Goering

by Roger Manvell

  Goering merged the various powers over forestry and game that were held by the provincial states. Germany’s extensive forests are important to her economy, and he began a series of reforms in forestry which were to be of permanent benefit. His love of the countryside was expressed in reafforestation schemes, irrigation and the preservation of areas of natural beauty. He introduced laws to protect wild life and preserve such dying species as the elk, the bison, the wild boar, the wild swan, the falcon and the eagle.

  It was now that he became increasingly interested in the Schorfheide, a great tract of forest and moorland infiltrated with lakes that stretched from the north of Berlin away to the Polish border (as it then was) and the Baltic coast; he restocked this area with wild life and decided he would acquire an estate there for himself. He also visited the Rominten Heide, or Heath, on Germany’s eastern border. He brought in bison and elk from Sweden, Poland and Canada for experiments which were not always successful, but were intended to revive the breeding of these animals. In July 1934 he tightened the German game laws, forbidding shooting except under a strictly defined quota, and then only by those whose license proved they knew how to handle a gun. All hunters had to be accompanied by a retriever so that wounded animals could be found and killed. Goering passed a law forbidding the vivisection of animals, and he forbade all forms of poaching, hunting on horseback and the use of claw and wire traps, artificial lights or poison against animals. “He who tortures an animal hurts the feelings of the German people,” he said.

  During 1933 he began to plan his great country house of Carinhall. As the second man to Hitler in Nazi Germany, as Premier of Prussia, as Reich Master of the Hunt and as Master of the German Forests, he felt himself entitled to the finest territory that could be found within reasonable distance from Berlin. He chose an area in the Schorfheide where there was a German imperial hunting lodge built of wood, near a lake called the Wackersee. Here he had a hundred thousand acres set aside as a state park reserved as far as possible for himself, to be the center for the house he planned to build and the game reserve he had decided to establish for his shooting parties.

  The Schorfheide was undulating and wooded, its heath and moorland interspersed with pine, oak and beech. The juniper bushes turned the scene a golden brown in autumn, while hawthorn, barberry bushes and broom varied the colors of the landscape, which was broken by marshes with their rushes and sedge and by small lakes edged with pines and firs. Woodpeckers tapped in the trees, and wild swans floated below on the lake water with their cygnets. Goering made the Schorfheide a sanctuary for the deer, the buffalo, the elk and the wild horse and then began to plan the house, which, while it perpetuated the memory of his wife, must bear the stamp of his living personality.

  Carinhall was to become unique among the monuments built by princes and millionaires as expressions of their pride. Hitler, Goering and Goebbels were all amateur architects with marked tastes in building, interior decoration and furnishing which their political success let loose in an orgy of construction. But of all the structures set up during the Nazi regime, Carinhall was the most unusual, a cumulative symbol of its builder’s dreams, considerably augmented and enriched over the years. Helped by two young architects, Helzelt and Tuch of the Prussian State Department of Architecture, Goering tried to realize his ambitions, his sentiments, his memories and his vanity in stone, timber, metal, plaster and thatch. He designed every detail himself down to the door handles; he called it his Waldhof, and the result was a monumental curiosity, a kind of ancient German baronial hall equipped with every luxury and combining a massive simplicity with showmanship of wealth and power. As Gritzbach put it, “Hermann Goering conceived the ground plan and the structure on lines that expressed his own strong and self-willed personality.” Expanding year by year, it gradually developed into a manor house of extraordinary size and appearance.

  A great avenue of trees led to the steep-roofed mansion, which was built around three sides of an extensive courtyard containing flower beds, a lily pond and a fountain topped by a statue of a horse with a nude rider. An ambulatory, its roof supported by thick beams and columns of oak, circled the courtyard, while magnificent gates, importations from the south, were set into the heavy wood and stone of the main architecture, for which granite blocks of varied colors were used. The building itself was designed so that every outer window commanded a view of either lake or forest, and, with its thatched mansard roof, pebble-dashed white walls and gray stone borders, it was meant to symbolize the German tradition in architecture. The central facade was in the Gothic style, and when Goering became a Reich Marshal his arms—a mailed fist grasping a bludgeon—were engraved on a pediment over the porch. In addition to the first main courtyard there was a quadrangle divided into a series of lawns with trimmed hedgerows and bronze statues of Apollo, Artemis and Ceres. Another courtyard was enclosed by climbing plants, and a reproduction of the Porcellino of Florence stood half hidden among the rosebushes.

