Sean Dimond

“Whenever they come up against someone who will not stand for their arrogance, they climb down from their perch and behave,” she wrote. “They respect character when they meet it, and if more people had shown firmness to Hitler’s handyman Papen and his acolytes in small every day contacts, as well as in big affairs of state, the Nazi growth could have been slowed up.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“one may safely say that it would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“why were the State Department and President Roosevelt so hesitant to express in frank terms how they really felt about Hitler at a time when such expressions clearly could have had a powerful effect on his prestige in the world?”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“The nation, Dodd had written, must discard its “righteous aloofness” because “another life and death struggle in Europe would bother us all—especially if it was paralleled by a similar conflict in the Far East (as I believe is the understanding in secret conclaves).” Dodd acknowledged Congress’s reluctance to become entangled abroad but added, “I do, however, think facts count; even if we hate them.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin