Goering

by Roger Manvell

  Late in November Rommel, who was making a fighting retreat with his famous Afrika Korps, flew to Rastenburg to report to Hitler; when he put the point soberly that North Africa should be abandoned, the Führer shouted at his favorite general that Tripoli must be held at any cost in lives. At a second meeting, Goering was called in and ordered to see that Rommel had everything he wanted. Goering responded with alacrity. “You can pile everything on my shoulders,” he said. “I shall attend to it all myself.” Hitler gave him extraordinary powers to rearm Rommel’s men, whose armor and supplies had been devastated by British bombing.

  Rommel traveled to Rome with Goering in his special train, and Frau Rommel was invited to accompany her husband. Rommel’s account of this journey is one of unmitigated frustration at what he called Goering’s “antics,” his vanity, his response to flattery from his staff and his endless conversation about jewelry and pictures. According to Rommel, who was deeply depressed, he showed no interest in Africa except insofar as there might be a chance to win laurels for himself through some action by the Luftwaffe or by his so-called praetorian guard, the Hermann Goering Panzer Division, which was then on its way to Tunis. Rommel’s bitterness against Goering, who accused him of needless pessimism, broke out. “During the whole of this period, my bitterest enemy was Goering,” he wrote. At a staff conference held two months before, in September, Goering had minimized the difficulties in Africa and radiated false optimism. As for the Americans, he had scoffed once more that they only knew how to make razor blades. Rommel was to find Mussolini far more sympathetic and knowledgeable about the difficult situation of the Afrika Korps.

  Frau Rommel was also horrified at Goering’s appearance and behavior. She had never met him before, and he seemed to her to be a megalomaniac. Later she remarked on his tie secured with an emerald clip, his watch case studded with emeralds, the enormous diamond ring which he displayed to her with the remark, “You will be interested in this—it is one of the most valuable stones in the world.” In Rome, Goering stayed with General and Frau Rommel at the Excelsior Hotel. Frau Rommel, who was worried because of her husband’s depression over the fate of his army in Africa, shared his despair at Goering’s ceaseless talk about pictures and sculpture. Goering avoided all reference to Africa in their private conversations. “They call me the Maecenas of the Third Reich,” he boasted, and he spent all the time he could away from staff conferences searching for pictures and sculpture.41

  Goering stayed some days in Italy and promised Mussolini that three armored divisions would be sent to Africa, the Adolf Hitler, the Hermann Goering and the Deutschland—“three names that mean much to German honor,” he added. Goering’s aides tried to spread confidence among the Italians they met. Ciano, however, believed that Goering’s aim was to “create confusion” and blame bad Italian organization for the failures in North Africa; Goering, according to some German experts at the embassy, merely talked nonsense. After a meeting with Kesselring and Rommel, the Reich Marshal went to Naples to appoint a superintendent of transport. “Can it be that Goering is really thinking of appointing himself Reich Protector of Italy?” wrote Ciano. Having settled his affairs in Naples, Goering returned to Rome to lecture Mussolini on the need to redouble his efforts in Africa.42 It was pleasant for him to be treated with respect and even servility by the high command of Italy. According to Schmidt, he “ranted and threatened,” alienating the Italians and showing “very little psychological insight.”

  In Berlin in December Goering met the French General Juin, who offered help in North Africa, but not if it involved direct contact with the Germans. “As long as there are still French prisoners of war in Germany, I cannot ask my officers to fight with the German Army,” he said. Goering was also present at a conference at Hitler’s headquarters in Rastenburg, where the Führer criticized the fighting quality of the Italians on the eastern front and the shortcomings of the French. At an inspection of newly appointed officers held in the Sportpalast, Goering deputized for Hitler and repeated to these young officers the Führer’s reproaches at the ability of his generals—they, not Hitler, he said, were responsible for the position at Stalingrad. Goebbels heard that “the delivery was poor, and some of his remarks about death on the field of battle were in rather poor taste.” In addition to the Luftwaffe, Goering still had his own private army amounting to twenty-two infantry divisions formed during this period from the supplementary ground staffs of the bomber force and the parachute divisions, which were to remain under his command till the end of the war. Goering’s aim was to keep the maximum number of men under his control in spite of the pressure that was being brought to bear on him to release men for the Russian front; as he put it to Hitler, why should he send his “National Socialist boys,” as he called them, where “some general or other would probably get the idea of sending them to church”?43 General von Thoma, who, with Guderian, was the most famous of Germany’s pioneer leaders of the panzer armored-tank divisions, complained bitterly after the war about Goering’s obstructionism during the Russian campaign; the division of authority between the ground forces and the air forces (including Goering’s paratroopers) led to disagreement in strategy which only a unified command on the spot would have obviated. According to Thoma, “Guderian worked well with Student, who trained the parachute forces, but Goering blocked proposals for combined action with the panzer forces. He always wanted to keep up the strength of the Luftwaffe and was therefore niggardly with such air transport as he had to provide for the parachute forces.” In the end the paratroopers, whom Hitler tended to keep in reserve for special projects that seldom matured, disintegrated and formed supplementary ground forces after Goering had lost his initial enthusiasm for the Luftwaffe. Goering had for too long formed the habit of promising what he was in no position to provide. Hitler finally developed into a man deploying false statistics rather than actual forces in the field, and Goering slipped easily into the same unreal strategy; when the Russians began to force the German armies back, he promised Hitler ten divisions of ground troops recruited from the Luftwaffe at short notice, without bearing in mind that the men he was committing to the fearful conditions of the eastern front were trained only for air operations and knew nothing of action on the battlefield. According to General Warlimont, “Goering stirred the fire, interfering with everything without scruple or responsibility. The misshapen Luftwaffe field divisions originated at that time [late in 1942] because Goering could not expect his Air Force men to change their blue-gray uniform for the field gray of the Army.”44

  Goering’s illusions of grandeur demanded still further extensions to Carinhall. However serious the war situation, his passion for building never ceased, and he made an official request to the Minister of Finance, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, for a grant of two million marks for extension and redecoration at Carinhall. Schwerin von Krosigk warned him of the damage this work would do to his reputation at a time when the Russian campaign was draining Germany’s manpower and resources. Goering promised to think the matter over, but later renewed his demand.45 Nor did the situation in Stalingrad stop him from organizing the most splendid reception he had ever held to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, on January 12, 1943, while the usual valuable presents and works of art poured in from all quarters. On January 30 while Goering was deputizing for Hitler at the annual party celebration of the ascent to power in 1933, his speech was interrupted by an air-raid warning, and he had to break off and take refuge in a bunker.

  Goering, in fact, was trying to live two lives at once—the life he lived at Carinhall, Rominten and Veldenstein, and the life of a man still exerting power and influence in the conduct of Germany’s war policy and economy. When the new Swedish minister, Thomsen, arrived to take up his duties in Berlin, he was invited to Carinhall, where he spent the day being driven around the forest and entertained by Goering in his shooting costume. According to the account given by Hassell and recorded at the time in his diary, Goering “changed his costume after the day and
appeared at the dinner table in a blue or violet kimono with fur-trimmed bedroom slippers. Even in the morning he wore at his side a golden dagger, which was also changed frequently. In his tiepin he wore a variety of precious stones, and around his fat body a wide girdle set with many stones—not to mention the splendor and number of his rings.”

  In January 1943 the first daylight raids by the U.S. Army Air Force over Germany began to supplement the night raids by the R.A.F., which had been growing in strength throughout 1942, ever since the massive thousand- or near-thousand-bomber raids had taken place on Cologne and Essen in May and on Essen and Bremen in June. The R.A.F. also carried out special missions by day. One by one the great centers of armament production and of communications were subject to these annihilating attacks. Goering’s name was Meier, and the effect of the raids on German morale was naturally very great. But the Germans, like the British, learned how to survive. The Luftwaffe night fighters took a heavy toll of the great bombers; by March 1943 Galland claims that two thousand had been shot down. Galland, as general of fighters, did his best, but he was not in command: “All my attempts to explain to the High Command the seriousness of our position miscarried. . . . They embarked on a path of criminal carelessness. They did not see the danger because they would have had to admit their many omissions. Unpleasant reminders were regarded as a great nuisance.” Goering made his public act of self-immolation at what he called the shame of the Luftwaffe by announcing he would forgo wearing his decorations. The Luftwaffe in fact, in spite of its high losses in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, was fighting, supporting and supplying as hard as its inadequate numbers allowed. What was needed was a gigantic program of air armament production and a vast new training scheme for air crews.

  By the middle of 1943, Germany, though still powerful, was in retreat in both Russia and the Mediterranean. Goering was in conflict with his own officers. Galland demanded a four-to-one ratio of fighters to bombers; Goering refused to accept the argument that a totally new policy of air defense on a massive scale was all that could save Germany from an increasing weight of Allied air attack. Both Hitler and Goering still favored the production of bombers, but Milch managed to deliver about a thousand fighters a month during the first half of 1943. Hitler’s determination to fight over every foot of ground in Russia and the south, where by July the Allies had landed in Sicily and by September had reached the mainland, led to the dispersion and loss of a high proportion of the fighter planes and crews that should have remained in Germany to supply what Roosevelt called the roof over the German fortress, the roof that Hitler and Goering forgot.

  The position of Goering himself grew more difficult. Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels’ aide who was among those observers of the Nazi leaders who kept a useful diary, returned from a year’s service on the Russian front to find that Goering’s drug addiction was common gossip among the Nazi leaders, and that Morell, Hitler’s quack physician, had told Frau Goebbels that “Goering was becoming more and more a slave to the habit, and that even his doctors were powerless to stop him.”46

  Rommel claims that he was successful in avoiding Goering’s interference at his conference with Hitler at the Führer’s headquarters behind the Russian front on March 10. He flatly puts the blame for the collapse of North Africa on Goering’s “baleful influence” at headquarters and his ambition to supersede the Army. On the other hand, Goering himself admitted at Nuremberg that by this time he had lost the confidence of Hitler:

  The chief influence on the Führer, at least up to the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942, if one can speak of influence at all, was exerted by me. From then until 1943 my influence gradually decreased, after which it rapidly dwindled. All in all, I do not believe anyone had anything like the influence on the Führer that I had. Next to me, or apart from me, if one can speak of influence at all, Goebbels, with whom the Führer was together quite a good deal . . . This influence wavered for a time . . . and then increased greatly in the last year of the war.47

  Toward the end the influence on Hitler was exerted “first and foremost,” as Goering put it, by Martin Bormann, the Führer’s private secretary. Bodenschatz confirms the decline in Goering’s position: “According to my personal opinion and conviction, Hermann Goering began to lose influence with Hitler in the spring of 1943.”

  Nevertheless, the retired and saddened figure of the Reich Marshal was involved briefly in the calculations of Goebbels, whose star was now once more in the ascendant. Goebbels was making his supreme bid for influence over Hitler; he had become convinced that Germany must face facts and bring the whole population into the conflict, and he saw himself as the one man in Germany capable of taking a place alongside the Führer as the plenipotentiary for total war. Although there was much that he despised in Goering—what he regarded as his softness, his lack of moral stamina and, above all, his lapse into luxury—he felt the need to revive Goering’s prestige and form a triumvirate with him and Speer, whose administrative qualities and driving energy in furthering war production he very much admired. With Goering as a popular figurehead round whom he believed he could weave a network of revivalist propaganda, Goebbels hoped to break the inner circle round Hitler represented by Bormann, Lammers and Keitel. He even hoped to bring the isolated and secret figure of Himmler into some form of assocation with him. It was to be an attempt by the remaining members of the Nazi foundation to oust the newcomers. As Goebbels put it, “As was always the case during the crises of the party, it is the duty of the Führer’s closest friends in time of need to gather about him and form a solid phalanx around his person.”

