The little princess was the adored child of a proud father who spent all of his spare time with her, playing, dancing, or cuddling. He loved to show her off in elaborate staging. There is one photo in which Edda is posed in a reed basket in front of Carinhall, facing an audience of admirers, among which is her father, seated in the front row. When Emmy wanted to employ a nanny, a Nazi official rebuked her for not hiring a party member. She replied that she did not belong to the Nazi Party, nor did any of the members of her family. Hitler solved the problem immediately by assigning her the number of a deceased party member.
Edda lived her earliest years in the lap of luxury, surrounded by loving, attentive parents who considered nothing too perfect for the princess. She had a tutor and lived isolated from the rest of the world, removed from the privations of the war, according to her mother’s biography.
For some welcome distraction, the Luftwaffe, commanded by Göring himself, offered her a miniature replica of Frederick II’s palace in Potsdam. The King of Prussia’s castle became Edda’s dollhouse, complete with kitchens, drawing rooms, and figurines, even a theater with a stage and curtains.
She did meet a number of historical figures whose mark on history would prove more or less honorable: Herbert Hoover, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the pilot Charles Lindbergh, Benito Mussolini, the kings of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, Willy Messerschmitt, and Ernst Heinkel, among others.
Edda’s life was a daily fairytale. Göring never went to bed without kissing his adored Eddalein good night. He began to remove himself from political life and devote more and more time to his daughter.
Corrupt and devoid of any initiative, Göring was harshly criticized by Hitler. In the late 1930s, Hitler assailed him for his weak leadership of the Luftwaffe, and Göring fell irreparably from grace when it lost the air war. Hitler called him “the greatest failure,”9 and the Allies nicknamed him “The Fat One.” Under the effect of narcotics, a euphoric, beady-eyed Göring could launch into a rant lasting several hours at a time, then finally lose steam, rest his head on the table before his stunned guests, and fall immediately into a deep sleep.10
At her fourth birthday party, Edda wore a tiny red Hussar’s uniform, made just for her by the costumers at the National Theater. In a photo taken that day, she stands at mock attention in perfectly polished little leather boots. At the age of five, she began piano and classical dance lessons. For her sixth birthday, on June 2, 1944, her godfather the Führer presented his gift in person, with a declaration intended for her father: “Just you wait and see, Göring! The greatest victory of the century is going to be ours!”11 For her last Christmas before Germany’s defeat, her mother gave her six pink nightgowns cut from bridal silk from the Reich Chancellery.12
This luxurious life far from the horrors of war ended on January 31, 1945, the day Edda and her mother were forced to flee the advancing Russian army and seek shelter at Obersalzberg, near the Austrian border in Bavaria. Seven years in the life of a princess ended forever the moment the door of Carinhall closed behind her.
As the Red Army approached, Göring himself ordered the property to be dynamited. After transferring his art collection—worth more than two hundred million reichsmarks—to Berchtesgaden by special convoy, he let a demolition team from the Luftwaffe take care of the job. As he rose through the ranks, he had freely indulged his all-consuming passion for art. He brought to Carinhall paintings, tapestries, jewels, statues: “gifts” he extorted from Germany’s cities and business community. He was never beneath letting it slip that he would be only too happy to be made a gift of “such and such” piece of art at one of the Reich’s society events. He also shamelessly pillaged the occupied countries of Western Europe and dispossessed many Jewish art collectors. His appetite was insatiable.
In Paris, the Jeu de Paume Museum was one of his favorite hunting grounds. He personally selected everything he wanted sent to him in Germany. His looting allowed him to boast later, “At the current moment, thanks to acquisitions and exchanges, I possess perhaps the most important private art collection in Germany, if not all of Europe.”13
On April 20, 1945, the Führer’s birthday, Berlin was burning and all roads leading south, including to Berchtesgaden, were cut off. Hitler had decided to shelter in his bunker in Berlin. Göring, believing himself Hitler’s successor and wanting to leave the city as quickly as possible, let it be known that a high official of the Third Reich needed to be transported to safety in the south, and he hurried to make preparations for his departure, requiring his usual full makeup, a white silk uniform, and forty-seven monogrammed suitcases.14 In Berchtesgaden, everyone worried if he would make it, particularly his wife and daughter. Germany was falling to the Allies, but the Göring family was reunited on April 21.
