In the Garden of Beasts

On Saturday, June 30, 1934, trailed by detectives and an SS squad, Hitler arrives at the Bad Wiessee spa town, barges into Röhm’s hotel, and has him arrested along with several of his lieutenants. Hitler’s men drive the prisoners to a prison in nearby Munich, where they execute six officers, but not Röhm.

In Berlin, Göring orders multiple arrests; when one eludes capture, Göring shouts, “Shoot them! Take a whole company… Shoot them… Shoot them at once!” (307).

Dodd and his wife learn of the arrests and shootings, and immediately they fear for Martha, who is out on a picnic with Boris, “a man whom the Nazis even in ordinary times could be expected to view as an enemy of the state" (308).  

Martha and Boris return from their lakeside picnic to find “soldiers, weapons, and military trucks" (310) everywhere. Martha returns home to news that a prominent general, former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, and his wife were executed in their garden, that martial law is declared in Berlin, and that “dozens, perhaps hundreds, of official murders" (311) have occurred. Another general is shot, along with Berlin SA chief, Karl Ernst, a Catholic cleric, a music critic, and possibly Papen’s press secretary.