  At the end of February Speer had talks with Goering, who was down on the Obersalzburg. He found him in a “resigned mood” and distrustful, but Speer managed to persuade him to see Goebbels and talk over his new policy for the war. On March 1 Goebbels drove up the mountain road to the wintry quiet of Goering’s chalet high above Berchtesgaden. The Reich Marshal received Goebbels in a manner the Propaganda Minister described in his private diary as charming and openhearted, though his dress was “baroque” and “almost laughable.” They reviewed the war situation rather despondently and seemed “somewhat helpless” in the face of the seemingly endless supply of Soviet armament. But Goebbels, who thought his host “tired and apathetic,” set to work to impress on him the need to rally Germany for a total war effort. Together they criticized Rosenberg, Ribbentrop (whom Goering still blamed for the war with Britain), Lammers, Bormann, Rommel, Keitel and the other generals at Hitler’s headquarters, and they discussed the unhealthy life that Hitler lived, worrying and brooding in his bunker. Goebbels then urged on Goering consideration of his main plan—to rally a group of loyal leaders in order to concentrate on winning the war and oust the inefficient and undesirable men who were hampering and misleading the Führer. Goering roused himself and agreed; he seemed heartened that Goebbels had come to see him. Strangely, he said that he would like to win Himmler over to the idea. Dictating his diary the following day, Goebbels remarked for the record, “Goering has been standing aside too long from the political factors which supply the real driving force. . . . He is no longer closely connected with our political leaders. . . . Goering is fully conscious of his rather weak position today. He knows that it is decidedly to his advantage for strong men to come to his side.” Goebbels says that he spent four hours with Goering; like all the Nazi leaders with a lust for self-expression, Goebbels loved to record how long his endless interviews and speeches lasted.

  But when the first approaches were made to Hitler, the mention of Goering’s name raised a storm. Hitler said he was thoroughly dissatisfied with Goering’s war measures. Speer, who was the first man to suggest Goering’s reinstatement, found the Führer “unapproachable at the moment as regards Goering.” Goebbels, though he realized Goering was still “somewhat inactive and resigned,” was loath to give up his plan to make use of his name. “Goering after all has strong political and military authority which was gained in the course of years and cert
ainly cannot be made to vanish overnight.” Goebbels visited Hitler, who criticized Goering “with extraordinary sharpness,” considering him the victim of “wishful thinking” and misled by his Luftwaffe generals, just as Goering considered Hitler misled by the generals of the Army. The Luftwaffe generals, said Hitler, merely withdrew to castles and lived the lives of sybarites. Goebbels, thinking the matter over in the course of dictating his diary, felt forced to agree that “Goering likes to hear things that are pleasant.” No one, therefore, told him the truth, and the air-raid damage achieved by Allied planes was always minimized in the reports. Goebbels tactfully gave up mentioning the idea of Goering’s reinstatement to the Führer, and Speer agreed with him.

  Goering, meanwhile, had gone to Italy with Bodenschatz to inspect the supply lines. Bodenschatz returned in time to face the anger of Hitler when Nuremberg was raided on the night of March 8. “Goering now knows it is the eleventh hour for him,” remarked Goebbels, who was with Hitler and had heard the Führer’s cutting remarks to Bodenschatz because Goering was in Rome at such a time as this. Hitler worked himself into a rage, having ordered Bodenschatz to leave his bed and come to headquarters so that he might be used as an object for the expression of the Führer’s hatred of the Luftwaffe. Goebbels magnanimously stepped in to protect Goering in his absence and rescue Bodenschatz. Goering might still be necessary as an ally, and Goebbels was testing his own renewed influence with the Führer. Four days later Hitler ordered Goering to return from Rome so that he could reprove him personally for his inactivity in the face of the increasing strength of the raids on Germany. The following day, March 12, according to Goebbels, “the Führer told Goering what he thought, without mincing words.”