Schmidt, Paul. HITLER’S INTERPRETER. London: Heinemann, 1951.
Semmler, Rudolf. GOEBBELS, THE MAN NEXT TO HITLER. London: Westhouse, 1947.
Shirer, William L. BERLIN DIARY. New York: Knopf, 1941.
————. END OF A BERLIN DIARY. New York: Knopf, 1947.
Trevor-Roper, H. R. THE LAST DAYS OF HITLER. London: Macmillan, 1947.
Thyssen, Fritz. I PAID HITLER. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1941.
Valland, Rose. LE FRONT DE L’ART. Paris: Plon, 1961.
Weizsaecker, Ernst von. THE WEIZSAECKER MEMOIRS. London: Gollancz, 1951.
Welles, Sumner. THE TIME FOR DECISION. New York: Harper, 1944.
Wheeler-Bennett, J. W. HINDENBURG: THE WOODEN TITAN. London: Macmillan, 1936.
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Fanny von. CARIN GÖRING. Berlin: Verlag von Martin Warneck, 1934.
Young, Desmond. ROMMEL. London: Collins, 1950.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
The principal sources for this chapter, in addition to the past biographies of Goering which we have consulted, are the personal recollections of Fräulein Erna and Fräulein Fanny Graf of Munich and of Professor Hans Thirring, the eminent physicist, all of whom knew Goering intimately when they were children together. It is Professor Thirring who vouches for the intimate relationship that existed between Frau Franziska Goering and von Epenstein. Any doubt as to Epenstein’s Jewish origin is dispelled by the inclusion of his name in the “Semi-Gotha.” The legendary or semilegendary feats of Goering’s youth are recorded in the official biography written by Erich Gritzbach, Hermann Goering: The Man and His Work, the text of which Goering edited himself—and he later insisted on drawing the greater part of the royalties for doing so! Goering’s career during the latter part of the First World War is described by Karl Bodenschatz in his book Jagd in Flanders Himmel, from which the quotations from Goering’s war reports are taken. We have been able to supplement this book by obtaining additional information from Bodenschatz and from Hermann Dahlmann (see note 4 below). The story of Goering’s meeting with Carin von Kantzow is told with great sentiment by her sister, the late Fanny von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, in her book Carin Göring.
1 Goering himself told this story to Dr. Gilbert, the prison psychologist at Nuremberg. See the article by Gilbert in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , Vol. 43, No. 2 (April 1948).
2 The principal stories of Goering’s exploits given here originate from Gritzbach’s biography, which, it should be remembered, Goering himself edited.
3 A story of some psychological significance was told to Heinrich Fraenkel (whose name will in future be indicated in these notes by the initials H.F.) by Professor Thirring: When Goering was about fifteen years old and already overproud of his exceptional skill and daring as a climber, he arranged to join a team made up of the Thirring brothers and an Englishman called Bob Dunlop, all much older than himself, who were to make the difficult ascent of the south face of the Gurpetschek. Goering, however, was still at an age when he had to ask his godfather’s permission before making such a climb, and, conditions at dawn being just right one morning, the older climbers felt they must go ahead without him, as he was not free to leave at once. When Goering learned that they had gone on he was so furious that he followed them and watched the climb through binoculars. When the others returned in the evening he made a hysterical scene and, almost in tears, accused them of “dishonorable conduct” and a “breach of faith.” Then he sneered at their abilities as climbers, calling them mere amateurs.
4 Hermann Dahlmann, a former General der Flieger in the Luftwaffe, in conversation with H.F. was more dubious than Bodenschatz of Goering’s qualities both as flyer and as officer. He had known Goering well since 1914, and he claims that it was Loerzer who brought pressure to bear on the authorities to get Goering awarded the Pour le Mérite before he had in fact shot down the required twenty-five enemy planes, a score he never achieved. He received the decoration as a “veteran” pilot and was inordinately delighted with it. When later on he was put in command of the Richthofen squadron, he had, according to Dahlmann, more difficulty in maintaining discipline than Bodenschatz makes out, and he became very unpopular with his men on account of his arrogance, an unpopularity that stayed with him long after the war was over—and, indeed, lasted until he came to power and the men who had formerly served under him thought better of trying to avoid him.