On April 22, Göring believed his moment of glory had arrived. A decree signed on June 29, 1941, had designated him as Hitler’s legal successor in the event the Führer resigned as commander in chief of the military. He wished to have Hitler’s consent before taking such an extraordinary step, but his plan was foiled by Bormann, the powerful secretary of the Nazi Party, who had already convinced Hitler that Göring was a traitor. In fact, when he arrived in Berchtesgaden on the evening of April 21, he had already been stripped of his right of succession.
Göring was arrested on April 23 by the SS acting under Hitler’s direct orders: “Surround Göring’s villa and arrest immediately the former Reichsmarschall. Crush any resistance. Adolf Hitler.”15 The house became a prison, with guards posted in the hallways and staircases. All communication was cut off, and Hermann, Emmy, and Edda were confined to their rooms.
The end came quickly. On April 25, Göring received a telegram from Hitler, written by Bormann: “Hermann Goering, Obersalzberg. Your action represents high treason against the Fuehrer and National Socialism. The penalty for treason is death. But in view of your earlier services to the Party, the Fuehrer will not inflict this supreme penalty if you resign all your offices. Answer yes or no.”16
As the Allied air strikes began nearing Obersalzberg, the family was led into the basement and then into deep underground tunnels. Göring was kept separate from the others, and no one was allowed to communicate with him. The intensified bombings terrified the little girl, who cried uncontrollably, but the conditions underground—in dark rooms crudely excavated from the limestone rock some one hundred feet underground—were equally terrifying. Her father was not allowed to come to her, the tension was thick, there was no ventilation, and the lack of oxygen made it impossible to even burn a candle.
Göring agreed to resign, and Hitler stripped him of all responsibilities within the Party and banned him from it as well. Radio Hamburg announced his resignation on April 26, citing health reasons. Göring tried to reassure his wife and daughter, whom recent events had completely taken by surprise. Emmy was convinced that Bormann, Göring’s sworn enemy, was plotting an assassination attempt. The couple decided to send a message to the Führer: if he truly believed that Göring had betrayed him, he should execute the entire family, Edda included.17
In a letter addressed to Germany’s Ministry of Special Affairs in 1947, Emmy virulently objected to the measures used to detain her and Edda. They had been arrested in their nightgowns, subjected to the cold, and nearly shot by the SS when an aide-de-camp had simply tried to hand them blankets.
Emmy Göring reported overhearing the following conversation between Edda and her nanny, Christa, on the subject of Emmy’s adored godfather, Adolf Hitler:
“Edda: I don’t like it when people say bad things about my godfather. Whom do you like better, Christa, my Uncle Adolf or my daddy?
Christa: Your daddy.
Edda: You have to love Uncle Adolf, too.
Christa: No, I don’t; he wasn’t good to your daddy.
Edda: That’s impossible because my daddy loves him, too!”18
When the bombing ceased and the family came out of hiding, they discovered that most of Obersalzberg, including their ow
n house, had been destroyed.
Several days later, taking advantage of a reduced police surveillance during a change of guard, Göring fled Berchtesgaden for the medieval castle where he had spent his childhood. This was Mauterndorf, in Austria, which he had inherited from his godfather, Hermann von Epenstein in 1939. The family was together again, but not for long. The castle was hardly welcoming, with its thick walls, glacial interior, and rumors of hauntings, but Edda saw her father regain his composure and she too felt reassured. Emmy, however, was inconsolable, distraught by the knowledge of everything they had lost and she wondered out loud every night she tucked Edda into bed whether they would live to see another day.
