Goering

by Roger Manvell

  Thirty days before the trial began, each defendant received in his cell a copy of the indictment, a bulky document of some 24,000 words, translated into German. Goering was served with his copy by a British officer, Major A.M.S. Neave, who was later to become a London barrister, but whose recent experiences had included a daring escape from a German prison camp, during which he had passed through Nuremberg itself; his present function was to deal with the legal rights and arrangements for the defendants, including their selection of counsel for the defense. Major Neave found Goering polite, nervous and strained; his mouth was twitching and he appeared to be on the verge of tears. He was most anxious to establish the correct action to take. A list of eligible counsel was given him from which he might choose the man to be responsible for his defense. He selected the one man in the list whose name he recognized, Dr. Otto Stahmer of Kiel, a very good barrister although he was seventy years of age.

  As the guards in the prison at the Palace of Justice peered through the trap door of cell number 5, they saw Goering poring over the document which summarized the record of the Nazi regime under the four headings which constituted the charges against him: the common plan or conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It had been signed in October in Berlin by the chief prosecutors and had become the official indictment of a great international assembly of nations, since by then eighteen countries had adhered to the charter setting up the tribunal. The defendants were accused not only individually under these four main charges, but also as key members of one or more of the organizations through which the Nazi regime had operated: the Reich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the S.S. and the S.D., the Gestapo, the S.A., the High Command of the Army (O.K.H.) and the High Command of the Armed Forces (O.K.W.). These organizations were themselves placed on trial as criminal groups.

  The charge of common plan or conspiracy was of a general nature and included breaking treaties, planning and waging wars of aggression, the ill-treatment, murder and use as slave labor of the civilian population of occupied countries, the murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war, the murder and persecution of people on racial and religious grounds, and the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, all on a scale unwarranted by any military necessity. “Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination,” read the indictment, “it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators.” [I, p. 6]

  The other three charges detailed certain aspects of this general conspiracy, the evolution of the Nazi aggression as country after country passed into their power, the plunder of every kind of property and its removal to Germany, the appalling statistics of murder and torture in the concentration camps and the prisons, the horror of the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) decree under which countless numbers of people disappeared without trace. Then followed the unending record of mass killings and the practice of the newly formulated crime of genocide, or racial extermination. Innumerable cases were cited of the torture and vicious ill-treatment of prisoners of war, more especially those from the eastern territories, who were regarded as subhuman and fit only for starvation, slavery and death.

  The whole of the first day of the trial was spent in reading aloud this document, the prosecutors of each nation taking it in turn to recite a section of the charges and the details attached to them. On the second day, the defendants were asked to state whether they were guilty or not guilty. Goering, who was called upon first to put forward his plea, twice attempted with a brusque assertion of authority to make a lengthier statement, and was firmly stopped by the president. He had to be content with a single roundabout sentence: “I declare myself in the sense of the indictment not guilty.” Lord Justice Lawrence, with his formidable courtesy, established his control from the start.

  The trial was to last from the winter of 1945 to the summer of 1946. The whole of the winter, from November until March, was occupied in presenting the case for the prosecution, the lengthiest and most terrible indictment in the whole history of law. On the defense side the case for Goering, as the principal defendant, was put first, and this itself lasted from March 8 to March 22. The defense of the remainder of the men in the dock took the trial on to the summer, concluding on July 4. The final speeches of the defense and the prosecution lasted till the end of July; between that time and the end of August the secondary trial, that of the indicted organizations, followed. A brief supplementary submission in the defense of Goering was heard on August 30. On August 31 each defendant was permitted to make his final statement before judgment was pronounced after an interval lasting one month. On September 30 Lord Justice Lawrence commenced the reading of the judgment, followed in turn by the other judges, and then each prisoner was summoned individually to the courtroom to hear the pronouncement of sentence. The trial concluded on the afternoon of October 1, 1946.

  The specific case against Goering was presented on January 8 by the American attorney Ralph G. Albrecht on behalf of the prosecution. He began by describing the well-known public character of Goering, which had even been seen in the early days of the trial itself—his show of “benevolence, his ever ready smile and ingratiating manner . . . his ready affirmation, by a pleasant nod for all to see, of the correctness of statements . . . his chiding shake of the head when he disagreed.”