5 This account of Captain (later Air Commodore) Beaumont’s encounters with Goering appears in Butler and Young, Marshal without Glory. When H.F. spoke to him about this he claimed the authors were inaccurate. He did not, however, explain in what way the account was inexact.
6 Quoted in Gritzbach, op. cit., p. 173,
7 This story was told to Roger Manvell (who will in future be indicated in these notes by the initials R.M.) in Stockholm by the Swedish journalist Miss Inger Reimers, who knows the lady concerned and vouches for the truth of the story, which has an amusing corollary. In 1933, when Goering came to power, he sent the lady a signed photograph of himself with his private telephone number. Later this photograph proved to be very useful. During the occupation of Denmark she wrote for an anti-Nazi journal and was visited in the night by the Gestapo. As soon as they found the photograph among her papers they immediately became respectful and withdrew.
8 For Count von Rosen the swastika meant nothing but a badge that he and some friends had adopted at school and which he came to use as a family symbol. He was to introduce the swastika into the design for his bookplate, and it can still be seen at Rockelstad and in the memorial window to the Rosen family in the House of the Nobility in Stockholm. When the Count presented a plane to Finland during the war against Russia, it too had a swastika painted on it for good luck, and Finland later adopted the symbol for all military planes. This information was given to R.M. in Stockholm by Uno Lindgren, a friend of the Rosen family.
9 A copy of this rare book, printed in German, was shown to R. M. by Uno Lindgren in Stockholm.
10 Trial of the German War Criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal (British edition), IX, pp. 64-65. The volumes of the Nuremberg trial proceedings will in future be indicated by the initials I.M.T.
CHAPTER 2
From the date when this chapter begins, Goering’s story for the most part coincides with that of Hitler and the Nazi movement. For general historical background our two principal sources have been William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Alan Bullock’s Hitler—A Study in Tyranny. For personal information about Goering during this period we are indebted to Ernst Hanfstaengl. The letters written to her parents by Carin Goering are taken from Fanny von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff’s biography of her sister. The details of Goering’s confinement in Langbro sanatorium are taken principally from Butler and Young, Marshal without Glory. The principal psychiatrist at Langbro at the time of Goering’s treatment, Professor Olaf Kinberg, died in 1960. R.M., however, interviewed a psychiatrist in Stockholm who had observed Goering during the period immediately preceding his confinement in Langbro, when he was still being treated in private hospitals. He was very violent and had to be put in a strait-jacket. The psychiatrist emphasized, however, that he was not insane; his instability came wholly from the influence of the morphine in his system. During the period of Goering’s illness, all reports on individuals made by doctors in Sweden were public documents. This is no longer the case, but when Goering came to power the Communists were able at first to get hold of Goering’s medical reports and certificates. The certificate ordering his confinement at Langbro was reproduced in The Brown Book in 1933-
1 I.M.T., IX, p. 65.
2 Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 168.
3 Hanfstaengl, The Missing Years, p. 71. See also p. 111.
4 Goering was concerned to keep the story of his rescue from the streets as obscure as possible. This is the account given H.F. by Hanfstaengl: “He told me how he had managed to crawl up behind one of the monument
al lions in front of the Residenz palace after he had been hit. Some of the Brownshirts had then carried him to the first doctor in the Residenzstrasse, who happened to be a Jew; for many years afterward Goering spoke warmly of his kindness and skill.” A fuller account was given to H.F. by Dr. T. Eitel, who knew Frau Ballin well, since she was his patient at the Oberstdorf sanatorium. The Ballins were distantly related to the well-known Albert Ballin, the friend of the Kaiser and chief of the Hamburg-America Line. They lived at the Odeonsplatz, according to H.F.’s informant, and Goering was brought to them by some storm troopers, who, unaware that they were Jews, knocked on their door and asked if they were prepared to take in “a wounded man, a knight of the Pour le Mérite.” Herr Ballin answered that he was prepared to take in anybody in distress regardless of his decorations. Later, according to the Hanfstaengls, Goering enabled the Ballins to emigrate to South America without too much trouble, taking some of their money with them, a most unusual privilege.
