Martha Dodd Stern
| Martha Dodd | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Martha Eccles Dodd October 8, 1908 Ashland, Virginia |
| Died | August 10, 1990 (aged 81) Prague, Czechoslovakia |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | attended University of Chicago |
| Known for | espionage, writing |
| Notable work |
Through Embassy Eyes (1939 memoir) Sowing the Wind (1945 novel) The Searching Light (1955 novel) |
| Spouse(s) |
George Bassett Roberts (m. 1932; div. 1934) Alfred K. Stern (m. 1938; d. 1986) |
| Children | Robert |
| Parent(s) |
William Edward Dodd Martha Ida "Mattie" Johns |
| Relatives | William E. Dodd, Jr. |
| Notes | |
Martha Eccles Dodd (October 8, 1908 – August 10, 1990) was an American journalist and novelist. The daughter of William Edward Dodd, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first Ambassador to Germany, Dodd lived in Berlin from 1933–37 and was a witness to the rise of the Third Reich. She became involved in left-wing politics after she purportedly witnessed first-hand the violence of the Nazi state. With her second husband Alfred Stern Jr. she engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union from before World War II until the height of the Cold War.
Martha Dodd was born in Ashland, Virginia. She studied at the University of Chicago and also for a time in Washington, D.C. and Paris. She served briefly as assistant literary editor of the Chicago Tribune.
Martha and her brother, William E. Dodd, Jr., accompanied their parents to Berlin when her father took up the post of U.S. Ambassador in 1933. She initially found the Nazi movement attractive. She later wrote that she "became temporarily an ardent defender of everything going on" and admired the "glowing and inspiring faith in Hitler, the good that was being done for the unemployed." She made a number of friends in high circles, and Ernst Hanfstaengl, her sometime lover and an aide to Adolf Hitler, tried to encourage a romantic relationship between Hitler and Dodd. Dodd found Hitler "excessively gentle and modest in his manners", but no romance followed their meeting. She had numerous relationships while in Berlin, including with Ernst Udet, a senior Luftwaffe officer and with French diplomat Armand Berard (later France's ambassador to the United Nations.) Other lovers included future Nobel Laureate Max Delbrück and the first head of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels.
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