Goering

by Roger Manvell

  He left Langbro after some three months, but had to return when he found that he could not maintain abstinence from the drug. When at length he entered the normal world again, he felt in better health and better spirits. Although his interest in Germany was reviving, he was still unable to return there, and in fact was not to do so until a political amnesty was proclaimed by the newly elected President von Hindenburg in the autumn of 1927.

  III

  Fulfillment

  GOERING RETURNED to Germany eagerly. He went alone, for Carin was ill and needed treatment. He came back both to find work that would enable him to earn a proper living and to renew his contact with Hitler, whom he went to see in Munich. Hanfstaengl was the only member of the Nazi circle who seemed genuinely pleased to see him. He judged him to be “fatter, more businesslike and materialistic and concerned chiefly with the Babbitt aim of life.”

  Hitler was preoccupied with the problem of rebuilding the Nazi Party as a political force in the State. He was determined now to win power by constitutional means. Since the day he last saw Goering lying wounded in the street while he himself was being hustled away from the violence and the failure, a great deal had happened. He had been in jail; he had written Mein Kampf—that farrago of ignorance, prejudice and occasional astuteness which passed for his philosophy; and he had returned to Munich to revise his strategy for uprooting the government and achieving power. The party had fought two elections in 1924 and was represented in the Reichstag by fourteen members; they were to face another election campaign in 1928. Goering’s former position as head of the S.A. was occupied by von Pfeffer, and Hitler at this stage was not willing to displace him and take back the penniless captain. Hitler was very conscious of money; he needed men who could keep themselves. What mattered most was attracting money into the party, not paying money out. Goering needed payment, and Hitler therefore did not receive him with any show of warmth; he was always deeply suspicious of a professional soldier, and Goering had not made himself popular with the rest of Hitler’s associates, who told their Leader that Goering had often criticized him during his exile in Austria and Italy and that he was using the party for his own purely personal ends. This was to some extent true; for Goering, a seat in the Reichstag would have increased immeasurably his status as a business agent and go-between. Hitler eventually compromised. It was agreed Goering should go back to Berlin and make his fortune, keeping in touch with the party.

  Even though money was scarce, Hitler was by no means impoverished. The Nazi press was gaining ground. There were steady profits coming in from the innumerable mass meetings, to which a small entrance fee was always charged. There were gifts from wealthy sympathizers. Hitler had an income; his tax records survive and prove that he was learning how to argue about expenses with the tax inspectors.

  Goering gradually established himself during the winter months as a business agent in the aircraft industry. He was in touch with Erhard Milch, a senior executive in Lufthansa, which enjoyed a monopoly in German civil aviation. He acted as an agent in Berlin for the Bavarian Motor Works, which made aviation engines, and for the firm of Heinkel. He was also agent for the Swedish Tornblad parachute, and he worked from a small office in the Gaisbergstrasse, which he shared with Victor Siebel, who was later to become an aircraft manufacturer.1 Heiden claims that the Bavarian Motor Works had been bought by Camillo Castiglioni, an Italian Jew from Trieste, who paid Goering generously to act as his representative, but that Goering achieved little for him. Heiden describes Goering as tireless in work and in the social round, turning night into day, working by candlelight in his flat, in front of him a picture of Napoleon, behind him a medieval sword.2

  In Berlin he was joined by Paul Koerner, another ex-officer, who became his partner. He began also to work upon his old social contacts, such as Bruno Loerzer and Prince Philipp von Hessen.

  Early in 1928 Goering apparently decided to put pressure on Hitler. The elections were approaching in the spring, and he went to Munich to fight for the recognition he felt that he deserved. Together with Hanfstaengl, he walked in the snow to Hitler’s flat in the Thierschstrasse. Goering did not want to go in alone, but Hanfstaengl refused to accompany him. Later he gathered that Goering had lost his temper, but won his point; Hitler consented that he should be regarded as a Nazi candidate for the Reichstag.3 Hanfstaengl says that he often heard Hitler express fears that Goering would fail to be of any use to the party; however, he copied Hitler’s style and delivery on the platform with remarkable effect.

  Goering was by now reasonably established and was anxious to mix business with politics. He was particularly useful in Berlin, where the Nazis’ main strength so far was among the working class, thanks to the seemingly radical influence of the brilliant young agitator Joseph Goebbels and of the party’s “left-wing” leaders Otto and Gregor Strasser. Hitler wanted the ultimate power that he knew would come only from combining the votes of the proletariat with the money, influence and pressures of the industrialists. Goering, the soldier and the gentleman, knew how to behave in such company; Hitler was still embarrassed in society, uneasy when dressed in formal clothes that never seemed to fit his body, unhappy in his failure to make small talk with the kind of people with whom he had never mixed socially. While Goebbels, whom he had appointed party gauleiter for Berlin, fought on Hitler’s behalf in the streets, Goering was expected and required to conquer the executive suite and the drawing room.

  By May, on the eve of the elections, Goering felt sufficiently confident to write to Carin to come and join him in Berlin. It was a joyful reunion after months of separation, though he had managed to visit her in Stockholm at Christmas. He took her to his flat at 16 Berchtesgadenerstrasse.

