Dodd Remembers the Past to Protect the Future

In the midst of a field of self-promoting campaign books, one presidential candidate’s new volume stands out. Unlike Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope (2006) or Carl Bernsetin’s Hillary Clinton biography A Woman in Charge (2007), Christopher Dodd’s entry into the fray deals with something other than himself and his policy ideas. Letters from Nuremberg, co-written with Lary Bloom, delves deep into history—both the personal history of the Dodd family and a larger history of a critical period in the development of the modern world.

Like his son, Sen. Dodd’s father was also a U.S. senator from Connecticut. But the defining moment of Thomas Dodd’s own political career was when he was given the second ranking position on the prosecution team for the Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg. It was not until 1990 that Sen. Dodd’s sister unearthed a box full of letters written from the senior Dodd to his wife while in Nuremberg—and prompted by this discovery, in early 2006, Sen. Dodd approached the writer Lary Bloom with an idea for a book about them. In a recent e-mail interview, Bloom wrote, “From the very first paragraph, I was transfixed by Tom Dodd’s descriptions and the quality of his prose. I could see that this was at once a compelling love story—[about] Tom and Grace—and an insightful first draft of history’s most important trial, the first ever international tribunal for war crimes.”

Letters From Nuremberg is as much a tribute to the restraint practiced by the American government during this period as to Dodd’s late father. “On December 23, 1945, for example, Tom Dodd told the court that the Nazis had to be held accountable for ‘the apprehension of victims and their confinement without trial, often without charges, generally with no indication of the length of their detention.’ In short, Guantanomo,” he wrote. He goes on to say that the exercise is not to compare the American government to the Nazis, whose crimes are certainly still unparalleled. Bloom continues, “It is only to show that the rule of law has been set aside by this country. Senator Dodd often quotes from Jackson’s opening argument at Nuremberg: ‘That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.’”

The comparison to current events is particularly fitting, but Letters from Nuremberg is never as critical as it could be of the Bush administration. Rather, it lets the contrast between the way our country behaved all those years ago to the legislative mess of the “War on Terror” speak for itself. “I think Senator Dodd sees the book as a way to address a critical contemporary issue—how this country is seen by the world and our violations of the rule of law—and as a vehicle that speaks to integrity and the high moral ground,” Bloom wrote.

But at its heart, Letters from Nuremberg is a story about a man and his wife, and a son and his father. At the end of his career, the senior Dodd received a Congressional censure for, according to the book, “alleged misuse of campaign funds.” He lost the next election and, six months after retiring to Connecticut, died a broken man. In part, Letters from Nuremberg is an effort by a son to mend his father’s reputation: “This book, for whatever else it does, shows the heart and integrity of Tom Dodd,” wrote Bloom.

The letters themselves are a remarkable chronicle of one of the most important periods in the 20th century. Tom Dodd wrote faithfully to his wife about the comings and goings of the trials. Underneath the narrative, however, lies a great love story—one that has made Chris Dodd and his siblings much more aware of their parents’ relationship and their father’s legacy. “They knew their parents had a strong relationship,” wrote Bloom, “but the letters are extraordinary in the way they portray that relationship—a great love story. There was also, of course, in these letters a way to put Thomas Dodd’s life and work in a new perspective.”

Part history, part love story, and inevitably, part campaign book, Letters from Nuremberg is a remarkable and fitting reminder of a proud period in our nation’s history.