  In the central part of the building was the entrance hall, some hundred and fifty feet wide, forming the principal art gallery in which Goering was to take so much delight, the center into which would flow the gifts of works of art and other treasures he was now beginning either to buy or to acquire—pictures by the old Flemish masters and by the German artist Lucas Cranach, whom he admired greatly, and Gobelin tapestries. Twin flights of stairs with gleaming white bannisters led from this entrance hall to the floor above. Other principal rooms included a council chamber in medieval style, center for official work, with its great beams and granite chimneypiece, the main library, the reception rooms for visitors, and the map or card room, where staff conferences were held under the portraits of Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Later there appeared a vast banquet hall with columns of red Veronese marble. Here the table was covered with silk, the chairs were white and upholstered in leather, the curtains were embroidered with the letter H in laurel wreaths stitched in gold thread. The walls were covered by tapestries depicting allegorical figures of Youth, Health and Joy; from the ceiling hung great crystal chandeliers. The windows were controlled electrically and would open to display an unimpeded view of the gardens and the forest. Outside on the paved terrace guests would be served by footmen in riding boots and green doublets and breeches, or by girls in buckskin boots and green jackets and skirts. The main drawing room had two anterooms, the Gold Room and the Silver Room, in which Goering was to display the fabulous gifts he received. The staircase to the upper floor was adorned with the relics and trophies of Goering’s hunts. It was in a large attic here that he installed his model railway, with which so many distinguished visitors were to be invited to play. The room was some eighty feet long, and the railway had a length of straight track running sixty feet. The trains were operated from a control panel placed beside a large red armchair.

  Goering also had a small, secluded workroom with antique Tirolean furniture and with access to a private library where he kept the books he treasured most, including works on Nordic history, historical and topographical volumes on Germany, studies of military science and aviation, and books on art, travel and exploration. In summer he used an entirely private loggia for his work, which enabled him to sit in the open air and look out over the lake.

  Carinhall had a basement, in which there was a gymnasium, a dimly lit swimming pool adorned with sculptures, and a gameroom. In the gymnasium Goering was able to practice marksmanship by shooting at moving pictures of animals projected onto the wall; in the gameroom there was an electrically powered system of model airliners and railways on a map. At night the gymnasium became a cinema, where the servants sat. Each had his appointed seat as if this were the church of some lord of the manor. The guest rooms for visitors and staff and the servants’ quarters were all comfortable and well appointed; Goering wished to be recognized as a model employer.

  Carinhall as so many visitors have described it was the result of constant changes and extensions which continued into the early years of
the war. The initial building was much smaller, an elaborate hunting lodge completed by an army of builders within a period of ten months. Opposite to it, by the lakeside, Goering constructed a mausoleum of Brandenburg granite which he intended should contain the body of his wife, whose grave at Lövoe in Sweden, had, as he claimed, been desecrated by Swedish anti-Nazis. (Goering had put a new tombstone emblazoned with the swastika over Carin’s grave, and when visiting Sweden he had placed a floral swastika on her tomb. This the Swedish anti-Nazis removed, leaving a note saying that “the German, Goering,” had committed an act of vandalism and should not use his wife’s grave as a means for propaganda. ) The new vault was set beneath the ground with a flight of steps leading down into it. Goering ordered a vast pewter coffin from the firm of Svensk Tenn, whose luxurious displays of furnishings and metalwork had attracted him when he was in Stockholm and could ill afford such decorations. The pewter coffin was designed on such a scale that it might eventually contain the body of Goering himself as well as that of Carin. He was as proud of the vault as he was of Carinhall itself, and in the conducted tours which he never tired of undertaking whenever guests came to visit Carinhall the vault was normally included.

