Goering

by Roger Manvell

  On several occasions the prosecution darkened the courtroom for the projection of films offered in evidence. These included the scenes of atrocity recorded by service cameramen in the concentration camps and other places of suffering. The effect of these films on the defendants was carefully noted by Gilbert. Some, like Funk and Frank, wept; some, like Speer and Hans Fritzsche of the Propaganda Ministry, were near to tears; Ribbentrop, Neurath, Schacht and Papen refused to look; others, such as Seyss-Inquart and Streicher, watched stolidly. Goering began by leaning forward, not watching; he looked dejected and he coughed. After the film, when Hess muttered, “I don’t believe it,” he told him to be quiet. The whole court was overcome by the sight of the film, and the prisoners filed out in complete silence. Afterward, in their cells, they were mainly incredulous; several, however, were still in tears of shame or completely unnerved by what they had seen. Goering’s reaction was an odd one: “It was such a good afternoon, too, until they showed that film. They were reading my telephone conversations on the Austrian affair, and everyone was laughing with me. And then they showed that awful film, and it just spoiled everything.”

  Goering was well aware that the atrocity films represented crimes which were the single most serious charge he was likely to face as the senior defendant. Round much of the rest he could argue, using his authority and strength of personality to work his way through the cross-examination. But this exhibition in the darkened courtroom, with the unbearable images thrust upon the screen without compromise until neither the court nor the defendants themselves could stomach more, made it impossible for him, the man second to Hitler in the State, to maintain his offhand bravado. “That awful film” had indeed spoiled everything, as he had said. Soon, however, he discovered what seemed some sort of way out of this dilemma. “I still can’t grasp all those things,” he said to Gilbert. “Do you suppose I’d have believed it if somebody came to me and said they were making freezing experiments on human guinea pigs, or that people were being forced to dig their own graves and be mowed down by the thousands? I would just have said, ‘Get the hell out of here with that fantastic nonsense. . . .’ I just shrugged it off as enemy propaganda.” When the Russians showed their atrocity films in mid-February he adopted precisely this attitude. “Anybody can make an atrocity film,” he said to the others, “if they take corpses out of their graves and then show a tractor shoving them back in again.” But it was evident that he was unable to convince even himself, let alone the others. When the Russians continued with their films, he laughed when the first shot appeared upside down (the film had not been rewound), and he refused to look at the scenes that were eventually shown. Afterward he said they were mainly the Russians’ own atrocities on the Germans. In any case, he was a soldier and used to the sight of death. “I don’t have to see a film to be horrified,” he said. Later, during the testimony of a woman who had been a prisoner in Auschwitz, he took off his earphones and refused to listen. In the end he claimed he had no knowledge of such things. “You know how it is even in a battalion,” he said to one of the defense attorneys, who had asked if anyone in authority knew anything of what was happening. “A battalion commander doesn’t know anything that goes on in the line. The higher you stand, the less you see of what is going on below.”

  The thirteen-day hearing of Goering’s defense opened on the morning of March 8 with the summoning of the first witness to appear on his behalf. This was Bodenschatz, testifying as the principal liaison officer between Goering’s and Hitler’s headquarters. What was soon to become a familiar round of questioning began when Stahmer tried to show how uninvolved Goering was in the more cruel or sordid of the Nazis’ activities. When did Goering become out of favor with Hitler? Goering’s constant work for peace and his endeavors with Dahlerus were described. What did he do to try to prevent war? Did he have any foreknowledge of the 1938 pogrom? None at all, said Bodenschatz. What did he do to try to extricate people from the concentration camps? He was constantly helping individual cases. What did the witness or Goering know about conditions in these camps? Nothing at all.

  When Stahmer had finished, Jackson took over and cross-examined Bodenschatz with a view to making him implicate himself and Goering in the very matters which Stahmer had introduced in order to allow Bodenschatz to display their lack of implication. This narrowed down to the case of the concentration camps. Bodenschatz was careful to side-step, and this became the general technique of the trial. No, I was quite unaware of these matters. No, it never did to ask questions. No, I was on leave at the time. No, I cannot make any definite statement on this matter. The question of the efficiency of the Air Force and of the increasingly bad relations between Hitler and Goering after 1943 were continually revived.

  Bodenschatz was succeeded on the stand by Milch, and Stahmer led him to testify to the effect that the German Air Force was built up for defensive reasons only, that Goering was always on the side of peace through strength. Milch also testified that Goering agreed with him that they should avoid having anything to do with Himmler’s use of criminals for air-pressure and temperature tests. Neither he nor Goering had any knowledge of the nature of these experiments. In the matter of the treatment of prisoners of war, what Goering had said was, “Once they have been shot down, they are our comrades.” As far as the corpses were concerned, Milch took the same line as Bodenschatz: “The people who knew about these conditions did not talk about them, and presumably were not allowed to talk about them.” No one could know that there were over two hundred concentration camps, though everyone knew there were some; and no one knew what went on inside. Nor did anyone know about the extermination camps for the Jews. To have tried to interfere would have meant certain death for oneself and one’s family; Milch said this in one of the most revealing moments during the trial.

