Goering

by Roger Manvell

  The notorious period of stalemate followed the fall of Poland. The pact with the Soviet Union gave Hitler the breathing space he needed to develop the war in the west. The German generals still felt themselves ill-equipped to face the combined armies of France and Britain, which were as unprepared as the Germans themselves to start hostilities in the west on September 3. There was once again talk about peace, and this was sufficient to bring Dahlerus hurrying back to Berlin on September 26. He met Goering and Hitler, and discussion turned on the best way to enable the British to conclude peace terms without loss of face; Goering thought representatives of the two countries might meet secretly in Holland and prepare the ground for later talks which would take place at the invitation of Queen Wilhelmina. After visiting Chamberlain in London, Dahlerus returned with uncompromising terms: the British government would negotiate only with a new German government, not that of Hitler. Dahlerus bore these terms back to Germany with a heavy heart, and on October 1 he met Goering at Carinhall. They talked there in the garden, and Dahlerus asked Goering directly whether he served Germany or Hitler. Goering asked him to return the following day and meanwhile arranged that he should meet Admiral Canaris, head of the German Intelligence Service and a man known to a few to be critical of Hitler. Nothing came of this meeting, except the possible indication that Goering was not unaware of the existence of an underground movement planning the overthrow of Hitler.

  On October 6 Hitler made his lengthy speech in the Reichstag offering to conclude a peace which should be followed by conferences to determine the outstanding problems of Europe as he saw them. Meanwhile, however, he set his military chiefs to prepare for war in the west, which excited them to produce a catalogue of reasons why this was impossible without months of delay. Only Raeder seemed anxious to strike; he had commenced his operations by sinking the British liner Athenia on the very day war had been declared. Hitler proceeded to browbeat the generals and forced upon them dates for attack that gave them barely a month in which to prepare. Brauchitsch, a weak man, took the full brunt of Hitler’s anger when he pleaded for more time.

  The secret plans to overthrow Hitler, which had always in the past failed to reach the point of action, now stirred uneasily once more. Warnings of incipient invasion were sent out through underground channels to both Belgium and France. Independently of this, an almost certainly bogus attempt on the lives of Hitler and the principal Nazi leaders was staged in Munich on November 8 at the annual reunion to celebrate the 1922 putsch. Goering alone was absent through illness, and the bomb that had been “planted” to kill the whole of the Nazi leadership exploded only after Hitler, who spoke for eight minutes instead of his customary two hours, had left. Whether this attempt was bogus or not, Goering told Bodenschatz that had Hitler been killed, he as successor to the Führer would have stopped the war by withdrawing German troops from all non-German territory.3

  There seems to have been no doubt that certain of the recalcitrant generals considered that Goering might be the man to head the government after the removal of Hitler by a military coup d’état. There is evidence of this, for instance, in the diaries of Hassell. “It is significant that in desperation everyone looks to Goering as the only hope,” he wrote on October 19, “significant because it makes clear how little hope there really is, for basically Goering is not a man in whom one can have confidence. He lacks both character and real determination to see things through.” The following month Hassell received hints that Goering was on bad terms with Hitler and even considered he was mentally ill, but he also noted Goering’s “paralyzing fear of the Gestapo” and the fact that he “will not listen to unpleasant things if he can help it.”

  Goering, as far as we can tell, gave no direct encouragement to these moves. His part in the campaign against Poland had been a resounding success and had done much to reinstate him in Hitler’s eyes. During October he was involved in the spoliation of that part of Poland which on October 8 was incorporated into the Reich by an order of which he and Hitler were signatories.4 In directives dated October 19 and October 30 and signed by Goering as Plenipotentiary of the Four-Year Plan, instructions were issued on the economic organization of Germany’s new eastern territories. The directive of October 19 included the “complete incorporation” of industry “into the Greater German economic system at the earliest possible time” and the removal of all raw materials and machinery needed for the German war economy; to this Goering added the statement, “Enterprises which are not absolutely necessary for the meager maintenance of the bare existence of the population must be transferred to Germany.” The expropriation of the Jews was naturally involved. Goering also signed a secret decree on October 7 which gave Himmler power to “Germanize” Poland. Nor were his staff concerned alone with raw materials, machinery and produce; they were interested in the confiscation of human labor. Goering needed a million men and women to work in agriculture and industry in the Reich, and he sent this request to Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland; arrangements were made for their forcible transfer in 1940. Goering’s signature underwrote document after document that initiated the terrorization and the expropriation of millions of men and women whose lives and labor lay at the mercy of the agents of Nazism.5

  The attack on the West which Hitler demanded of his generals was postponed no fewer than fourteen times between November 1939 and the spring of 1940. The bad weather was frequently blamed for these delays. Goering wanted to bomb Britain, but Hitler insisted that such attacks should only accompany a land offensive. But when Raeder asked for air support to help his inadequate Navy attack British merchant shipping, Goering was uninterested. Meanwhile Goering concentrated on the production of planes, more especially the short-range bombers.6 At a reception held at the Soviet embassy in Berlin on November 7, the day the Queen of the Netherlands and the King of the Belgians offered to mediate for peace, Goering boasted to a group of American journalists (including both Shirer and Lochner) about the fine planes that were being produced in Germany, and how they would be more than a match for the Allied air forces even though they were now able to buy planes from America, where the Neutrality Act had recently been repealed. Asked why he was merely bombing enemy ships and not their ports, he said, “We’re humane. You shouldn’t laugh—I’m serious. I am humane!”

  On November 12 the German people received a severe shock at the stringency of the clothing allowance when their ration cards were issued; they realized what Hitler had meant when, in a broadcast on November 8, he had told them that it would be a long struggle and that he had ordered Goering to prepare for a five-year conflict on the day Britain and France had entered the war. Later in the month Goering lectured an assembly of high-ranking officers on the poor morale in the Army as compared with the Navy and the Air Force.

  It was at this time that the rifts began to show between Germany and Russia, on the one hand, and Italy on the other. Germany and Russia were driving the hardest possible bargain with each other on the exchange of commodities, such as grain and oil from Russia for war material from Germany. On November 1 Goering protested about the loss this entailed to the German armed forces, even though in a speech on September 6 at an armament works he had emphasized the importance of the economic agreement with Russia to German victory.7 But to Hitler the trading of German armaments to Russia was the high price that had to be paid to keep the Russians out of the conflict that lay ahead in the west. On the other hand, Stalin in person complained at the charges that were being made for German aircraft! Meanwhile, Mussolini’s alarm was growing at this expansion of German-Soviet co-operation and the sudden spread of Russian power into Poland and the Baltic. The Russians started their war against Finland on November 30.

  At the beginning of the war in Poland, Goering had told Magistrati at the Italian embassy in Berlin that Italian neutrality suited Germany; he had even hinted that Russia was going to intervene in Poland and absorb a part of Polish territory. But during the autumn Germany’s awareness that Hitler had been l
et down by Mussolini in August, and that as a result Britain and France had been encouraged to support Poland, began to intensify. On November 12 a further conversation took place between Magistrati and Goering, in which Goering confirmed his opinion that the majority of the Germans were satisfied the Duce and the Führer had agreed amicably on Italy’s remaining neutral; this in fact was far from the truth about German opinion, but Goering still wanted his Annunziata order. However, when Mussolini sent Hitler his letter of January 4 in which he strongly criticized the pact with Russia, Hitler summoned both Ribbentrop and Goering, and the three of them discussed the letter angrily for several hours. Only six weeks later, on February 20, Ciano was writing in his diary that Goering had shown his anger to the Italian military attaché in Berlin over “the Italian position”; and he added of Goering, “He is the most human of the German chiefs, but he is emotional and violent and might become dangerous.”8 The Duce agreed to send Germany 3,500 tons of copper the following day, which emphasized the shortage of raw materials that led Goering to decree on March 14 that German citizens must give up to him any articles they had which were made of copper, bronze, zinc, brass, tin, lead or nickel.9 On April 2 Ciano noted that Goering was once more applying pressure on Italy to hasten her preparations for war, and that Mussolini replied at once that he was doing so. At the end of the month Goering assured the Duce he would be given at least a fortnight’s notice before any German offensive was launched in the west.

  On January 3 an official announcement had reaffirmed that Goering was absolute dictator of Germany’s economy, and this enabled him on January 10 to put further pressure on the industrialists of the Rhineland, whom he gathered together for a conference at the Chancellery. On January 30 he received General Georg Thomas, chief of the Economic and Armament Department of O.K.W., the Armed Forces High Command, and told him Hitler expected soon to be master of France, Belgium and Holland, and that “the decision follows to exploit everything of ours to the utmost in 1940, and to exploit the raw-material reserves at their expense in later years.”10 It was part of the Army’s duty to appoint economic liaison officers to reconnoiter captured territories and prepare for the shipment to the Reich of all valuable raw materials, “trainload upon trainload.” After the fall of France, so great was the pressure of German big business to get its hands on the wealth of the occupied countries that Goering had to step in and call a halt to this rapacity with a decree on June 19 that stated, “The endeavor of German industry to take over enterprises in the occupied territory must be rejected in the sharpest manner.” But in August he was once more advising economic penetration in Norway, Holland and Belgium. In a memorandum dated August 2, Goering impressed on the Reich commissars in these countries the absolute necessity for economic penetration through share purchases by German enterprise and take-over bids for firms made by German capital, and also by preventing firms in these territories from transferring their titles of ownership to interests in such neutral countries as the United States or Switzerland.

  The year 1940 began with an event that further delayed Hitler’s plans for attack on the West. Major Helmut Reinberger, a staff officer in the Luftwaffe, lost his way while flying to a conference and made a forced landing in Belgium; he was carrying the complete plan of attack in the west, together with maps. He twice attempted to destroy the documents, and indeed managed to send a report that they were sufficiently burned to make them unintelligible. There was consternation in Berlin, however, and Hitler, Goering and Keitel held a conference on January 13, trying to determine how much might now be known. According to General Kurt Student, while Goering raged at this accident, Hitler kept calm.11 For a week the matter was anxiously debated, and then the German ambassador in Brussels was summoned by the Belgian Foreign Minister and told flatly that the plans for an invasion were known. On January 20 Hitler gave a stem warning on military security to his commanders, including Goering, who had dismissed General Felmy, the able commander of the air fleet to which Reinberger had been attached; Felmy’s place was taken by Kesselring.12

  The attack was now set back until the spring. Because of the need to protect the all-important flow of Swedish iron ore, which during the winter had to be shipped through Narvik, it was planned to begin with an invasion north into Denmark and Norway, where Major Vidkun Quisling was only too anxious to encourage a German occupation. There was also some fear that Britain might occupy Norway to blockade Germany and bring assistance to Finland. Hitler signed the directive for this operation on March 1, having ten days previously, quite independent of his military chiefs, appointed General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst commander for the invasion of the Norwegian ports. When the directive arrived on Goering’s desk on March 1, he was furious that he had not been consulted.

  On March 5 Hitler called an urgent conference to stop the dispute that had broken out among his commanders. General Alfred Jodl, operations chief of O.K.W., records in his diary how Goering “vents his spleen because he was not consulted beforehand” and “dominates the discussion and tries to prove that all previous preparations are good for nothing.” Hitler made concessions to Goering, but insisted that the plan in general should proceed, though with heavier commitments by the Army and Navy.13

  During the period of this dispute, Sumner Welles, the American Under-Secretary of State, arrived in Germany on what was intended to be yet another well-meant mission to restore peace, inspired this time by President Roosevelt. The visit was also a tour of investigation by a man who opposed America’s isolationism. He talked at length to Mussolini, Ciano, Hitler, Ribbentrop and Goering, and he included Paris and London in his tour. Hitler issued special directives to anyone who should have conversations with this visitor to let him do most of the talking, to put full blame for the war on Britain and France, and to stress that Germany was prepared to fight on.

