In the afternoon the defendants were held ready while the tribunal assembled for the last time. One by one they were to be led up to hear their sentences pronounced. In the hall the American guards tested the equipment: “One—two—three—O.K.” The psychologists stayed below with the prisoners.
Goering was the first to be called. He was led into the court through the sliding door at the rear of the dock, and there he stood alone, adjusting his earphones for the translation of his sentence. The president began to speak. “Hermann Wilhelm Goering, on the counts of the indictment . . . ” But he had to stop, because Goering was indicating a fault in the circuit; he was not receiving the translation. Judge and prisoner faced each other while the technicians restored the equipment.
The president spoke again. “Hermann Wilhelm Goering, on the counts of the indictment on which you have been convicted, the International Military Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging.”
At last the German words came through the earphones: “. . . Tod durch den Strang.” Goering stood absolutely still, watched by everyone in silence. Then he dropped the earphones with a clatter, turned and went out.
Below in the cell, Gilbert was waiting for him, still watchful for reactions. Goering arrived, his face pale and fixed, his eyes staring. “Death,” was all he said as he sat down on his bed. Then his hands began to tremble and he gripped a book in an effort to control himself. His eyes filled with tears and his breathing grew hard; he asked to be left alone. When Gilbert returned later, Goering said that he had known he would receive the death penalty and that it was better so; it was the only sentence possible for martyrs. But he was still worried, even in these last days of his life, about what the psychologists might write about him; the interpretation of an inkblot test taken long before, when he had attempted to brush away the red spots from the page, still worried him.
Goering’s words to Papen when he learned that the latter had been acquitted were, “Ich freue mich für Sie. I’m glad for you.”3 The day after he was sentenced, he formally petitioned to “be spared the ignominy of hanging and be allowed to die as a soldier before a firing squad.” This was refused, and he was left to live out the fourteen days before the executions, which were due to take place on October 15 on a gallows erected in the gymnasium of the prison. He was permitted to see Emmy once only after sentence had been passed; she came three days before his death.
On the night of October 15, two hours before his execution was due to take place, Goering asked for the last rites according to the Lutheran Church. He was refused, since he had made no sign of sorrow or repentance during the whole of his period in prison. Nor was repentance in his heart, for he had succeeded, no one knew how, in obtaining a phial of crystals which, when swallowed and dissolved in the acids of the stomach, brought him a slow and painful death.4
The guards were alert, watching the prisoners who had received the death sentence and who were soon to be taken down one by one to the gymnasium, led by Goering. Peering through the grille in the cell door, one of the guards saw Goering twisting in convulsions. The doctor was rushed to the cell, but within five minutes, at ten minutes to eleven, Goering lay dead.
Two hours later, in the small hours of the night, Ribbentrop took Goering’s place as the first man to die by the rope. Then followed the others, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, Seyss-Inquart. Their dead bodies were burned and their ashes were scattered. Goering, who had cheated the scaffold, was thrown with the others into the fire.
APPENDIX
The Reichstag Fire
DURING 1960 the popular German journal Der Spiegel published a series of articles by Dr. Fritz Tobias, an official of the Social Democratic Party, challenging the assumption, which at that time was almost universally accepted, that the Reichstag fire on the night of February 27, 1933, was instigated by the Nazis; that Goering and Goebbels, if not Hitler himself, were implicated; that Goering’s motive had been to hasten the mass arrest of the leading members of the Communist Party, who were represented as responsible for burning the Reichstag as part of a plot to overthrow the new Nazi regime during its first weeks in power; and that to this end the Nazis introduced the Dutch incendiary van der Lubbe into the Reichstag and then attempted to prove at the trial that he was a Communist agent. (Van der Lubbe, when he could be induced to speak at all, always boasted that he alone was responsible for the fire, yet it was shown at the trial that he could have been in the building for only a comparatively short while, in spite of which the fire he was said to have started spread with tremendous rapidity and caused great damage.)
The claim now made by Dr. Tobias in his articles in Der Spiegel was that van der Lubbe was wholly responsible for the fire, that he had set about the arson with great skill and efficiency, and that the Nazis could not in the end be proved to have had anything to do with it. The articles naturally caused a sensation, and the argument was taken up in Britain by A.J.P. Taylor in History Today (August 1960) and in the Sunday Express (January 22, 1961). Dr. Tobias subsequently elaborated his case in a book of considerable length, Der Reichstagsbrand (Grote Verlag, 1962).