  Jackson had no difficulty in eliciting from Milch that it had been impossible for Goering or anyone else actively to oppose Hitler. “The Reich Marshal never strongly opposed the Führer in public, nor before any large group of his officers, because Hitler would not have tolerated such opposition.” In the matter of trying to prevent Hitler’s going to war with Russia, Milch said he had the impression that Goering “had previously discussed the subject with Hitler, but without any degree of success, because with Hitler that was impossible.” This too became a recurrent theme at the trial. Every act, good or bad, stemmed from Hitler and could not be opposed, even by the most senior member of the leadership. With some irony, Jackson made Milch reveal point by point the weaknesses of an authoritarian state where no one could put forward proposals that he believed to be right or justifiable if they were critical even of the most ill-considered views of the Führer. Over all hung the fear of the Gestapo.

  MILCH: It was not easy for any of us. We were all convinced that we were being constantly watched, no matter how high our rank. There was probably not a single person concerning whom a dossier was not kept, and many people were subsequently brought to trial as a result of these records. The ensuing difficulties did not affect only these people . . . or me personally; they included everybody right up to the Reich Marshal, who also was affected by them.

  JACKSON: So you mean that from the Reich Marshal right down to the humblest citizen, there was fear of Heinrich Himmler and his organization?

  MILCH: Well, the degree of fear may have varied. It was perhaps not so great in the highest and in the lowest ranks. [VIII, p. 280]

  Jackson also tried to make Milch comment further on a statement he had made under interrogation that Hitler after March 1943 was no longer normal. How, Jackson asked, could Goering consent to serve under an abnormal man? Again Milch sidestepped.

  MILCH: The abnormality was not such that one could say, “This man is out of his senses.” . . . I believe that a doctor would be better able to give information on that subject. I talked to medical men about it at the time.

  JACKSON: And it was their opinion that he was abnormal?

  MILCH: That there was a possibility o
f abnormality was admitted by a doctor whom I knew well personally. [VIII, p. 281]

  Further questions were put to the witness to try to implicate Goering and Milch directly in the use of forced labor recruited from prisoners of war and from the populations that either were developing a partisan movement or were likely to do so once the Allies had landed in France.

  The British prosecutor G. D. Roberts brought up the recurrent question of the R.A.F. officers who had escaped from Stalag Luft III at Sagan in March 1944 and had subsequently been shot and their bodies cremated. Milch claimed to have had no knowledge of this matter at the time it happened. So did the next witness, Bernd von Brauchitsch, testifying as Goering’s military adjutant.

  The next principal witness for Goering’s defense was Paul Koerner. Stahmer used his testimony to show that Goering in 1933 dissolved any unauthorized concentration camps that came to his notice, that he stopped the ill-treatment of the Communist leader Thaelmann and that in any case he ceased to control the Gestapo and the camps when Himmler took over in the spring of 1934. Koerner was further questioned on the Roehm purge, the 1938 pogrom and the Four-Year Plan. As before, all this was designed to show Goering’s essentially moderate and pacific attitude. Jackson then returned to the attack, but Koerner stuck to his defense of Goering until Jackson suddenly interposed.

  JACKSON: You were interrogated at Obersalzberg, the interrogation center, on October 4 of last year by Dr. Kempner of our staff, were you not?

  KOERNER: Yes.

  JACKSON: You stated, in the beginning of your interrogation, that you would not give any testimony against your former superior, Reich Marshal Goering, and that you regarded Goering as the last big man of the Renaissance, the last great example of a man from the Renaissance period; that he had given you the biggest job of your life and it would be unfaithful and disloyal to give any testimony against him. Is that what you said?

  KOERNER: Yes, that is more or less what I said.

  JACKSON: And that is still your answer?

  KOERNER: Yes.

  JACKSON: No further questions. [IX, pp. 19—20]

  General Rudenko, who followed Jackson, was scathing about Koerner’s negative replies to his questions on the plundering of the occupied territories. Koerner too claimed to know nothing about the concentration camps, as did Kesselring, who followed him into the box. Kesselring was called on to testify to the correctness of the raids on Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry as military targets and to the pattern of responsibility within the Luftwaffe, and to give his views about the conduct of the war. Kesselring was of the opinion that Hitler was ready to consider the advice of his generals. Maxwell-Fyfe’s cross-examination was in the highest degree damaging to Kesselring, who had been commanding in Italy when the German forces committed atrocities against the Italians.

  Goering took his stand in the witness box on the afternoon of March 13. In his cell he had been nervous with anticipation, his hands trembling and the expression on his face strained. He had told Gilbert again that he felt it wrong for him, as one of the heads of a sovereign state, to be brought before a foreign court. However, making careful use of Stahmer’s prepared questions, he gave a detailed account of his association with Hitler and the party and of his own contribution, as he saw it, to the seizure of power and the subsequent moves in its consolidation. He made everything sound as plausible and as reasonable as he could, and he spoke ably and with great consciousness of his past authority. He was frank about his belief in the party and showed the pride he felt in the success of his personal efforts to bring it to power.

