Goering

by Roger Manvell

  GOERING: It wouldn’t the minute I issue a decree, a law sanctioned by the State.

  HILGARD: I was leading up to that.

  HEYDRICH: The insurance may be granted, but as soon as it is to be paid it will be confiscated. That way we’ll have saved face.

  HILGARD: I am inclined to agree with what General Heydrich has just said. First of all use the mechanism of the insurance company to check on the damage, to regulate it and even pay—

  GOERING: One moment! You’ll have to pay in any case, because it is the Germans who suffered the damage. But there’ll be a lawful order forbidding you to make any direct payment to the Jews . . . but to the Minister of Finance.

  HILGARD: Aha!

  GOERING: What he does with the money is his business. . . .

  HEYDRICH: Seven thousand five hundred stores in the Reich . . .

  GOERING: I wish you had killed two hundred Jews, and not destroyed so much property.

  Among other business discussed was the closing of Jewish businesses in Austria. Goering learned that the plan there was to close some fourteen thousand of the seventeen thousand Jewish-owned stores by the end of the year, and that the rest would be “Aryanized.”

  GOERING: I must say that this proposal is grand. This way, the whole affair would be wound up in Vienna, one of the Jewish capitals, so to speak, by Christmas or by the end of the year.

  FUNK: We can do the same thing here. I have prepared a law elaborating that, as of January 1, 1939, Jews shall be prohibited from operating retail stores and wholesale establishments . . .

  GOERING: I believe that we can agree with this law.

  The meeting, which was to last nearly four hours, continued with discussion of the problems of expropriating shares and bonds held by Jews and the profits made from such properties as apartment houses and from moneylending. Then the ministers and their colleagues moved on to the expulsion of the Jews from German and Austrian territory; Heydrich gave the figures that so far fifty thousand had left Austria, but only nineteen thousand had left Germany. But prior to expulsion there must be segregation.

  GOERING: But, my dear Heydrich, you won’t be able to avoid the creation of ghettos on a very large scale, in all the cities. They will have to be created.

  Ghettos and complete segregation, thought Heydrich, might lead to slow starvation, disease and crime; how to organize a community within a community where the minority can conduct no business of their own and the majority is unwilling to have any dealings with them? The ministers became more and more entangled in their various ideas for regulations. They decided it could not be achieved in stages. Then Goering had the brilliant idea of fining the Jews a billion marks as a punishment for the murder they had committed in Paris.

  GOERING: I shall close the wording this way: German Jewry shall as a punishment for their abominable crimes, et cetera, et cetera, have to pay a fine of one billion. That will work! The swine won’t commit another murder. . . . I would not like to be a Jew in Germany!

  Had he known the nature of Goering’s attitude at this meeting, Hassell would scarcely have recorded in his diary the following month that, after condemning the pogrom openly, Goering had said more privately that this was the last filthy business to which he would lend his name. Hassell regrets Goering did not take the opportunity to join General von Brauchitsch and overthrow Hitler; he is just another appeaser, like France and Britain! He believed that Goering was deeply afraid not only of Hitler, but also of Himmler and Heydrich, although he had told them after the pogrom that he would burn his honorary S.S. uniform. Emmy too had been openly critical. Johannes Popitz, the Prussian Minister of Finance, told Hassell that when he had said to Goering that those responsible should be punished, Goering had replied, “My dear Popitz, do you wish to punish the Führer?” Nevertheless, Popitz said Goering was deeply troubled by the pogrom. On January 24, 1939, Goering signed a letter to Frick as Minister of the Interior informing him that a Central Emigration Office for Jews was to be established in his ministry with Heydrich in control, adding that Heydrich was empowered “to solve the Jewish question by emigration and evacuation in the way that is most favorable under the conditions prevailing at present.” When he signed that, Goering introduced Heydrich to the problem of ridding Europe of the Jews, a matter which was soon to be resolved by the “final solution” of genocide.9