On May 1, 1945, the news of Hitler’s suicide was broadcast around the world. On May 7, with Göring’s liberation order signed, the family attempted to reach Fischhorn Castle near Zell am See, Austria, but was discovered by the US Thirty-Sixth Infantry Division, led by Brigadier General Robert I. Stack. The Görings were allowed to spend a last night together in the castle before surrendering the following day.
A military aide present that day later reported he would never forget the sight of the little girl in the back seat of the sedan, sobbing as she watched her father arrested. The family had been allowed to spend the morning in the comfortable second-floor apartments of the chateau. Göring took a long bath and then went downstairs to have his photo taken in front of the Texas flag.19 On this day, May 9, 1945, his wife and child did not yet realize they would never again see him a free man. Göring had sent several letters to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, requesting to meet with him, and he was convinced the general would grant him an interview and find him a way to save his skin. The man who would become the thirty-fourth president of the United States decided differently, however. The time had come to strip Göring of his marshal’s staff and his medals and treat him like the prisoner of war he was.
Edda celebrated her seventh birthday on June 2, 1945, for the first time without her father. The family was temporarily separated. On June 20, mother and daughter were relocated, at their request, to Veldenstein Castle; although these new lodgings were empty and unheated, they belonged to Göring, who had purchased the castle from his godfather. Five months later, Emmy and Edda finally received news from Hermann, who was under arrest in Augsburg. A family photo arrived, delivered by US Army Major Evans, and bearing a message in Hermann’s handwriting, “I trust Major Evans completely.” Edda wrote him back, “To my adored papa!! We are at Veldenstein now. I miss you terribly, terribly, and I love you so much. Come back to us soon…. The pansies smell so sweet and the roses are so pretty. I pray to God every night for us. 1,000,000 kisses from your Edda!!!”20 She sent him the note with a drawing of an Easter egg, a house, and spring flowers, as well as a photo of herself. Göring was forbidden to receive mail, however, and he would never read her note.
After initial questioning in Bavaria, Göring was transferred to Camp Ashcan in Mondorf-les-Bains, Luxembourg, on May 22, 1945. He carried 280 pounds on his five-foot-six-inch frame and was doped up on Paracodeine; he had been addicted to morphine ever since the 1920s to relieve the pain of his many injuries, particularly those sustained during the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. At first, he took daily morphine shots; later, Paracodeine pills. His attempted detox and the several weeks he had spent in an asylum when he lived in Sweden had not cured him. In prison, although he had been taking between twenty and forty pills daily, he was forced into withdrawal. Colonel Burton C. Andrus, the commander at Mondorf-les-Bains, remembered their first meeting: “When Goering came to me at Mondorf, he was a simpering slob with two suitcases full of Paracodeine pills. I thought he was a drug salesman.”21
Although his detox would last the first few months of his imprisonment, he remained focused on trying to meet General Eisenhower.
Joachim von Ribbentrop, Karl Dönitz, and forty-nine other high-ranking Nazi officials were waiting at the camp to be transferred to Nuremberg the following September. Their only pastime consisted in watching documentaries about the Nazis’ crimes.
On October 15, 1945, Emmy Göring was arrested at Veldenstein and imprisoned at Straubing, ninety miles from Nuremberg. She was separated from Edda without knowing where the girl would be taken. The girl was sent to a neighboring village and would join her mother in prison seven weeks later. She arrived with her teddy bear and a suitcase of clothes for the bear, under an escort of American soldiers who did not speak a word of German. She knew she was going to be reunited with her mother but she must have been terrified.
The press described Emmy as “Straubing’s star prisoner” and relished her downfall from “First Lady of the Nazi Reich” to “haggard political prisoner of the US Army, who has to clean her own cell and wash her own clothes.”22 She was not allowed to receive mail, and she remained without news of her husband. Edda would later say about their stay in Straubing, “Actually, I found it comfortable there.”23 She slept in her mother’s cell on a straw mattress covered by a checkered blanket that, as rumor had it, had been given to her by Mussolini. There were some happy moments; on December 6, 1945, a fellow prisoner disguised as St. Nicholas brought her chocolates.
