Martha Dodd
Encyclopedia
Martha Eccles Dodd and her husband spied
for the Soviet Union
against her native United States
from before World War II
until the height of the Cold War
. She had lived in Berlin
early in the Third Reich (1933–1937) with her father, then United States Ambassador to Germany
.
. She studied at the University of cox 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 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 one with Ernst Udet
, a senior Luftwaffe
officer
, and another with French diplomat
Armand Berard (later France
's ambassador to the United Nations.) She also had brief affairs with Americans Thomas Wolfe
and Carl Sandburg
Other lovers included future Nobel Laureate Max Delbrück
and the first head of the Gestapo
, Rudolf Diels
.
Following the Night of the Long Knives
, the mid-1934 Nazi purge of its paramilitary
Sturmabteilung
, Dodd changed her views on the Nazis. People in her social circle were begging the Americans for help and the Dodd family found its phones tapped and their servants enlisted as spies. Her mother wrote that Dodd "got into a nervous state that almost bordered on the hysterical [and] had terrible nightmares". She then became active in left-wing politics
. In March 1934, the Soviet NKVD
Center ordered intelligence officer Boris Winogradov (under diplomatic cover Berlin as press attache), to recruit his lover Martha Dodd as an agent. Vinogradov and Dodd began a romantic relationship that lasted for years, even after he left Berlin; in 1936 they asked Joseph Stalin
asking for permission to marry. Martha Dodd agreed to spy for the Soviet Union. Other case officers
soon replaced Vinogradov and Dodd worked with each of them while hoping to reconnect with Winogradov. (Winogradov was executed c:a 1938 in the Great Purge
.) Dodd informed the Soviets of secret embassy and State Department business and provided details of her father's reports to the State Department. As part of her cover, she maintained a romantic relationship with Louis Ferdinand
, grandson of the last Kaiser. Anticipating her father's retirement from his Berlin post, she tried to learn the Soviet's preferred replacement for him as U.S. Ambassador and told the NKVD leadership that "If this man has at least a slight chance, I will persuade my father to promote his candidacy." After the Dodds left Germany on December 31, 1938, Iskhak Akhmerov
, NKVD rezident in New York City
, managed her espionage work.
In the summer of 1938, while still romantically involved with the filmmaker Sidney Kaufman, with whom she lived for several months, Martha married New York millionaire Alfred Stern, an investment broker
who acquired great wealth in a prior divorce
from the daughter of Sears Roebuck tycoon Julius Rosenwald
. According to Dodd, Stern was prepared to contribute $50,000 to the Democratic party
to secure an ambassadorship. The Soviets viewed her as a valuable but uncertain asset. One assessment was: "A gifted, clever and educated woman, she requires constant control over her behavior." Another wrote that "She considers herself a Communist and claims to accept the party's program. In reality [she] is a typical representative of American bohemia, a sexually decayed woman ready to sleep with any handsome man." In a February 5, 1942, letter, Dodd told her Soviet contacts that her husband should be brought into their network. With their approval, she approached her husband and reported that he responded with enthusiasm: "He wanted to do something immediately. He felt he had many contacts that could be valuable in this sort of work." Stern established a music publishing house that served as a cover for routing information from the U.S. to the Soviet Union. Dodd and Stern proved of little value to the Soviets beyond providing the publishing house cover and occasionally recommending someone as a potential agent. As part of the Soble spy ring, Miss Dodd (code named Liza) recommended Jane Foster
to infiltrate the OSS
.
In 1939, Dodd published a memoir of her years in Berlin, Through Embassy Eyes. It included extravagant praise of the Soviet Union based in her travels there. With her brother William as co-editor, she published her father's Berlin diaries, Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 1933-1938.
Her 1945 novel, Sowing the Wind, described the moral deterioration of decent Germans under Hitler. It was "not much esteemed as a work of fiction," but became a best-seller in translation in the Russian sector of Berlin in 1949.
The FBI had Dodd under surveillance by 1948. Contacts between Dodd and Stern and the NKGB, successor to the NKVD, lapsed in 1949. In 1955, Dodd published The Searching Light, a defense of academic freedom
that told the story of a professor under pressure to sign a loyalty oath
. In July 1956, subpoenaed to testify in several espionage cases, they fled to Prague via Mexico with their nine-year-old son. They later applied for and were denied Soviet citizenship. Boris Morros
, a Soviet spy turned FBI informant, implicated Dodd and Stern in 1957 as Soviet agents as part of his exposure of the Soble
spy network. The Soviets then allowed them to immigrate to Moscow just as they were convicted of espionage by a U.S. court.
A KGB
document, dated October 1975, noted that the Sterns spent 1963–70 in Cuba
. In the 1970s, apparently disappointed with their lives in the Soviet Union, they tried without success to have their American attorney negotiate their return to the U.S. The KGB monitored the negotiations and had no objections, since their knowledge of espionage activities was outdated or had been revealed by Morros.