Dr. Tobias originally undertook his investigation in order to prove that the Nazis were indeed implicated in the fire, and it was only during his researches that he came to believe the opposite. It did not prove difficult for him to refute the obvious falsifications contained in the notorious Brown Book of the Hitler Terror, originally published in Paris in 1934 under the auspices of the Communist Party in order to make Goering appear the central figure in the plot. He also disproved other groundless allegations, for example that van der Lubbe was a homosexual.
But he has allowed his refutations to carry him too far, as Heinrich Fraenkel has shown in an extensive review of Dr. Tobias’ book in Der Monat (May 1962). In the course of Fraenkel’s researches on Goering in Germany and Holland he found evidence that convinced him beyond any doubt of van der Lubbe’s psychological maladjustment and his pathological desire for both publicity and martyrdom; of his physical inability to have fired the Reichstag entirely alone; and of his association with the Nazis immediately prior to the fire. Summarized, this evidence is as follows:
1. The testimony of Simon Harteveld of Leiden, the man who trained van der Lubbe when he was a mason’s apprentice, that in his teens he became permanently almost blind as the result of a practical joke played on him while he was working on a building site. Everyone who had dealings with van der Lubbe acknowledges the poorness of his vision.
2. The testimony of Harteveld that he indoctrinated van der Lubbe with a particular brand of left-wing politics which was against the party line of the Communists and encouraged him to take individual action on behalf of the proletariat. Van der Lubbe suffered from the psychological maladjustment known as the Herostratus complex, named after the man who burned the temple at Ephesos in order to win fame. The effects of this complex took various forms in van der Lubbe’s career before the period of the Reichstag fire. He attempted to gain publicity for himself by starting to swim the Channel without any training or preparation; he tried to claim leadership in a strike at the Tielemann factory with which he had had nothing to do, in order to win fame through his consequent victimization. At another factory he claimed to have smashed windows when the damage had been done by other workers. He was, in fact, determined to be victimized for something.
3. The testimony of a trained nurse, Frau Mimi Storbeck, formerly a German and now a naturalized Dutch subject who is in charge of a children’s home in Haarlem. A few days before the fire, when Frau Storbeck was a district nurse in Berlin, van der Lubbe was brought to her by two S.A. men who described him as a foreign vagrant in need of public assistance. The S.A. men did all the talking, and Frau Storbeck realized that van der Lubbe was nearly blind. Although he seemed to be in a state of starvation, he refused to eat the food she offered him.
4. The testimony of Dr. Stomps of Haarlem, the Dutch lawyer who was sent by a committee set up in Hol
land to investigate van der Lubbe’s case in 1933, at the time of the trial. For a full hour he tried in vain to persuade the defendant in his cell to sign the official request which would have given him the right to have the help of a Dutch lawyer in a German court. Van der Lubbe refused to speak to him. Dr. Stomps’s final words to him were, “Don’t you want to be saved from execution?” Van der Lubbe turned on him with a grin and uttered one word, “No!”
The facts concerning the Reichstag fire are at present being officially investigated by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. Meanwhile, no evidence has come to light so far which directly incriminates Goering. But it seems certain now that the Nazis were in some way involved with van der Lubbe, the “official” incendiary.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following bibliography contains only those books which are of special importance or interest in the study of Goering’s career; it is not intended to represent the history of Germany or of the Third Reich, though certain general histories are included because of their many references to Goering. Readers are referred also to the introductory remarks to the Notes on each chapter, where the titles of books which proved to be of particular importance as sources are given.
Collections of Official Papers
CIANO’S DIPLOMATIC PAPERS, edited by Malcolm Muggeridge. London: Odhams, 1948.
DOCUMENTARY BACKGROUND TO WORLD WAR II, edited by James W. Gantenbein. New York: Columbia University Press, 1948.
DOCUMENTS ON BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY, 1919-39. Second Series, Vols. I-VIII; Third Series, Vols. I-IX. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1946 onward.
DOCUMENTS ON GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY, 1918-45. Series C, Vols. I-III; Series D, Vols. I-IX. London: H.M.S.O., 1949 onward.
DOCUMENTS CONCERNING GERMAN-POLISH RELATIONS AND THE OUTBREAK OF HOSTILITIES BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY. London: H.M.S.O., 1939.
DOCUMENTS AND MATERIALS RELATING TO THE EVE OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, Vols. I and II. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1948.
FRENCH YELLOW BOOK. DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTS, 1938-39. London: Hutchinson, 1939.