When mother and daughter were freed in February 1946, they were penniless and had nowhere to go. Like Margarete and Gudrun Himmler would do when offered their freedom, Emmy and Edda Göring asked the prison director to let them stay.
Fifteen days later however, in March 1946, it was time for them to leave Straubing. An American journalist, Peggy Poor, found them lodgings in a small hunting chalet in Sackdilling, fifteen miles from Nuremberg, near Neuhaus, in exchange for an interview with Emmy.
The chalet belonged to a forest warden by the name of Frank. His wife had known Göring as a young man; in fact, Göring himself had the chalet built and used it to change and rest after hunting parties. The journalist left for Nuremberg the following day to inform Göring that his wife and daughter had been released.
Emmy and Edda took daily walks in the surrounding forest. Emmy was Edda’s teacher as well, helping her learn her multiplication tables and teaching her literature. In their reduced straits, they could no longer afford to keep Edda’s tutor but the family of Carin, Göring’s first wife, would support them financially.
Göring’s lawyer was able to petition for his client to send and receive mail, and Göring was relieved to communicate again with his wife and daughter. Emmy remained bitter, despite her newfound freedom. In interviews, she confided, between sobs, how the Americans had unfairly treated her. In her version of events, she was a destitute woman who had been robbed by the SS of £8,000 and a fur coat, even though they knew she would need it. She accused the Americans of dispossessing her of artworks valuing £50,000, leaving her with just bare essentials. In tears, she told one reporter, “Do you know … when we moved here from Austria the Americans allowed us to bring only one car for me and little Edda … and all our belongings.”24
Emmy could not understand how her husband’s complete loyalty to Hitler had been rewarded with an order for his arrest and assassination; Hitler might even have been prepared to have Edda murdered, his own goddaughter. In her mind, Göring’s loyalty was immoderate, the kind of legends in the Nibelungenlied.25 When a messenger who had visited Emmy and Edda on March 24 brought Göring news of his wife’s state of mind and her desire to strip him of his delusions about Hitler’s treatment of him, the prisoner refused to listen; Emmy could sway him in certain matters but not on this. Some fundamental principles were beyond the understanding of mere women.26
For his daughter’s eighth birthday, on June 2, 1946, Göring wrote her a letter, “From the bottom of my heart, I pray to God almighty to watch over you and help you.”27 He included a card for his wife, in which he sent her his “passionate love.”
“Nazi Number One,” as Göring liked to refer to himself, was formally charged in the Nuremberg trials that were held between November 1945 and October 1946. In early September, Emmy was inform
ed that she could visit her husband, after a seventeen-month-long separation. Visits were limited to thirty minutes and prisoners were separated from visitors by glass and bars.
Edda was not allowed into the prison. As a minor, she could only visit on Children’s Day, held on September 18, although the same conditions applied for child visitors, meaning she could neither touch nor kiss her father. Emmy told her not to appear sad in front of her father, to which Edda replied, “Don’t worry, Mother.” She saw her father for the last time on September 30, 1946. Göring’s right hand was manacled to his guard so he raised his left hand and pronounced this blessing over his wife and daughter: “I bless you and our daughter. I bless our dear country. And I bless anyone who will help you in any way.”28
At his trial, Hermann Göring entered a “not guilty” plea, as did all of the other senior defendants at Nuremberg. Emmy saw him a final time on October 7, 1944, and told him, “You can die in peace knowing you did everything you could at Nuremberg. I will always think of you as having died for Germany.”29
In his last letter to his wife, Hermann told her, “My life ended the moment we said goodbye for the last time…. In his goodness, God spared me the worst. All my thoughts are with you and Edda… My heart will beat to the last for our great and eternal love. Your Hermann.”30
When Edda learned of her father’s death sentence, she asked her mother innocently, “Is Papa really going to die?” And when Hermann asked Emmy if Edda knew he would be executed, she explained that she chose not to lie to the girl because Edda needed to trust her mother completely. It was her duty to tell her the truth and she hoped that the girl’s life would not be too difficult.
Children of Nazis Page 5
