[9] His paternal English or Scottish ancestors had lived in America since the 1740s when Daniel Dodd settled among the Highland Scots in the Cape Fear Valley.

On a colleague's advice, Dodd traveled to Germany and earned his PhD at the University of Leipzig in 1900, based on a thesis (in German) concerning Thomas Jefferson's 1796 return to politics following a three-year hiatus.

[11] Shortly after returning to the United States and resuming his teaching career, Dodd married Martha Johns at her family's home in nearby Wake County, North Carolina on December 25, 1901.

His semi-literate and impoverished father supported his family only through the generosity of wealthier relatives, whom Dodd came to view as "hard men, those traders and aristocratic masters of their dependents".

In 1902, Dodd wrote an article in The Nation in which he complained of pressure to flatter Southern elites and their view that slavery played no role in the onset of the Civil War.

Dodd explained that "To suggest that the revolt from the union in 1860 was not justified, was not led by the most lofty minded statesmen, is to invite not only criticism but an enforced resignation."

[17] Though much of his scholarship was later superseded, Dodd helped to model a new approach to regional history: sympathetic, judicious, and less partisan than the work of earlier generations.

[19] In 1912 he wrote speeches for presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson, a Virginian and academic whose family had similarly experienced the devastating aftermath of the American Civil War.

In 1920 Dodd reviewed the League-related parts of the speech Ohio Governor James M. Cox gave when accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

In 1935, Avery Odelle Craven edited a festschrift titled Essays in Honor of William E. Dodd By His Former Students at the University of Chicago, which included papers by Frank Lawrence Owsley and Maude Howlett Woodfin.

The ambassadorship, normally a patronage position rather than one filled by a State Department professional, was offered to others, including James M. Cox and Newton D. Baker, both of whom declined citing personal reasons.

"[36] Before leaving to take up his post, Dodd consulted on the situation in Germany, and especially Nazi persecution of the Jews, with his own contacts and during interviews the State Department arranged for him.

[39] Dodd met with members of the Jewish-American community, including Stephen S. Wise and Felix Warburg, who asked him to seek a reversal of the Nazis' repressive anti-Jewish policies.

We must protect them, and whatever we can do to moderate the general persecution by unofficial and personal influence ought to be done.Edward M. House, a veteran in Democratic Party circles since the Wilson administration, told Dodd that he should do what he could "to ameliorate Jewish sufferings", but cautioned that "the Jews should not be allowed to dominate economic or intellectual life in Berlin as they have done for a long time.

"[42] Dodd shared House's views, and wrote in his diary that "The Jews had held a great many more of the key positions in Germany than their numbers or talents entitled them to.

"[43] Based on this view of the proper role of Jews in society, he advised Hitler in March 1934 that Jewish influence should be restrained in Germany as it was in the United States.

"I explained to him [Hitler]", wrote Dodd, "that where a question of over-activity of Jews in university or official life made trouble, we had managed to redistribute the offices in such a way as to not give great offense."

"[44] Dodd tried without success to save the life of Helmut Hirsch, a German-American Jew who planned to bomb parts of the Nazi party rally grounds at Nuremberg.

When Mowrer's employers arranged for him to leave and he sought to stay to cover the September 1933 Nuremberg rally, Dodd refused to support him, believing his reporting was so provocative that it made it difficult for other American journalists to work.

"[47] On October 12, 1933, Dodd gave a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, with Joseph Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg in attendance, and used an elaborate analogy based on Roman history to criticize the Nazis as "half-educated statesmen" who adopted the "arbitrary modes" of an ancient tyrant.

[52] Following a U.S. vacation of several months in 1936, Dodd devoted the fall to testing German reaction to a personal meeting between Roosevelt and Hitler, an initiative the President proposed, or a world peace conference.

After a series of rebuffs, Dodd produced a report for the State Department dated November 28, 1936, which Assistant Secretary Moore commended and forwarded to Roosevelt.

He was neither a political figure of the sort normally honored with such a prestigious appointment, nor a member of the social elite that formed the higher ranks of the Foreign Service.

In Berlin some of his subordinates were embarrassed by his insistence on living modestly, walking unaccompanied in the street, and leaving formal receptions so early as to appear rude.

[54] Early in his tenure as ambassador, Dodd decided to avoid attending the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg rather than appear to endorse Hitler's regime.

[57] In 1937, Dodd stepped down as ambassador in Berlin, and President Roosevelt appointed Hugh Wilson, a senior professional diplomat, to replace him.

[59] Dodd, who suffered for years from a severe throat condition exacerbated by the stress of his ambassadorship, traveled on a speaking tour of Canada and the US, establishing his reputation as a statesman who opposed the Nazis.

[9] During World War II the Liberty ship SS William E. Dodd was built in Panama City, Florida, and named in his honor.

[64] 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.

[71] Dodd and his family's time in Nazi Germany are the subject of Erik Larson's bestselling 2011 work of popular history, In the Garden of Beasts, which portrays Dodd as well-meaning but naive and unprepared, believing as a historian that all national leaders are ultimately rational actors, and rendered helpless when he realizes that Hitler may in fact be completely irrational.