  Sumner Welles has given his own account of his mission to Europe in his book A Time for Decision; the German account of these talks has survived through the elaborate notes kept by Paul Schmidt, supplemented by the description of the meetings in his book published after the war. The Germans found Sumner Welles reserved, cold and intelligent. He spent only three days in Berlin and saw Goering at Carinhall during the afternoon of March 3. In Schmidt’s view, Goering’s handling of Sumner Welles was most skillful, though for some reason he did not offer him the usual lavish meal, sending him back to Berlin after several hours of conference in a state of starvation.

  Welles found Carinhall in its normal state of extensive reconstruction and thought it would end up by being about the size of the National Gallery in Washington when the work of building was finished. A trained observer, he noticed Goering’s high color and thought at first that his face was heavily rouged, but as the unnatural flush faded during the course of their meeting, he put the effect down to some form of “physical maladjustment.” “His hands were shaped,” he wrote, “like the digging paws of a badger.” On his right hand Goering wore a great ring set with six large diamonds; on his left hand he had his favorite emerald ring, the stone of which appeared to be about an inch square.

  Goering was very unaffected and friendly in his manner, and he gave his own account of Germany’s case in European politics, claiming that he personally had done everything he could to maintain peace in the face of the provocative attitude of the British and the French; the war was solely the result of their persistence. As for the war itself, Germany had “all the trumps in her hand”; the German Air Force was supreme and would remain so. Whether the war was short or long was quite immaterial; Germany had more than sufficient raw materials, and was even producing butter and other fats from coal!

  While they sat and talked in easy chairs by the fire with the snow falling in swirling gusts outside, Welles, like others before him, found he was more impressed by Goering than he had been by the other Nazi leaders. He found him just as ruthless and untouched by human feelings as they were, but he felt that Goering was capable of taking a wider view of Germany’s relations
to other European countries and to the United States. But when Welles pointed out that the American poeple could hardly remain unaffected by a war that devastated Europe, Goering replied naively that he could not see how a war in Europe touched “the vital interests” of the United States. Welles countered this by reminding Goering that the American people, though equally determined to keep out of the First World War, had been quick to enter it once they came to accept that their national interests were indeed threatened, and that even now they were “profoundly moved” by German cruelty to the Jews. Goering tried to answer this by claiming that the Americans supported in their own attitude to the colored races the very policy they condemned in Germany’s attitude to the Jews. When Welles pointed out the difference between an active government policy of discrimination and repression and the practice of these things by misguided groups against the general feeling of both the nation and its rulers, Goering said no more on this issue, but returned to the safer ground of abuse of Britain’s determination to develop the war against Germany instead of following the policy of peace that had been offered her so repeatedly by Hitler.

  Goering then insisted on taking the hungry Under-Secretary on a tour of his galleries, where, he explained, he had himself arranged every object and work of art. He showed him his gifts from foreign governments, including recent acquisitions from Japan; he showed him his Cranachs and other pictures in his growing collection of Old Masters. The reception room and the halls were hung with “hundreds of paintings,” but Welles felt that “it would be difficult to find an uglier building or one more intrinsically vulgar in its ostentatious display.” He drove away through the gathering twilight, passing through electronically operated gates at successive points along the drive leading to the main entrance and the road back to Berlin. As he drove he thought how the only deterrent to the armed might of Germany would be to form once more a united front of the Western European democracies and the United States, and how impossible it would be to achieve this with the American electorate in its present mood of isolation. The people in the streets of Berlin, he thought, looked glum and unsmiling.