HITLER DIRECTS His WAR, edited by Felix Gilbert. New York: Oxford University Press, 1951.
NAZI CONSPIRACY AND AGGRESSION, Vols. I-X. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946. English translations of documents collected for the major Nuremberg trial.
POLISH WHITE BOOK. OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS CONCERNING POLISH-GERMAN AND POLISH-SOVIET RELATIONS, 1933-39. London: Hutchinson, 1939.
TRIAL OF THE GERMAN WAR CRIMINALS: PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL, Vols. I-XXII. London: H.M.S.O. This is the edition of the Nuremberg trial record that is quoted herein; it is referred to in the notes as I.M.T. A 23-volume edition of the proceedings was published at Nuremberg as Trial of the Major War Criminals.
TRIAL OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL. DOCUMENTS IN EVIDENCE, Vols. XXIV-XLII. Nuremberg. The text of the documents accepted in evidence at the chief Nuremberg trial, in their original language.
Historical Studies
Ansel, Walter. HITLER CONFRONTS BRITAIN. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1960.
Churchill, Winston. THE SECOND WORLD WAR, Vols. I-V. London: Cassell, 1948 onward.
Cooper, R. W. THE NUREMBERG TRIAL. London: Penguin Books, 1947.
Craig, Gordon A. and Gilbert, Felix, editors. THE DIPLOMATS. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953.
Crankshaw, Edward. GESTAPO. London: Putnam, 1956.
Dulles, Allen Welsh. GERMANY’S UNDERGROUND. New York: Macmillan, 1947.
Fitz Gibbon, Constantine. THE BLITZ. London: Wingate and Ace Books, 1959.
Flanner, Janet. MEN AND MONUMENTS. New York: Harper, 1947.
Jarman, T. L. THE RISE AND FALL OF NAZI GERMANY. London: Cresset, 1955.
Knight-Patterson, W. M. GERMANY FROM DEFEAT TO CONQUEST. London: Allen and Unwin, 1945.
Lee, Asher. THE GERMAN AIR FORCE. London: Duckworth, 1946.
Liddell Hart, B. H. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL: THE GERMAN GENERALS TALK. London: Cassell, 1948.
Namier, L. B. DIPLOMATIC PRELUDE. London: Macmillan, 1948.
————. EUROPE IN DECAY. London: Macmillan, 1950.
————. IN THE NAZI ERA. London: Macmillan, 1952.
Neumann, Franz. BEHEMOTH. London: Gollancz, 1942.
Reed, Douglas. THE BURNING OF THE REICHSTAG. London: Gollancz, 1934.
Reitlinger, Gerald. THE FINAL SOLUTION. London: Valentine Mitchell, 1953.
————. THE SS, ALIBI OF A NATION. London: Heinemann, 1956.
Richards, Denis, and Saunders, Hilary St. George, R.A.F., 1939-45. London: H.M.S.O., 1953-54.
Rieckhoff, H. J. TRIUMPH ODER BLUFF? Geneva: Interavia, 1945.
Rossi, A. THE RUSSO-GERMAN ALLIANCE. London: Chapman and Hall, 1950.
Shirer, William L. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960.
Shulman, Milton. DEFEAT IN THE WEST. London: Seeker and Warburg, 1949.
SURVEY OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS. Annual surveys for period 1920 to 1938. London: Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1925 onward. Subsequent volumes: THE WORLD IN MARCH, 1939 and HITLER’S EUROPE (2 vols.).
Taylor, A. J. P. THE ORIGINS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961.
Wheatley, Ronald. OPERATION SEA LION. New York: Oxford University Press, 1958.
Wheeler-Bennett, J. W. MUNICH, PROLOGUE TO TRAGEDY. London: Macmillan, 1948.
————. NEMESIS OF POWER. London: Macmillan, 1953. Wiskemann, Elizabeth. THE ROME-BERLIN Axis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.
Memoirs, Diaries and Biographies
Alfieri, Dino. DICTATORS FACE TO FACE. London: Elek, 1954.
Bernadotte, Folke. THE CURTAIN FALLS. New York: Knopf, 1945.
Blood-Ryan, A. W. GOERING, THE IRON MAN OF GERMANY. London: Long, 1938.
Bodenschatz, Karl. JAGD IN FLANDERS HIMMEL. Munich: Verlag Knorrund Hirth, 1935.
Boldt, Gerhardt. IN THE SHELTER WITH HITLER. London: Citadel Press, 1948.