  Goering’s methods of work as Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan reveal his nature. He had an excellent memory and was very quick to grasp the essentials of any situation presented to him by his assistants and experts. His interest lay always in policy and seldom in technical details; as Kesselring put it, “Goering . . . could be made to work, and when he felt the need for it he worked with remarkable concentration and perseverance.” He enjoyed tossing out ideas that set everyone running. A few hasty words would lead to days of work for his staff. He scribbled his notes in a large diary, writing with an oversize pencil which, according to Diels, “he held like a dagger.” As points arose in conference, he would interrupt the discussion to send telegrams up and down the country; these telegrams were often unintelligible until checked back with his office. When Diels complained to him in 1938 about the arbitrary methods that existed in the call-up of women for work in the munitions factories, Goering broke off and sent a telegram to the Minister of Labor: “No differences of rank in the women call-up.” He never drafted his decrees; these were left to the experts in his various departments. Diels, like others, complained bitterly of the incompetence of Koerner, whom Goering had put in charge of the Four-Year Plan. He claims that he told Goering in 1939 that Koerner would lose Germany the war, and that the industrialists refused to consult him because he was unable to understand what they were saying; to this Goering replied, “He is my friend and I will not allow anyone to speak badly of him.” It was one of Goering’s greatest weaknesses as an administrator that he sometimes gave responsible posts to old friends rather than to men qualified for the work.

  One of the most acute observers among the Nazi leadership was Albert Speer, a brilliant young architect whom Hitler suddenly created Minister of Armament and War Production in 1942. When, he was interrogated about Goering after the war, Speer said, “He is intelligent, has a flood of desultory ideas and considerable perception, but he lacks the toughness with which to put them into effect. Some of his ideas are so bad that they outweigh his intelligence. He undertakes too much. His ideas were at the same time his danger, because he was not enough of a realist. . . . Until 1939 he was in good mental shape and carried out the great work of the Four-Year Plan against the wishes of industry. Until then he showed a great deal of energy with good and bad qualities. After 1939 his energies slumped, and only the bad qualities remained.” According to Speer, the Four-Year Plan was Goering’s only worth-while effort before the war; Koerner, in Speer’s opinion, as in the opinion of so many others, was totally incapable of undertaking his great responsibilities. 10

  In July 1938, Goering, unknown to Ribbentrop in Berlin, had made some confidential inquiries in Britain to discuss whether an official visit by him would be encouraged by the government. Chamberlain welcomed the idea, provided “the atmosphere should be as favourable as possible,” particularly in connection with Czechoslovakia, and Dirksen, the German ambassador in London, reported in August that it was known Lord Halifax was very enthusiastic about Goering’s proposed visit. In addition, certain informal conversations took place with the knowledge of the ambassador between Sir Horace Wilson and Wohltat, an official acting on behalf of Goering, in which Wilson suggested that Britain would be willing to sign a nonaggression pact with Germany as a result of which she might become free to shelve her obligation to Poland. When the discussions came to the knowledge of Ribbentrop, he bitterly resented these attempts by Goering to interfere with foreign affairs.

  Nevertheless, during the nine months prior to the Munich settlement Goering was constantly conferring with the representatives of foreign countries. In February he went to Warsaw to co
ntinue with his efforts to keep Poland reassured at the time when the crisis in Germany’s relations with Czechoslovakia was mounting. Pointing to a picture of the Polish King John Sobieski coming to the relief of Vienna in 1683, Beck, who was Goering’s host, had laughed and said, “That will not recur.” During one of Goering’s discussions with Ambassador Lipski, his aide Bernd von Brauchitsch heard him reveal what seemed to be secret information about the Luftwaffe. Afterward, when they were alone, Brauchitsch asked why he had given away this information. Goering merely laughed and said the facts he had revealed were ascertainable with a little research by Lipski; having found them to be true, Lipski would be all the more ready to believe anything else Goering cared to tell him at the subsequent meeting, whether it were true or false. “That’s politics,” said Goering.11