  I wish to say it is correct that I—and I can speak only for myself—did everything which was at all within my personal power to strengthen the National Socialist movement, and to increase it, and have worked unceasingly to bring it to power in all circumstances as the one and only power. I did everything in order to secure the Führer the place as Reich Chancellor which rightfully belonged to him. [IX, p. 75]

  He spoke at great length about the need to eliminate the hostile political parties, to establish a state secret police, and to found detention camps for those who were planning to overthrow the regime in its earliest days. He admitted that there were acts of brutality in these camps, and that unauthorized camps were set up by Karpfenstein, Gauleiter of Pomerania, and by Heines and Ernst, both of whom were associates of Roehm. He dissolved these camps, he claimed, and investigated any acts of brutality which came to his notice in the camps under his direct control.

  That evening when he was back in his cell, Goering, like an overwrought actor, was unable to eat; he sat smoking his Bavarian pipe. He was very excited, and worried that he could not keep his hand from shaking. He refused to have the light on, and his mood turned somber as he talked to Gilbert of man as the worst of the beasts of prey, and how war would in future become more and more destructive. The following morning he heard of the death of Blomberg. “A man of honor,” said Goering, turning aside for a moment from a discussion with Stahmer.

  When the next session opened, in response to a further question from Stahmer he explained what he meant by the “leadership principle” and the particular need for it in Germany.

  I upheld this principle and I still uphold it positively and consciously. One must not make the mistake of forgetting that the political structure in different countries has different origins, different developments. Something which suits one country extremely well would, perhaps, fail completely in another. Germany, through the long centuries of the monarchy, has always had a leadership principle. . . . I am of the opinion that for Germany, particularly at that moment of its lowest existence when it was necessary that all forces be welded together in a positive fashion, the leadership principle, that is, authority from above and responsibility from below, was the only possibility. [IX, p. 82]

  The leadership principle, he added, is the basis of both the Catholic Church and the government of the U.S.S.R.

  He then went on to explain why the trade-unions had been dissolved as centers of political disaffection, and that the Roehm faction had been destroyed because it had wanted to use illegal methods of gaining power, whereas Hitler had been determined to use methods that were legal. Men such as Roehm, Heines and Ernst, he said, were plotting to overthrow the Führer.

  I knew Roehm very well. I had him brought to me. I put to him openly the things which I had heard. I reminded him of our mutual fight and I asked him unconditionally to keep faith with the Führer. He raised the same arguments as I have just mentioned, but he assured me that of course he was not thinking of undertaking anything against the Führer. Shortly afterward I received further news to the effect that he had close connections with those circles that were strongly opposed to us. [IX, p. 84]

  When the purge that followed led to more deaths than seemed proper, Goering claimed, he interceded with Hitler and urged that the killings be stopped immediately.

  In the course of that evening I heard that other people had been shot as well, even some people who had nothing at all to do with this Roehm revolt. The Führer came to Berlin that same evening. I learned this later that evening or night, and went to him at noon the next day and asked him to issue an order immediately that any further execution was, under any circumstances, forbidden by him, although two other people who were very much involved and who had been ordered to be executed were still alive. These people were, in fact, left alive. I asked him to do that because I was worried that the matter would get out of hand, as, in fact, it had already done to some extent, and I told the Führer that under no circumstances should there be any further bloodshed. [IX, p. 85]

  However, he added,

  . . . as my final remark on the Roehm putsch I should like to emphasize that I assume full responsibility for the actions taken against those people—Ernst, Heidebrecht and several others—by the order of the Führer, which I executed or passed on, and that, even today, I am of the opinion that I acted absolutely correctly and from a sense of duty. That was confirmed by the Reich
President, but no such confirmation was necessary to convince me that here I had averted what was a great danger for the State. [IX, p. 85]

  The examination then turned to his attitude toward the church, where Goering’s extraordinary views showed his uncontrolled vanity.

  Constitutionally, as Prussian Premier, I was, to be sure, in a certain sense the highest dignitary of the Prussian Church, but I did not concern myself with these matters very much. . . . I am not what you might call a churchgoer, but I have . . . always consciously belonged to the church and have always had these functions over which the church presides—marriage, christening, burial—carried out in my house by the church. My intention thereby was to show those weak-willed persons who, in the midst of this fight of opinions, did not know what they should do that if the second man in the State goes to church . . . then they can do the same. . . . On the whole I should like to say that the Führer himself was not opposed to the church. . . . He said that he did not consider himself to be a church reformer and that he did not wish that any of his political leaders should win laurels in this field. [IX, pp. 25—27]

  What Hitler and he were concerned with was to keep church and politics separate, and he opposed in principle the arrest of clergy unless they were violently critical of the regime and took part in political affairs outside the church.