The story is non-fiction: “[A]ny material between quotation marks comes from a letter, diary, memoir, or other historical document” (2).

In the Garden of Beasts tells the story of an American and his family as they visit Berlin during the first year of Hitler’s rule in Nazi Germany. At first, they shop, dine, and enjoy the city: “They knew Goebbels and Göring as social acquaintances with whom they dined, danced, and joked” until “an event occurred that proved to be one of the most significant in revealing the true character of Hitler” (2).

An American physician working in Berlin, Joseph Schachno, appears at the American consulate there in late June 1933, displaying signs of a severe beating: “The skin had been flayed from much of his body” (3).

American Consul General George Messersmith hears his story: Nine days earlier, “Schachno had been visited at his home by a squad of uniformed men responding to an anonymous denunciation of him as a potential enemy of the state" (4). Finding nothing, the men take Schachno to their headquarters and whip him thoroughly, then release him.