  One of the earliest of the elaborate housewarming parties organized by Goering, on June 10, 1934, was attended by some forty people, including the British and American ambassadors. Sir Eric Phipps, the new British ambassador, sent Sir John Simon a long, ironic description of the whole proceedings.27 Goering arrived late at the place in the forest where the guests were assembled; he drove up in a fast racing car, dressed in “aviator’s garments of indiarubber, with top boots and a large hunting knife stuck in his belt.” First he delivered a lecture on German forestry and fauna, speaking in a loud voice and using a microphone. He then attempted to make one of his bull bisons demonstrate mating with some cows, but this was a failure; the bull “emerged from his box with the utmost reluctance, and, after eyeing the cows somewhat sadly, tried to return to it.” Goering then disappeared, leaving his guests to drive in their cars through the woods to Carinhall itself, where he received them again—dressed now in white tennis shoes, white drill trousers, white flannel shirt and a green leather jacket, with the large hunting knife still stuck in his belt—and took them round the house: all the while he carried a “long, harpoon-like instrument.” Emmy Sonnemann was there, and she presided over an excellent meal; Goering introduced her as his private secretary.

  Ambassador Dodd, telling the story in his diary, wrote that Goering—whom he described as “a big, fat, good-humored man who loves display above everything”—showed them about the estate later “and displayed his vanity at every turn, often causing his guests to glance amusedly at each other.” Finally they were led to see the vault, “the most elaborate structure of its kind I have ever seen.” Goering “boasted of this marvelous tomb of his first wife where he said his remains would one day be laid.” Dodd says that he and Phipps grew “weary of the curious display” and hastened back to Berlin.

  A few days later, on June 19, Carin’s body, transported in its sarcophagus on which the arms of the Goering and Fock families were emblazoned, was interred in the vault with macabre pomp. After a simple service at Lövoe the coffin, covered by a swastika flag, had been placed in a railway car lined with evergreens and filled with flowers. Goering’s wreath of white roses bore a card on which he had written, “To my only Carin.” Guarded by a corps of Nazis, the coffin went by ferry to Sussnitz and then by rail through the towns of northern Prussia, which were put in a state of mourning while it passed, until it finally reached Eberswalde, where it was placed on a cart and taken by road to Carinhall. Uniformed party men lined the route, and a military band played Siegfried’s Funeral March from Götterdämmerung. Hitler was there. But the ceremony so elaborately planned was suddenly interrupted. Himmler arrived late, pale and shaken. He claimed that an attempt had been made on his life and that the windshield of his car had been shattered by a bullet. He was uninjured and had heard no sound of the shot being fired. For a few minutes the interment was delayed while Himmler whispered his story to Goering and Hitler. Then, while hunting horns and trumpets sounded, the sarcophagus was edged down into the vault, where six candles stood burning. After the bearers had filed out, Goering and Hitler went down the steps to pay silent homage.28

  V

  Hitler’s Paladin

  AS GOERING BEGAN to discover the possibilities for wealth and power that his high position in the State could command, his initial interest in the development of police control and its administration waned. He was a man of impulse, of lavish activity so long as his attention was fully absorbed; he disliked painstaking detail or following through the schemes that he originated with such undisciplined energy.

  Power brought its own deep satisfaction, but it also brought anxiety. The natural distrust that the Nazi leaders had for one another was immeasurably increased once they had acquired the means to destroy each other. As a result, alliances were formed among the members of the hierarchy surrounding Hitler; each man chose his temporary friends with some misgiving and appointed deputies whose loyalty he hoped he might succeed in holding. Roehm was the man whom Goering most feared; Himmler was the man with whom he made his alliance; Diels was the man he chose for his first deputy.

  The organized forces in Germany during the first year of the regime were deeply divided. The Reichswehr, the established German Army, was nominally under the civil authority in the persons of the President and the Minister of Defense; but in fact it had its own high command, and the Minister of Defense was an Army general, Blomberg, the man chosen by Hindenburg. Opposed to the Reichswehr were the private forces of Nazism, the S.A. and the S.S., which in turn were divided against each other. The S.A. at this time numbered perhaps between two and three million men, a vastly greater though far less disciplined force than that of the Reichswehr. Roehm commanded this army of the Brownshirts, whereas the S.S., the black-shirted elite of violence, although nominally still part of the S.A., had been under Himmler’s special authority since 1929. Himmler, like Goering, hated Roehm, and it was natural that the two men should ultimately recognize a common interest. Goering’s Prussian police and his Gestapo organization were through this alliance united with the police departments of the remaining German states, which Himmler, supported by Goering, so rapidly gathered under his control during the latter months of 1933.

