Martha Dodd
American journalist, novelist and spy for the Soviet Union (1908–1990)
Martha Eccles Dodd (October 8, 1908 – August 10, 1990) was an American journalist and novelist. The daughter of William Edward Dodd, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first Ambassador to Germany, Dodd lived in Berlin from 1933–1937 and was a witness to the rise of the Third Reich. She became involved in left-wing politics after she witnessed first-hand the violence of the Nazi state. With her second husband, Alfred Stern Jr., she engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union from before World War II until the height of the Cold War.
Life and career
Martha Dodd was born in Ashland, Virginia. She studied at the University of Chicago and also for a time in Washington, D.C., and Paris. She served briefly as assistant literary editor of the Chicago Tribune. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her father, the historian William Dodd, as the American ambassador to Germany and the Dodd family arrived in Berlin in August 1933. On 30 August 1933, Ambassador Dodd arrived at the Reichspräsidentenpalais to present his credentials to President Paul von Hindenburg as the ambassador of the United States to the German Reich, which were accepted.
Dodd and her brother, William E. Dodd, Jr., accompanied their parents to Berlin when her father took up the post of U.S. Ambassador.
The public source identifies “Martha Dodd” as american journalist, novelist and spy for the Soviet Union (1908–1990). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Martha, Dodd and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q324718. VIAF identifies the subject as 52597984. The Library of Congress control number is n89656282. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1990, 1933 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Martha Dodd” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.