  Counsel was concerned first to implicate Goering under counts one and two of the indictment, the charges relating to the Nazi conspiracy and aggression against other countries. He began with a summary of Goering’s career in association with Hitler, his rise to personal power after 1933, the warlike character of many of his utterances during the years preceding the war, and his energetic pursuit of rearmament. “Goering,” he said, “was in fact the central figure in German preparation for military aggression.” He showed how Goering was involved in the Anschluss, in “the rape of Czechoslovakia,” in the preparation for violence against Poland, in the “ruthless exploitation” of occupied Soviet territory, and in the slave labor program, beginning with the arrangement for a million Poles, primarily agricultural workers, to be forcibly brought to the Reich, and finally the approval of the deportation of several million men and women from the occupied territories and some two million prisoners of war, all to serve in German industry and agriculture.

  The American prosecutor referred to document after document signed by Goering or authorized by his acknowledged agents, ordering the seizure of property in the occupied territories (including especially works of art), the spoliation of raw materials and machinery that Germany might be said to want, and the theft of foodstuffs, leaving the local population on a diet that was carefully calculated to keep it marginally on the right side of actual starvation. Documents were produced to show that Goering had been entrusted with the economic exploitation of the Soviet territories almost two months prior to the invasion.

  Finally came proof of Goering’s crimes against humanity: of his continued connection with the concentration camps after these had passed under the control of Himmler, especially in the exploitation of the labor force created from the inmates of the camps; of his having helped to lead the campaign against the Jews, especially in the form of economic oppression and the sequestration of property following the pogrom in 1938, and in the later extension to the conquered territories of decrees originally designed to eliminate Jews from German economic life. Nor was he free from implication in the final crime against the Jews, that of genocide. Albrecht ended: “The presentation made to the tribunal on the individual responsibility of the defendant Goering has been intended to be merely illustrative of the mass of documentary evidence which reveals the leading part played by this conspirator in every phase of the Nazi conspiracy.” This was said during the afternoon of January 8. Goering had to wait another two months before he could reply.

  His long-enforced silence at the trial, in all from November 20 to March 8, told hard on a man of Goering’
s temperament. But he did everything he could to attract attention to himself both in court and out of it. In court, if he could not speak out loud, he could always make gestures. He knew he was the principal subject of curiosity; he was being filmed and photographed, and his behavior at first led to considerable comment in the press. When, at ten o’clock on the morning of November 20, the judges, robed in black, took their seats, every eye turned to look at the prisoners coming up from the cells. The emotion, half repulsion and half curiosity, which had accumulated over the years against the Nazis was concentrated now on this little gathering of men, shabby in appearance and disconcerted in manner, as they filed into place. But Goering lost little time in showing off his self-confidence. He displayed his contempt for what the advocates or his fellow prisoners were saying; time and again he turned to make gestures or whisper remarks. He shook his head when he disagreed, or squirmed in his seat. He scowled. He grinned. He laughed. Sometimes he swore and muttered to himself, and when Hess, who sat beside him throughout the trial, made a fool of himself, he constantly attempted to silence him. All the while he was alert to score what points he could in his favor. In the film record of the trial he can be seen scribbling notes, fingering his earphones, turning to the other defendants, checking points of fact, advising everyone around him with nods and asides as to what he should think and say. At one point Hess, goaded too far, turned on him and snapped, “Don’t interrupt me!” All Goering could do then was to shrug his shoulders at the foolishness of this poor madman beside him.

  During these five months of silence in public, Goering could unburden himself freely only to Dr. Gilbert, the prison psychologist, for he refused the services of the chaplain. Here at last he found the chance to talk, though he was, of course, able also to discuss his case with his counsel, Dr. Stahmer, and, once the trial had begun, with the rest of the defendants during the lunch interval, which was initially spent in the courtroom itself.

  Goering at first seemed to be in his element and put on his initial act of the jovial realist and amusing cynic. He expressed contempt for the trial. “The victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused,” he had said on first receiving the indictment. He regarded it as “a cut-and-dried political affair” and said, “I just wish we could all have the courage to confine our defense to three simple words: Lick my arse!” He went round among the defendants repeating this crudity with gusto during one of the lunch intervals, trying to make them all laugh with him. Just before entering upon his own defense he said, “Bringing the heads of a sovereign state before a foreign court is a piece of presumption which is unique in history!” He refused, in fact, to recognize the authority of the court.

  As far as Germany was concerned he was completely cynical. When Gilbert pointed out that the German people were disillusioned now about the Nazi leadership, he replied, “Never mind what the people say now. That’s the one thing that doesn’t interest me a damn bit. I know what they said before. I know how they cheered and praised us when things were going well. I know too much about people.” Later he said, “Democracy just won’t work with the German people. . . . I’m glad I don’t have to live out there any more—each trying to save his face and his neck by denouncing the party, now that we’ve lost.”