5 Goering was in fact taken across the border to Innsbruck by a Dutchman, a wealthy supporter of the party named Schuler. This information was given to H.F. by Hanfstaengl. The Goerings had a friend in Innsbruck, a specialist in children’s ailments called Dr. Sopelsa, to whose house the fugitives were taken. Dr. Sopelsa’s widow now lives in Salzburg and is a friend of the Thirrings. She told H.F. how her husband examined Goering’s wound and saw that it was necessary to get him to hospital immediately.
6 See Frischauer, Goering, p. 64.
7 See Butler and Young, Marshal without Glory, pp. 84-87.
CHAPTER 3
Goering’s return to Germany brings him back into the history of the Nazi movement as a whole. In addition to the principal sources already mentioned, we have received personal information about Goering during this period from Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hans Streck and Karl Bodenschatz, among others noted in their place. Carin’s letters, as before, come from her sister’s biographical study, which is also the principal source for the facts concerning her last years with Goering. Goering’s own account of his services to the Nazi movement were given in some detail before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.
1 Information concerning Goering’s financial situation at this time and his various business commitments was given H.F. by Dr. Justus Koch, Ernst Hanfstaengl and Erhard Milch.
2 Heiden, Der Führer, pp. 238-39.
3 During this critical time Goering stayed in Munich at the house of Hans Streck, whom H.F. interviewed. Streck, a musician, had taken part in the putsch of 1923. It was Roehm who asked the Strecks if they would accommodate Goering, as he had no money for a hotel. He slept on their sofa overnight, leaving the living room when the servant arrived to clean in the morning. He was at first very depressed and even told them of an attempt at suicide, but he was determined to reinstate himself with the party, though this was not easy in view of the criticism of Hitler that, according to Streck, he was known to have made while he was in exile. It was essential to his business career for him to secure from Hitler assurances that he would be allocated one of the seats in the Reichstag won by the Nazi vote at the next election. Only after three meetings with Hitler did he get the promise he needed. He came back happy from this final meeting. In spite of his poverty, Frau Streck remembers his silk pajamas, his black silk kimono embroidered with gold dragons, his signet ring and his well-manicured hands. When he left he inscribed a flowery message of thanks in the Strecks’ visitors’ book. It is also of interest that Streck was singing tutor to Hitler’s overfavorite niece, Geli Raubal. Hanfstaengl also believes Goering’s indiscreet attitude to Hitler during his period of exile to be the cause of Hitler’s coldness; according to Hanfstaengl, Goering more or less blackmailed Hitler into taking him back after their four and a half years of separation. After he had succeeded, he rushed in great excitement to Hanfstaengl’s house shouting that he was going to be a Reichstag deputy; he told Hanfstaengl that he had challenged Hitler to take him back on grounds of both sentiment and expediency. Hanfstaengl believes that Hitler must have calculated during his meetings with Goering whether it was better for the party to have this excitable man as a friend or as an enemy, and that he decided in the end that he could be a powerful ally, given the opportunity. A few weeks later at a private meeting he announced, “I have decided that Party Comrade Goering is to have a safe seat.” See also Hanfstaengl, Hitler: The Missing Years, p. 143.
4 See Manvell and Fraenkel, Dr. Goebbels, p. 84.
5 Thyssen, I Paid Hitler, p. 131.
6 Quotations from Goering’s speeches here and below are taken from Gritzbach, op. cit., pp. 128, 74—76.
7 Thyssen, op. cit. (p. 142), claims that Goering spent a week with the ex-Kaiser at Doorn in the autumn of 1932.
8 Quoted in Bullock, Hitler, p. 146.
9 See Knight-Patterson, Germany from Defeat to Conquest, p. 483.
10 Schacht, My First Seventy-six Years, p. 279.
11 Opinions seem to vary as to Goering’s abilities as a driver. Hitler’s opinion is recorded in Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 311. Milch agrees that Goering was a dangerous driver. On the other hand, Birger Dahlerus praises Goering’s stylishness on the road when he drove him from Carinhall to Berlin. Frau Emmy Goering claims he was a marvelous driver, though in 1934 they both had a near-fatal accident when Goering’s car collided with a truck near Rosenheim.