  Goering took his place on many platforms, even alongside the radical Goebbels. He discussed politics endlessly with Koerner and the other party members; evidently he began to neglect business and he became short of funds, for Carin records how they had to have hurried meals in cheap restaurants, even sharing a bowl of pea soup with Koerner. The old talking points, Versailles, Bolshevism, the Jews, reparations, the evils of a Social Democrat government, were thrashed out endlessly in voices that sounded like the cracking of whips.

  The Nazis made a poor enough showing at the elections on May 20. They polled 810,000 votes, while the Social Democrats won over nine million. The Nazis were entitled to only twelve of the 491 seats in the Reichstag. Goering and Goebbels filled two of these seats on behalf of the party. As Goebbels put it, contemptuously: “I am not a member of the Reichstag. I am . . . the possessor of immunity and . . . a free railway pass.”4 Members of the Reichsstag could not be prohibited by the authorities from speaking at political meetings, as both Goebbels and Hitler had been in the past; Hitler, in fact, was still forbidden to speak at public meetings in Berlin. Goering, less cynical than his colleague, was delighted at his election. He was elected as from Bavaria, says Hanfstaengl, and when the latter saw him off to Berlin from the station in Munich Goering wore a Bavarian mountaineer’s hat with an edelweiss token and a huge brush; his “enormously fat” body was covered by a “showy great aviation overcoat made of leather” and he was happily waving his free first-class railway ticket. Among those who sent Goering their congratulations when he assumed his seat in the Reichstag was former Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, who wrote: “Your extraordinary talent and your ability as a speaker, as well as your physical strength, should prove useful for your new position as a representative of the people in the Reichstag.” Brawls in the Reichstag were only too frequent, when strength of speech had to be supplemented by strength of body.

  Carin described for her mother in a letter dated June 14 the great day when Hermann took seat number 54 in the Reichstag.

  With us everything is fine, and I think it’s colossally interesting. Yesterday the Reichstag was opened, and naturally I was there, too. Hermann has a very good seat beside General von Epp of Bavaria; the two of them are on their own at a table in front. They got these good s
eats only because the number had to be increased anyway. And a good thing, too. It was quite uncanny to see the Rotgardisten; they’ve come up in the Reichstag in a quite unheard-of way, and they throw their weight about colossally. They were all in their uniforms adorned with the star of David—that is, the Soviet star, it’s quite the same thing—red armbands, etc. Young mostly, and rearing for a fight. And some of them absolutely criminal types. How many in all these parties, except Hitler’s, are Jews! . . . Hermann will be having a frightful lot to do, no doubt at all. Even now I see him only occasionally. But all his free time he spends with me. At least we are trying to eat together, but we hardly ever have a meal alone. . . . On Saturday or Monday we fly to Zurich. Hermann is invited to give a few lectures, and besides that he hopes to arrange some demonstrations of the Tornblad parachute. There have been so many parachute accidents recently (with other parachutes), and now Hermann would like to show what the Tornblad can do.

  In the autumn of 1928 Carin mentions that their financial position was so far improved that they could rent a modern flat of five rooms at 7 Badenschestrasse and fill it with some of their original furniture, which they had fortunately managed to recover. Goering was now receiving a regular income amounting to some $125 a month as a Reichstag deputy, in addition to the money that came his way through business and through payments made him by Lufthansa. Fritz Thyssen, the industrialist, says that he also helped Goering during this period.

  Hermann Goering I came to know in the following manner. One day the son of one of the directors of my coal-mining companies, a certain Herr Tengelmann, came to me. “Listen to me,” he said, “there exists in Berlin a Herr Goering. He is trying very hard to do some good for the German people, but he is finding little encouragement on the part of German industrialists. Wouldn’t you like to make his acquaintance?” In consequence of this suggestion I met Goering in due course. He lived in a very small apartment in these days, and he was anxious to enlarge it in order to cut a better figure. I paid the cost of this improvement.

  At that time Goering seemed a most agreeable person. In political matters he was very sensible. I also came to know his first wife, Carin, who was a Swedish Countess by birth. She was an exceedingly charming woman and showed no signs of the mental derangement which clouded her life before she died. Goering idolized her, and she was the only woman who was able to guide him—as though he were a young man.5

  It was decided that Goering’s special interest in the Reichstag should be communications, which included aviation. The task the deputies set themselves was to harry the government on every point they could find. When there was a debate on the decline in efficiency of the state railways, Goering was virulent in his attack:

  The real and only cause of this intolerable state of affairs is the exploitation of the German Reich Railway by the Dawes Plan and by reparations. All the parties in the Assembly must admit this today, but all these parties are equally responsible for the existing state of affairs. Now that is the core of the evil. The Reich Railway, formerly the pride of Germany, probably the best railway in the world, the loyal servant of the people and of all their economic needs, is regarded today just as something to be plundered and exploited by our enemies. My party has clearly and unequivocally emphasized this fact from the outset. When we come to power we will put an end to this intolerable state of affairs and restore the free German Reich Railway to the free German people!6

  Conscious of his debt to Lufthansa, he demanded during a debate in the Reichstag on the air estimates in June 1929, that the civil airline be voted more money because, as Heiden records it, German aviation had a “great patriotic task” to fulfill, namely, to act as a screen for German rearmament in the air. “Why is there no Air Minister?” he demanded.