  He enjoyed his own particular sense of humor. “Of course we wanted to dissolve the Russian colossus!” he said to Dr. Gilbert and a group of the defendants during one of the lunch breaks. “Now you’ll have to do it. . . . It will amuse me to see how you handle it. Of course, it’s immaterial to me whether I’m watching from heaven or from the other place—the more interesting place.” He enjoyed equally telling Dr. Gilbert how he came to join the Nazis. “I had a date to join the Freemasons in 1919. While waiting for them, I saw a pretty blonde pass by, and I picked her up. Well, I never did join the Freemasons. If I hadn’t picked up that blonde that day, it would have been impossible for me to get into the party, and I wouldn’t be here today.” But he still relished the position he had held in the party: “They don’t have to show films and read documents to prove that we rearmed for war. Why, I rearmed Germany until we bristled! I’m only sorry we didn’t rearm still more. Of course, just between us, I considered your treaties so much crap. I joined the party precisely because it was revolutionary, not because of the ideological stuff. Other parties had made revolutions, so I figured I could get in on one too. And the thing that pleased me was that the Nazi Party was the only one that had the guts to say ‘To hell with Versailles!” while the others were crawling and appeasing.”

  He obstinately maintained his belief in Hitler. He was thankful, he said, the Führer was not alive to stand trial at Nuremberg. “It would be intolerable for me to have him standing before a foreign court. You men knew the Führer,” he said to the other defendants over the lunch table. “He would be the first to stand up and say, ‘I have given the orders, and I take full responsibility.’ ” Yet he also revealed his resentment at the way Hitler had treated him. “You know,” he said to Gilbert, “it is not my purpose to exaggerate my love for the Führer, because you know how he treated me at the end. But I don’t know what to say—I think maybe in the last year and a half or so, he just left things to Himmler . . . ” His continued support of Hitler seemed due largely to self-interest and his sense of his own position in history. “You do not understand the people as I do. If I were to back down now after the way I supported him, they would only have contempt for me. Who knows how things will develop in fifty to a hundred years? . . . The death sentence? That doesn’t mean a thing to me—but my reputation in history means a lot.”

  On another occasion he said to Gilbert, “If I can have the chance to die as a martyr, why, so much the better. Do you think everybody has that chance? If I can have my bones put in a marble casket, that, after all, is a lot more than most people can achieve.”

  He attempted throughout the trial to rule the other defendants. Although he rejected the ministrations of the chaplain, he agreed to attend the chapel services “because, as ranking man of the group, if I attend the others will follow suit.” At least, that is what he said to the chaplain; to Dr. Gilbert he said, “Prayers, hell! It’s just a chance to get out of this damn cell for half an hour.” At the lunch intervals he would attempt to dominate the others, telling them what they should say, advice which was rarely taken well. The rest of the group became less and less impressed by Goering’s mixture of bravado and cynicism. Speer, the most intelligent and convinced anti-Nazi among the prisoners, said in January when Gilbert visited him in his cell, “You know, Goering still thinks he’s the big shot and is running the show even as a war criminal.” Later he said again, “Goering knows his goose is cooked, and needs a retinue of at least twenty lesser heroes for his grand entrance into Valhalla. . . . It’s amazing what a tyranny he exercises over the rest.”

  Because of this, solitary confinement was re-established by Colonel Andrus during the hours in prison. This angered all the defendants, but the effect on Goering was remarkable. He is described by Gilbert as “dejected and tremulous like a rejected child.” He guessed that it was his aggressive and cynical influence that was the cause of the punishment. He burst out, “Don’t you see that all this joking and horseplay is only comic relief? Do you think I enjoy sitting there and hearing accusations heaped on our heads from all sides? We’ve got to let off steam somehow. If I didn’t pep them up, a couple of them would simply collapse. . . . Don’t you think I reproach myself enough in the loneliness of this cell, wishing that I had taken a different road and lived my life differently, instead of ending up like this?” He was, for once, quite subdued, even apologetic.

  At the request of Colonel Andrus, on February 17 Gilbert drew up lists dividing the prisoners into special small groups for lunch, in which those who were convinced of Nazi wrongdoing could neutralize those less inclined to accept the justice of the charges against them. Goering was forced to eat alone, and he bitterly resented the fact. Speer admitted afterward that Goering had
been exercising a kind of moral terror over the weaker defendants and had actually been bargaining in terms of the testimony they should give: he would say this if they would say that. Goering’s own reaction was typical: “Just because I’m the Number One Nazi in this group, it doesn’t mean I’m the most dangerous. Anyway, the colonel ought to bear in mind that he’s dealing with historical figures here. Right or wrong, we are historical personalities here, and he’s nobody.” He then compared himself, not for the first time, to Napoleon in captivity.