Bormann, Martin. THE BORMANN LETTERS. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954.
Bross, Werner. GESPRÄCHE MIT HERMANN GÖRING. Flensburg: Verlag Christian Wolff, 1950.
Bullock, Alan. HITLER. London: Odhams Press, 1952.
Butler, Ewan and Young, Gordon. MARSHAL WITHOUT GLORY. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951.
Ciano, Galeazzo. CIANO’S DIARY, 1937-38. London: Methuen, 1952.
————. CIANO’S DIARY, 1939-43. London: Heinemann, 1947.
Coulondre, Robert. DE STALINE À HITLER. Paris: Hachette, 1950.
Dahlerus, Birger. THE LAST ATTEMPT. London: Hutchinson, 1948.
Diels, Rudolf. LUCIFER ANTE PORTAS. Zurich: Zwischen Severing und Heydrich Interverlag, 1949.
Dodd, Martha. THROUGH EMBASSY EYES. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1939.
Dodd, William E. AMBASSADOR DODD’S DIARY, 1933-38. London: Gollancz, 1948.
Fromm, Bella. BLOOD AND BANQUETS. London: Bles, 1943.
François-Poncet, André. SOUVENIRS D’UNE AMBASSADE À BERLIN. Paris: Flammarion, 1946.
Frischauer, W. GOERING. London: Odhams, 1951.
Galland, Adolf. THE FIRST AND THE LAST. London: Methuen, 1955.
Gilbert, G. M. NUREMBERG DIARY. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1947.
Gisevius, Hans Bernd. PSYCHOLOGY or DICTATORSHIP. New York: Ronald Press, 1950.
————. To THE BITTER END. London: Cape, 1948.
Goebbels, Joseph. THE GOEBBELS DIARIES. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1948.
————. MY PART IN GERMANY’S FIGHT. London: Paternoster Library, 1938.
Goering, Hermann. REDEN UND AUFSÄTZE. Munich: Eher, 1935.
————. GERMANY REBORN. London: Elkin Matthews, 1934.
Gritzbach, Erich. HERMANN GOERING: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1939.
Guderian, Heinz, PANZER LEADER. London: Michael Joseph, 1952.
> Halder, Franz. HITLER AS WARLORD. London: Putnam, 1950.
Halifax, Lord. THE FULNESS OF DAYS. London: Collins, 1957.
Hanfstaengl, Ernst. HITLER: THE MISSING YEARS. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1957.
Hassell, Ulrich von. THE VON HASSELL DIARIES, 1938-44. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1948.
Heiden, Konrad. DER FÜHRER. London: Gollancz, 1944.
Henderson, Sir Nevile. FAILURE OF A MISSION. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1940.
Hermann, Hauptmann. THE LUFTWAFFE, ITS RISE AND FALL. New York: Putnam, 1943.
Hibbert, Christopher. MUSSOLINI. London: Longmans, 1962.
HITLER’S TABLE TALK. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953.
Howe, Thomas C. SALT MINES AND CASTLES. New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1946.
Hossbach, Friedrich. ZWISCHEN WEHRMACHT UND HITLER. Wolfenbütteler Verlagsanstalt, 1949.
Kelley, Douglas M. TWENTY-TWO CELLS IN NUREMBERG. New York: Greenberg, 1947.
Kesselring, Albert. SOLDAT BIS ZUM LETZTEN TAG. Stuttgart: Athenäum Verlag, 1950.
Koller, Karl. DER LETZTE MONAT. Mannheim: Norbert Wohlgemuth Verlag, 1949.
Kirkpatrick, Sir Ivone. THE INNER CIRCLE. London: Macmillan, 1959.
Lochner, Louis. WHAT ABOUT GERMANY? New York: Dodd, Mead, 1942.
————. TYCOONS AND TYRANT. Chicago: Regnery, 1954.
Ludecke, Kurt G. W. I KNEW HITLER. London: Jarrolds, 1938.
Manvell, Roger and Fraenkel, Heinrich. DR. GOEBBELS. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960.
Papen, Franz von. MEMOIRS. London: Deutsch, 1952.
Rommel, Erwin. THE ROMMEL PAPERS. London: Collins, 1953.
Schacht, Hjalmar. ACCOUNT SETTLED. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1948.
————. MY FIRST SEVENTY-SIX YEARS. London: Wingate, 1955.
Schellenberg, Walter. THE SCHELLENBERG MEMOIRS. London: Deutsch, 1956.
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