  He was now, however, gradually to increase the harshness of his references to Czechoslovakia. The assurances given to Mastny the previous November were conveniently forgotten. In April he spoke of Czechoslovakia as “the appendix” when talking to Henderson, who noted that this was now Goering’s favorite term. The appendix, he said, should be cut up and divided among Poland, Hungary and Germany. On another occasion he declared that “the incorporation of the Sudetens into the Reich” would be “sooner or later inevitable.” One night, after dining at the French embassy, Goering asked François-Poncet quite openly what France would do if Germany were to remove the appendix of Europe. The ambassador replied formally that France would respect her obligations and give assistance to the Czechs. At this Goering looked savage and growled, “Well, so much the worse.” To the King of Sweden he talked of pushing the Czechs back to Russia, “where they belong,” and the British ambassador in Prague recorded in May that “Goering has lately been making no secret of his intention to liquidate Czechoslovakia this summer.”

  On the night of May 21, while Henderson was dining with friends in Berlin, some demolition work nearby sounded for the moment like bombing, and he tactlessly remarked that the war seemed to have begun. Goering heard of this later and told him that he too had been startled by the noise, but that his reaction had been, “Those cursed Czechs have begun it!” This story is not so trivial as it sounds, for on the preceding day the Czech government had manned the frontier posts and called up the reservists because, it was declared, Hitler was about to invade. No one knows what lay behind this sudden demonstration. In fact no German troops had been moved, so Hitler was free to make what political use he could of the heightened tension caused by the action of the Czechs.

  On May 28 Goering, along with Keitel, Brauchitsch, Raeder, Ribbentrop and others, attended a conference convened by Hitler, at which the Führer gave full expression to his anger with Czechoslovakia and with the sympathy its plight was causing, more particularly in France. While informing the Czechs that he had no aggressive intentions against them, he said to his subordinate leaders and chiefs of staff, “It is my unshakable will that Czechoslovakia shall be wiped off the map.” He ordered preparations to be made for military action on October 1.

  During the summer, in both June and July, Goering had conversations with Sztójy, the Hungarian minister in Berlin, concerning Hungary’s part in the attack on Czechoslovakia, which should, he suggested, follow a day or two after any German invasion, the aim being to forestall the Poles (who also had minority claims to make). For, said Goering, “she ought not to rely on Germany’s pulling the chestnuts out of the fire all alone.” The Hungarian minister replied proudly that Hungary did not wish “to receive anything as a gift.” It was obvious, added Goering, that any invasion by Hungary must be preceded by the necessary provocation. On August 11, Lipski reported that during an informal conversation the previous day Goering had told him that Czechoslovakia would soon cease to exist, and that “he realized the necessity for a common Polish-Hungarian frontier.” He added, according to Lipski, that if there were a war over the Sudeten question, the Italians would be most unlikely to let France attack Germany.12

  During the uneasy summer of 1938, Hitler mastered his generals, in spite of a movement led by General Ludwig Beck, Chief of the Army General Staff, to oppose his plans to wage a war for which his armies had neither the necessary strength nor readiness. Beck resigned and became involved in one of the first major conspiracies designed to remove Hitler from power. The question in everyone’s mind, and not least in Hitler’s as he spent the summer fulminating in Berchtesgaden, was the action that might be taken by France and Britain if and when Germany used open force against Czechoslovakia. Both Marshal Balbo, the Italian Air Minister, and later, General Vuillemin, head of the French Air Force, visited Germany and were Goering’s guests at Carinhall. When Goering asked Vuillemin what France would do should war break out between Germany and Czechoslovakia, the General could say nothing except that France would keep her word. But privately he expressed his view to the French ambassador that the French Air Force would not last a fortnight against what he had seen in Germany. The following November Wolfram von Richthofen was to recommend that the Condor Legion in Spain be trebled to ensure a victory for Franco, a demand he would justify on the grounds that this would be good for German rearmament.13

  There were many indications that Chamberlain wanted the matter settled at the expense of the Czechs; there were even signs that Britain was becoming angry with Czechoslovakia. “The moment has come for Prague to get a real twist of the screw,” wrote Henderson to Halifax in July. Chamberlain felt that Britain should mediate and get the matter settled once and for all by diplomatic means. Meanwhile, the anti-Hitler movement in Germany was trying through its spokesmen in London to persuade the British to stand up to Hitler, and had even given Halifax knowledge of Hitler’s plans and the existence of the generals’ plot in Germany to overthrow him should he order an attack on Czechoslovakia. But the British had by now decided to put pressure on Czechoslovakia’s President, Eduard Beneš, rather than on Hitler, and Chamberlain instructed Henderson to let Hitler know that he was ready to visit Germany and act between him and Beneš.

