crisis...