Anne de Courcy

The ambassador’s daughter bent on betrayal

When the young Martha Dodd arrived at the American embassy in Berlin in 1933 she cared nothing about politics. By the time she left four years later, she was a committed Soviet spy

Martha Dodd, the daughter of the American ambassador in 1930s Berlin. [Getty Images] 
issue 16 November 2024

In June 1933, the 24-year-old Martha Dodd, the daughter of the newly appointed American ambassador to Berlin, arrived in the German capital with her parents and older brother. She knew little and cared less about politics. To her, Adolf Hitler, who had just seized supreme power in Germany, was merely ‘a clown who looked like Charlie Chaplin’.

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