  The war tension in Europe grew. Everyone waited for the sullen man from Berchtesgaden to speak his mind at Nuremberg, where the party was due to assemble for its annual week of speeches and celebrations on September 6. The words so much feared were first uttered by Goering on September 10 when he spoke of the Czechs as “this miserable, pygmy race” and their country as “a petty segment of Europe.” They were, he shouted, “oppressing a cultured people,” and behind them lay “Moscow and the eternal mask of the Jew devil.” In Czechoslovakia gas masks were distributed, and the Jews began hastily to leave the country. On September 12 Hitler roared his hatred of his neighbor, but issued no ultimatum. A revolt in the Sudeten area had to be suppressed by force; the French, fearful of having to fulfill their obligations to help the Czechs, now begged Chamberlain to intervene, and to Hitler’s astonishment he was informed on September 13 that the British Prime Minister would fly (for the first time in his life) to Germany in order to examine with Hitler “far-reaching German proposals . . . take part in carrying them out, and . . . advocate them in public.”

  This was the Führer’s chance. Everyone in Germany except Hitler himself was dubious of the success war might bring to Germany; even Goering, according to a dispatch from the British embassy dated September 11, did not “regard Germany’s prospects in a general war too optimistically.” Chamberlain’s gesture to Hitler at the same time revealed Britain’s hidden hand. The relief was intense everywhere, except in Prague, and not least at Berchtesgaden itself. Hitler smiled.

  Goering was at Berchtesgaden when Hitler received Chamberlain on September 15, and he did not mind at all when Chamberlain’s desire to speak to Hitler alone, except for the interpreter Schmidt, led to the exclusion of Ribbentrop along with himself from the first conference. Ribbentrop’s revenge was to refuse to let Chamberlain have a copy of Schmidt’s notes on the three-hour conversation. Chamberlain won nothing from Hitler but a brief period of waiting while he returned to London to
consult his colleagues about the proposed secession of the Sudeten region from Czechoslovakia on the basis of the right of self-determination. “I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word,” said Chamberlain.

  On September 17 Henderson went to Carinhall and found Goering “still unwell.” Henderson begged Goering to intervene with Hitler and keep him from the precipitate action that Ribbentrop would no doubt encourage. Goering talked loosely about the bad effects of any “catastrophic” action in Czechoslovakia; otherwise he was sure Hitler would now behave with restraint, though he agreed about Ribbentrop. Goering remained “deliberate and restrained in his language” and later spoke in a “very admiring and respectful manner” of Chamberlain.

  Meanwhile Hitler continued with preparations for war within three weeks and brusquely urged both the Poles and the Hungarians to lay parallel claims in the name of their minorities to assure the total dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. They did so on September 21 and 22. In the files of the German Foreign Ministry there is a memorandum on a conversation that had taken place between Goering and Hungarian Minister Sztójy at Carinhall on September 16. Goering had urged that Hungary was not “doing enough in the present crisis”; the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia was far too silent, and the government was not demanding, as it should have been, the restoration of the Czech areas to Hungary. He also assured the minister that Yugoslavia would take no action if Hungary joined in any conflict with Czechoslovakia on the third or fourth day after any action initiated by Germany.14 On September 19 Lord Runciman presented to Beneš the British and French proposals that the Sudetenland be handed over to Germany without even holding a plebiscite, in return for which Britain and France would guarantee the new Czech frontiers against unprovoked aggression; an answer to the proposals was required by September 22, when Chamberlain was due to see Hitler for the second time. Beneš refused. Extreme pressure was brought to bear once more; Britain and France, their governments declared, would withdraw all help if Beneš did not accept these terms. On September 21 Beneš capitulated; he had, he said, been “basely betrayed.”