In 1979 the U.S. Department of Justice dropped charges against Dodd and her husband related to the Soble case. She died on August 10, 1990, in Prague
.
Her letters were deposited at the Library of Congress
. Her FBI file contained 10,400 pages.
SPY
SPY is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:* SPY , ticker symbol for Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts* SPY , a satirical monthly, trademarked all-caps* SPY , airport code for San Pédro, Côte d'Ivoire...
for the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
against her native United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
from before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
until the height of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. She had lived in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
early in the Third Reich (1933–1937) with her father, then United States Ambassador to Germany
United States Ambassador to Germany
The United States has had diplomatic relations with the nation of Germany and its predecessor nation, the Kingdom of Prussia, since 1835. These relations were broken twice while Germany and the United States were at war...
.
Biography
Martha Dodd was born in Ashland, VirginiaAshland, Virginia
Originally known as Slash Cottage, Ashland is located on the Old Washington Highway U.S. Route One and the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad, a busy north-south route now owned by CSX Transportation...
. She studied at the University of cox and also for a time in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. She served briefly as assistant literary editor of the Chicago Tribune.
Martha and her brother accompanied their parents to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
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
Ernst Hanfstaengl
Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl , was a Harvard-educated German businessman who was an intimate of Adolf Hitler before falling out of favor and defecting. He later worked for Franklin D...
, her sometime lover and an aide to Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, 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 one with Ernst Udet
Ernst Udet
Colonel General Ernst Udet was the second-highest scoring German flying ace of World War I. He was one of the youngest aces and was the highest scoring German ace to survive the war . His 62 victories were second only to Manfred von Richthofen, his commander in the Flying Circus...
, a senior Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
officer
Officer (armed forces)
An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...
, and another with French diplomat
French diplomatic missions
This is a list of diplomatic missions of France, excluding honorary consulates. France's permanent representation abroad began in the reign of Francis I, when in 1522 he sent a delegation to the Swiss. Despite its reduced presence following decolonisation, France still has substantial influence in...
Armand Berard (later France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
's ambassador to the United Nations.) She also had brief affairs with Americans Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing...
and Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
Other lovers included future Nobel Laureate Max Delbrück
Max Delbrück
Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück was a German-American biophysicist and Nobel laureate.-Biography:Delbrück was born in Berlin, German Empire...
and the first head of the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
, Rudolf Diels
Rudolf Diels
Rudolf Diels was a German politician and SS-Oberführer. A protégé of Hermann Göring, Diels was in charge of the Gestapo from 1933 to 1934....
.
Following the Night of the Long Knives
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives , sometimes called "Operation Hummingbird " or in Germany the "Röhm-Putsch," was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders...
, the mid-1934 Nazi purge of its paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
Sturmabteilung
Sturmabteilung
The Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...
, Dodd changed her views on the Nazis. People in her social circle were begging the Americans for help and the Dodd family found its phones tapped and their servants enlisted as spies. Her mother wrote that Dodd "got into a nervous state that almost bordered on the hysterical [and] had terrible nightmares". She then became active in left-wing politics
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
. In March 1934, the Soviet NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
Center ordered intelligence officer Boris Winogradov (under diplomatic cover Berlin as press attache), to recruit his lover Martha Dodd as an agent. Vinogradov and Dodd began a romantic relationship that lasted for years, even after he left Berlin; in 1936 they asked Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
asking for permission to marry. Martha Dodd agreed to spy for the Soviet Union. Other case officers
Agent handling
In intelligence organizations, agent handling is the management of agents, principal agents, and agent networks by intelligence officers typically known as case officers.-Human intelligence:...
soon replaced Vinogradov and Dodd worked with each of them while hoping to reconnect with Winogradov. (Winogradov was executed c:a 1938 in the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
.) Dodd informed the Soviets of secret embassy and State Department business and provided details of her father's reports to the State Department. As part of her cover, she maintained a romantic relationship with Louis Ferdinand
Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia
-Children:* Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia , married firstly Waltraud Freytag on 22 August 1967 in Plön, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany; secondly Ehrengard von Reden on 23 April 1976; thirdly Sibylle Kretschmer. He renounced his succession rights on 18 September 1967...
, grandson of the last Kaiser. Anticipating her father's retirement from his Berlin post, she tried to learn the Soviet's preferred replacement for him as U.S. Ambassador and told the NKVD leadership that "If this man has at least a slight chance, I will persuade my father to promote his candidacy." After the Dodds left Germany on December 31, 1938, Iskhak Akhmerov
Iskhak Akhmerov
Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov was a Soviet spy of Tatar ethnicity who joined the Bolshevik Party in 1919. Akhmerov attended the Communist University of Toilers of the East and the First State University, where he graduated from the School of International Relations in 1930...
, NKVD rezident in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, managed her espionage work.
