AMERICAN ENVOY TO RESIGN

Southland Times, Issue 23378, 9 December 1937, Page 5

AMERICAN ENVOY TO RESIGN

Divergences Of View

With Nazis

UNITED STATES COOL TOWARDS GERMANY

(United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright) (Received December 8, 8.40 p.m.)

NEW YORK, December 8.

The United States Ambassador to .Berlin (Dr W. E. Dodd) will resign on January 1. Mr H. R. Wilson, who is at present Ambassador to Switzerland, will succeed him.

The Washington correspondent of The New York Times, commenting on Dr Dodd’s resignation, says: “It has been apparent for some time that he was uncomfortable in Berlin, partly because of divergences of view with Nazi politics.

“Coincidentally there is a manifest coolness in the relations of the two countries. Not only has Dr Dodd taken occasion, during public addresses, to praise democracy, but he was strongly opposed to American Embassy representation at the Nazi Congress at Nuremberg.”

Dr William Edward Dodd, the American historian and diplomat, shows. a marked leaning towards democratic views. Mr Roosevelt appointed him Ambassador to Berlin in June 1933—a post for which his knowledge of Germany and its language and of the inner history of the post-war period eminently fitted him. Dr Dodd was born at Clayton, North Carolina, in October 1869 and was educated at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. In 1897 he entered Leipzig University and in 1900 took the degree of doctor of philosophy. On his return to the United States he was appointed professor of history at the Randolph-Macon College, Virginia, holding the chair from 1900 to 1908, when he was made professor of American history at Chicago University. Meanwhile Dr Dodd had written a work on Jefferson's return to politics in 1796 which was translated into German, and also the lives of Nathaniel Macon and Jefferson Davis. Later he wrote works on “Statesmen of the Old South” and "Expansion and Conflict."

But probably the writings of Dr Dodd which will be regarded as the most authoritative are those which appeared after the Great Wai about the part played by President Wilson In 1920 he published “Woodrow Wilson and His Work" and later edited Wilson’s public papers, jointly with R. Stannard Baker.

In addition to writing a number of text books on American history Dr Dodd has translated works by German authors, including “What Is History?" by Lamprecht, under whom he had studied at Leipzig.