William Dodd (ambassador) - Later Life and Death

Later Life and Death

In 1937, Dodd stepped down as Ambassador in Berlin and President Roosevelt appointed Hugh Wilson, a senior professional diplomat, to replace him. After leaving his State Department post, he campaigned to warn against the dangers posed by Germany, Italy, and Japan, and detailed racial and religious persecution in Germany. He predicted German aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Dodd, who was in failing health, traveled on a speaking tour of Canada and the US, establishing his reputation as a statesman who opposed the Nazis.

In 1938, Dodd wrote an assessment of Nazi ideology and the Third Reich's plan for Europe. He stated:

everal policies were adopted during the first two years of the Nazi regime. The first was to suppress the Jews.... They were to hold no positions in University or government operations, own no land, write nothing for newspapers, gradually give up their personal business relations, be imprisoned and many of them killed.... betrays no indication of the propaganda activities of the Nazi government. And of course there is not a word in it to warn the unwary reader that all the people who might oppose the regime have been absolutely silenced. The central idea behind it is to make the rising generation worship their chief and get ready to "save civilization" from the Jews, from Communism and from democracy—thus preparing the way for a Nazified world where all freedom of the individual, of education, and of the churches is to be totally suppressed.

A volume of his planned four-volume history of the South appeared in 1938 as The Old South: Struggles for Democracy, covering the 17th century.

Dodd's wife died in May 1938.

In December of 1938, Dodd accidentally ran over a 4-year-old African-American child and fled the scene. The child sustained severe injuries, but survived. Dodd was charged with leaving the scene of an accident, convicted, and fined $250 plus court costs. Dodd also paid more than $1000 for the child's medical bills.

After a year's illness, Dodd died on February 9, 1940, at his country home at Round Hill, Loudoun County, Virginia.

In April 1946, during the Nuremberg trials, Dodd's diaries were used as evidence against Hjalmar Schacht, a liberal economist and banker, and a Nazi government official until the end of 1937. Schacht praised Dodd's character but suggested his views in the 1930s were tainted by his less than fluent German. He testified that Dodd was his friend and invited him to emigrate to the United States. Schacht's attorney described Dodd as "one of the few accredited diplomats in Berlin who very obviously had no sympathy of any sort for the regime in power".