In the summer of 1938, while still romantically involved with the filmmaker Sidney Kaufman, with whom she lived for several months, Martha married New York millionaire Alfred Stern, an investment broker
Investment broker
Investment brokers are individuals who bring together buyers and sellers of investments. They need a license to operate. They act on behalf of buyers and sellers of stock...
who acquired great wealth in a prior divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
from the daughter of Sears Roebuck tycoon Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald was a U.S. clothier, manufacturer, business executive, and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for the Rosenwald Fund which donated millions to support the education of African American children in the rural South, as well...
. According to Dodd, Stern was prepared to contribute $50,000 to the Democratic party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
to secure an ambassadorship. The Soviets viewed her as a valuable but uncertain asset. One assessment was: "A gifted, clever and educated woman, she requires constant control over her behavior." Another wrote that "She considers herself a Communist and claims to accept the party's program. In reality [she] is a typical representative of American bohemia, a sexually decayed woman ready to sleep with any handsome man." In a February 5, 1942, letter, Dodd told her Soviet contacts that her husband should be brought into their network. With their approval, she approached her husband and reported that he responded with enthusiasm: "He wanted to do something immediately. He felt he had many contacts that could be valuable in this sort of work." Stern established a music publishing house that served as a cover for routing information from the U.S. to the Soviet Union. Dodd and Stern proved of little value to the Soviets beyond providing the publishing house cover and occasionally recommending someone as a potential agent. As part of the Soble spy ring, Miss Dodd (code named Liza) recommended Jane Foster
Jane Foster
Jane Foster Zlatovski allegedly engaged, with her husband, George Zlatovski, in covert activities on behalf of the Soviet Union while employed in sensitive U.S. Government wartime agencies during World War II. They were indicted in 1957. Their case was never tried and both Zlatovskis denied the...
to infiltrate the OSS
OSS
-Science and technology:* Open-source software* Open Sound System, a standard interface for making and capturing sound in Unix operating systems* Open Search Server, search engine software...
.
In 1939, Dodd published a memoir of her years in Berlin, Through Embassy Eyes. It included extravagant praise of the Soviet Union based in her travels there. With her brother William as co-editor, she published her father's Berlin diaries, Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 1933-1938.
Her 1945 novel, Sowing the Wind, described the moral deterioration of decent Germans under Hitler. It was "not much esteemed as a work of fiction," but became a best-seller in translation in the Russian sector of Berlin in 1949.
The FBI had Dodd under surveillance by 1948. Contacts between Dodd and Stern and the NKGB, successor to the NKVD, lapsed in 1949. In 1955, Dodd published The Searching Light, a defense of academic freedom
Academic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...
that told the story of a professor under pressure to sign a loyalty oath
Loyalty oath
A loyalty oath is an oath of loyalty to an organization, institution, or state of which an individual is a member.In this context, a loyalty oath is distinct from pledge or oath of allegiance...
. In July 1956, subpoenaed to testify in several espionage cases, they fled to Prague via Mexico with their nine-year-old son. They later applied for and were denied Soviet citizenship. Boris Morros
Boris Morros
Boris Morros was an American Communist Party member, Paramount Studios producer, Soviet agent, and FBI double agent.Morros was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and emigrated with his family to America in 1922...
, a Soviet spy turned FBI informant, implicated Dodd and Stern in 1957 as Soviet agents as part of his exposure of the Soble
Jack Soble
Jack Soble Jack Soble (birth name:Abromas Sobolevicius, sometimes used Abraham Sobolevicius or Adolph Senin) Jack Soble (birth name:Abromas Sobolevicius, sometimes used Abraham Sobolevicius or Adolph Senin) (born May 15, 1903 in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania - ?, but possibly (1897-1974) was a Jewish...
spy network. The Soviets then allowed them to immigrate to Moscow just as they were convicted of espionage by a U.S. court.
A KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
document, dated October 1975, noted that the Sterns spent 1963–70 in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
. In the 1970s, apparently disappointed with their lives in the Soviet Union, they tried without success to have their American attorney negotiate their return to the U.S. The KGB monitored the negotiations and had no objections, since their knowledge of espionage activities was outdated or had been revealed by Morros.
In 1979 the U.S. Department of Justice dropped charges against Dodd and her husband related to the Soble case. She died on August 10, 1990, in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
.
Her letters were deposited at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. Her FBI file contained 10,400 pages.
Works
- Martha Dodd, Through Embassy Eyes (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), excerpt available, UK title: My Years in Germany
- Martha Dodd;, Charles Austin BeardCharles A. BeardCharles Austin Beard was, with Frederick Jackson Turner, one of the most influential American historians of the first half of the 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science...
, eds., Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 1933-1938 (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1941), OCLC 395068 - Martha Dodd, Sowing the Wind (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1945)
- Martha Dodd, The Searching Light (NY: Citadel Press, 1955)
Sources
Issue 13- Gene Smith, "Martha Dodd's Shining Season," American Heritage, July/August 1997, vol. 48, issue 4, available online, accessed June 13, 2011