  A preliminary trial of strength was won by Roehm when Goering made a bid to display his prestige as Premier of Prussia at the opening of his new State Council on September 15, 1933. Goering’s plan for himself included a state drive followed by a review of the S.A. and the S.S. at a special march-past that he suggested they should stage in his honor. But Goering’s informants are said to have brought him word that Roehm and Ernst had arranged that if the march-past took place it should be performed so carelessly that the Premier would find himself publicly insulted. In self-defense Goering was forced to retract this act of personal self-glorification and share the honors of the march-past with both Roehm and Himmler. Ambassador Dodd, who was present officially, estimated that a hundred thousand uniformed men lined the streets for the ceremony.

  After Goering had delivered a speech in which he referred contemptuously to the parliamentary system which the Third Reich had superseded, the march-past took place, with a special display of the goose step. This empty act of personal aggrandizement by Goering during a ceremony at which Hitler was not present was watched by the diplomatic corps as well as by prominent men from art, industry, politics and the church whom the Premier had invited to become state councilors on the very eve of the period when any form of independent authority exercised by the German states was to be abolished by Hitler.

  Roehm was a man of undoubted ability, and Hitler’s own attitude to him was complex and ambiguous. Except for his period abroad, he had belonged to the party for longer even than Hitler himself. He was a professional soldier, and in his way he had done almost as much as Goeri
ng to ease Hitler into the bargaining position which had won him the chancellorship. He had always seemed on terms of intimacy with the Leader, calling him du, a privilege denied to everyone else, including Goering. Hitler’s instinctive regard for Roehm, perhaps not untinged with fear of the consequences of upsetting him, permitted a long period of stalemate to develop between them, a situation which became a growing threat to the Führer’s activity. Hitler’s vision was wider and subtler than Roehm’s; Roehm believed in barefaced, not legalized, power. He believed the S.A. should become Germany’s revolutionary army, at once absorbing and eliminating the Reichswehr, and that he should be Hitler’s Commander in Chief. Hindenburg’s influence gradually waned as he withdrew to live in a state of virtual retirement, and the question of who should eventually gain legal command of the Reichswehr correspondingly intensified. Roehm’s views were widely known; he made no secret of them in his public speeches. On the other hand, Hitler did everything he could to encourage the confidence of the high command. At the same time he thought it best to make Roehm a member of his Cabinet on December 1933, and permitted the publication the following January of a letter of tribute accompanying the appointment in which the familiar du appeared and Roehm was thanked for his “imperishable services.” These favors both angered and alarmed Goering.

  Roehm was a noted pederast, as were many of his associates, in particular Edmund Heines, head of the S.A. in Silesia, a convicted murderer whom Hitler had dismissed in 1927 for his undisciplined conduct, then reinstated in 1931. Although Hitler did not trouble about the private morals of his followers, he cared a great deal for any weakening of the party’s prestige that such notorious behavior might bring about. Even so, he was astonishingly tolerant of practices which had for some time been common knowledge and the constant cause of complaint by parents whose sons had been enticed into the bedrooms of their commanding officers. Meanwhile Goering encouraged the compilation of any evidence that was damaging to Roehm; this included, according to Papen, the discovery that arms for the S.A. were being secretly brought in from Belgium. Goering and Himmler collected assiduously both facts and rumors that blackened the names of the S.A. leaders—their misappropriation of money, their drunken behavior in public places, their anti-Catholic propaganda in the universities, their gross forms of homosexuality. Roehm, now seated at Hitler’s council table, unconsciously assisted them by alienating the traditionalists among the Cabinet ministers, as well as the Führer himself, with his persistent demands on behalf of the S.A. In February, the month Roehm presented a memorandum proposing that the S.A. should be combined with the regular Army and the S.S. under a Ministry of Defense of which he clearly desired the control, Hitler assured Anthony Eden, then Lord Privy Seal of Britain, who was in Berlin to discuss the disarmament problem, that he was prepared substantially to reduce the strength of the S.A. Relations between Roehm and the other members of the Cabinet responsible for defense were deteriorating still further when Hitler learned that Hindenburg was not likely to survive longer than a few more weeks. Hitler acted quickly; during April and May he had secret talks with the commanders of the Army and the Navy and in effect promised them the dismemberment of the S.A. if they would support his assumption of the Presidency on the death of Hindenburg.