  Why are we economizing on these things when our duty to the nation demands the opposite? Why are individual members, and also the committee, harping on anonymous reports which only serve to destroy confidence in the German air arm? We airmen, whenever it has been required of us, have fought in the open, and we shall do so again. I hope, gentlemen, that you will decide to approach this matter in the same spirit of candor so that the difficulties which are confronting the German air arm may be eliminated.

  He ended: “Save the air arm. If you don’t you will live to regret it.” He was constantly to urge the increase of subsidy for the air throughout his career as Reichstag deputy, encouraged always by the air service and the aircraft industry.

  Goering now was called the “salon Nazi,” the “ambassador of Hitler.” Carin’s letters to her mother during the next three years, at the end of which her health finally gave way under the strain of being Goering’s wife, read like a social gazette. The Hohenzollerns were already being drawn into the party net; the Crown Prince was a friend in the background, but his brother August Wilhelm (whose nickname was Auwi), joined the party in 1930 and became a Nazi speaker on the platform alongside Goering, and his brother Eitel Friedrich was also interested in National Socialism. The Prince and Princess zu Wied had become constant guests at the flat in the Badenschestrasse and were on very intimate terms with the Goerings. “Princess zu Wied’s cook will help in the kitchen,” writes Carin, anxiously planning to give a picturesque Swedish meal in the peasant style with the help of her friends and of her devoted maid Cilli; the guests were to include Thyssen, Hjalmar Schacht and Hitler. “Our house is so full of politicians that I would be driven mad if it were not so fascinating!” says Carin in a whirl. The widening circle included industrialists, officials from the embassies (whom Goering had met initially through business) and a range of aristocrats, all of whom for one reason or another were watching the progress of the party in the hope that it might one day offer protection for their business or personal interests.

  Other guests mentioned in Carin’s letters home include Prince Henckel-Donnersmark, a wealthy Silesian industrialist and landowner, and Baron Koskull of the Swedish legation, as well as several other members of the aristocracy. On Christmas Eve, 1930, Goebbels brought “charming, personal gifts,” and they all sang carols after eating cold meat and fruit; Thomas von Kantzow was there and sang carols in Swedish with his mother. Goebbels also came for lunch on Christmas Day, when Prince August Wilhelm arrived, bringing white lilies and a camel’s-hair blanket as gifts. Later, in 1931, the Goerings were invited to Doorn to spend a week with the ex-Kaiser, who, according to Hanfstaengl, another close friend of Auwi, was sufficiently interested in the Nazis to write to Hitler at this time and informally appoint Auwi his representative with the party.7 The Hanfstaengls’ house in Munich became one of those social meeting places so useful to Hitler during the early years of discussion and organization, and Hanfstaengl records that it was here, on February 24, 1930, that Goering managed to prevent Hitler’s delivering a funeral oration over the body of the disreputable Horst Wessel, who had been killed in a tavern brawl the day before —a propaganda move which Goebbels was anxious to achieve. Goering represented a moderating influence in this debate, and his victory over Goebbels was a sign that by now he had overcome Hitler’s suspicion of him.

  But before the industrialists were finally persuaded to support Hitler, the party had to deal with the dissension in its own ranks between the “left” and the “right” and fight the bitter election campaign in the summer of 1930. The command of the S.A. (now estimated as over 100,000 men, and therefore exceeding the figure permitted for the Reichswehr) was still in the hands of Pfeffer; this command Goering coveted. The S.A. was composed mainly of unemployed men with a taste for demonstration and violence; they were the more or less conscious representatives of the “dispossessed” in Germany. Hitler, Goering and Goebbels watched their growing force with a wary eye; it needed a strong hand to control it. Otto Strasser, editor of the Berliner Arbeiterzeitung, was, as he had always been, a radical, and his pseudorevolutionary articles supporting strikes and industrial unrest became increasingly embarrassing to Hitler and the right wing of the party, now that they were pledged to w
in power the legal way and persuade the industrialists to support them. In June 1930 Hitler and Otto Strasser met in Berlin, but reached no agreement. Hitler returned south to Munich and ordered Goebbels, as Gauleiter of Berlin and director of party propaganda, to expel Strasser from the party. Strasser answered him by founding his own nationalist movement, the Black Front.

  This expulsion of the man who seemed the champion of the dispossessed angered the S.A., whose lawless behavior was regarded with grave suspicion by the industrialists with whom Goering was associating. The party offices in Berlin were stormed by the S.A. in September, the very month of the elections, and Hitler himself had to come to Berlin to rescue Goebbels from his impossible situation. He used his remarkable powers of persuasion and his prestige as leader of the party to quiet the hooligans and promise them paradise. He made himself their commander, and later, on January 1, 1931, he appointed Roehm, whom he had summoned back from a job as military instructor in Bolivia, as chief of staff. It was to be a bitter moment for Goering, but, as events were soon to show, he was far better placed where he was.