12 See Blood-Ryan, Goering, the Iron Man of Germany, pp. 136-137. When Frau von Papen complained to Goering, around the year 1932, about the Nazis’ attitude to the Catholics, he replied, “That could soon be changed. Why doesn’t the Catholic Church disown the Old Testament?” He pointed out to her that all that mattered was to get rid of the Jewish origins of Christianity. Papen told this to H.F., adding that Goering was probably half joking.
13 Quoted in Blood-Ryan, op. cit., p. 151. Goebbels’ comments during this period come from his published diary, My Part in Germany’s Fight.
14 Quoted in Butler and Young, Marshal without Glory, p.113.
15 Quoted in Blood-Ryan, op. cit., pp. 155-56.
16 I.M.T., IX, p. 69.
17 These tributes to Hitler appear in Goering’s book Germany Reborn, pp. 77-98.
18 According to Knight-Patterson, op. cit. (p. 542), Goering received 367 votes, against 13 for the Socialist candidate and 80 for the Communist candidate.
19 Quoted in Gritzbach, op. cit., p. 142.
20 Papen told H.F. that there were no permanent ill-feelings between himself and Goering as a result of this trick. Papen accepted it as a clever piece of political maneuvering. The quotation from his Memoirs appears at p. 208, that from Germany Reborn at p. 101, and that from I.M.T. in IX, p. 69.
21 Papen, op. cit., p. 242.
22 Goering, Germany Reborn, p. 111. The quotation that follows is from Wheeler-Bennett’s life of Hindenburg, The Wooden Titan, p.434.
CHAPTER 4
In addition to the principal sources on the history of Nazi Germany and Goering’s evidence at Nuremberg, we have drawn on both the published memoirs and the personal recollection of Papen, Schacht, Hanfstaengl, Schwerin von Krosigk and Hans Bernd Gisevius in obtaining further information for this chapter. We have consulted, among many other sources on the Reichstag fire, the excellent contemporary account written by Douglas Reed, but have supplemented this published material by investigations more particularly concerning the connections between the Dutch incendiary van der Lubbe and the Nazis, which may now be considered incontrovertible. There is still no positive evidence that Goering either initiated or was concerned in initiating the fire. Subsequently he enjoyed maintaining a mystery about whether or not he had known anything about it; it became one of his recurrent jokes. H.F. was present at the legal inquiry into the origins of the fire held in London in 1933, at which such evidence as was brought together (not all of it by any means genuine) was certainly aimed at implicating Goering. At the Nuremberg trial, however, Gisevius made Goebbels the principal instigator of the arson. See also the Appendix to this book, “The
Reichstag Fire.” For Goering’s connection with the Gestapo and the S.S. we have consulted principally Gerald Reitlinger’s book on the S.S. Special information was given us by Frau Goering, Karl Bodenschatz and Willy Schade, the expert on forestry who was manager of Goering’s shoot. There are innumerable published descriptions of Carinhall written by visitors whom Goering took on conducted tours of his mansion and his estate; their descriptions vary only because the mansion was in a constant state of development. The best description of the estate itself remains that given by Gritzbach in his official biography of Goering.
1 Gritzbach, op. cit., p. 22.
2 Gritzbach to H.F.
3 Papen, Memoirs, p. 256.
4 Documents on British Foreign Policy, Second Series, IV, pp. 230—31.
5 Quoted in Blood-Ryan, op. cit., pp. 187—88.
6 Quoted in Heiden, op. cit. p. 430.
7 Goering, Germany Reborn, pp.126—27.
8 See Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series C, I, pp. 93— 94.
9 Goering, Germany Reborn, p. 134. The quotation that follows is from Frischauer, op. cit., p. 101. Shirer, op. cit., p. 193, quotes the story by Halder. Goering’s statement to General Donovan is quoted by Papen in his Memoirs, p. 271. Schwerin von Krosigk and Papen both told H.F. about Goering’s remarks made during his captivity at Mondorf.
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