Goering

by Roger Manvell

  Goering was taken first to Zell am See, Austria, the headquarters of Robert J. Stack, commander of the Thirty-sixth Infantry Division, and later to Kitzbühel, about thirty miles away, where the American Seventh Army was based. Stack made Goering welcome —apparently too welcome to please Eisenhower. Even Koller heard a report that Goering was seen standing on the balcony of the hotel in Kitzbühel held by the Army, champagne glass in hand, laughing with the American officers, and he was photographed standing beside the flag of the Texas division to which he had surrendered. The handsome reception given him by the Americans received a bad press, and orders were given from Allied headquarters that he was to be treated in future as a normal prisoner of war. As he waited in vain for some message to come from Eisenhower his spirits sank, and he even discussed suicide with Brauchitsch, who was still with him.

  He was flown to the Augsburg prison camp, where he was treated more strictly as a prisoner of war and accommodated in a two-room flat commandeered by the Americans.27 Goering had his bed in one room; Brauchitsch and his adjutant slept as best they could in the other, which they shared with Robert Kropp. They lived on Army rations which they prepared for themselves in the kitchen. Major Paul, the officer in charge of them, was obviously under orders to establish a proper distance between himself and his prisoners. But even so the natural hospitality of the Americans could not be entirely suppressed—nor their curiosity about their famous prisoner. During the brief period Goering and Brauchitsch were at Augsburg, they were again entertained in the officers’ mess; on these occasions Goering roused himself from his gloom and put on all his charm. The drinking, according to Brauchitsch, was heavy.

  At Augsburg on May 11 Goering was photographed and interviewed by the press, and the attention of the world pleased him. He spoke of the failure of the German generals to convince Hitler that the war was lost by the middle of 1944. “Hitler,” he said to the audience in front of him with their notebooks poised, “refused to accept this point of view. He ordered that it never be referred to again.”

  Augsburg was to prove a brief transition before Goering was put into a more permanent form of captivity. By now he realized that Eisenhower had no intention of communicating with him. He was told to make himself ready to leave on May 21, when he was flown from Augsburg to the prison center at Mondorf, near Luxembourg. He was allowed to take one officer with him. He chose rather to take Robert Kropp, his faithful servant.

  X

  Nuremberg

  WHEN GOERING CAME to see me at Mondorf, he was a simpering slob with two suitcases full of paracodeine pills. I thought he was a drug salesman. But we took him off his dope and made a man of him.” This was the view expressed by Colonel B. C. Andrus, the American commandant at the Bad Mondorf prison, where Goering was taken on May 21 from the airfield in a military truck by two soldiers, the rhythmic movement of whose jaws he was not to forget. They were the sign of an indifference to his status which was the one thing he feared might follow Eisenhower’s complete disregard of his most distinguished prisoner.

  His new prison was the Palace Hotel, gutted of all luxury and organized for hard living. The Americans renamed it “Ashcan.” Goering was deprived of his pills and put on strict regimen designed to reduce his drug addiction and strip down some of the unhealthy load of flesh, which was affecting his heart. He weighed 280 pounds. One of the German doctors familiar with Hitler’s circle, Dr. Brandt, had told the Americans that Goering was used to absorbing daily twenty times the normal dose of paracodeine tablets. They allowed him now eighteen tablets a day, reducing the quantity still further over a period of time until he was freed of the drug habit altogether. He was to be kept at Mondorf until his transfer to Nuremberg jail in September, after some four months’ investigation by interrogation officers. By that time his weight had been reduced by sixty pounds, and he was fit and ready to take the stage at Nuremberg.

  Robert Kropp had been flown to Mondorf with his master, and for a while he was put in charge of a small staff of German servants working at the prison. He did his best to look after Goering, who was beginning to realize that he was himself little more than an ordinary prisoner of war. Though deprived of his treasury of pills, Goering had managed, he told Kropp, to keep one of the capsules of poison that all the Nazi leaders were supposed to carry on their persons by order of their Führer. Kropp’s last service for him was to steal a pillow, which was at once confiscated. Early in June Kropp saw the last of him; they said goodbye, and Goering, who was near to tears, thanked him. He told Kropp that his constant worry was the welfare of Emmy and the child. After Kropp had gone, a German prisoner of war became his batman.

  It was in June that Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick renewed his acquaintance with Goering. Kirkpatrick visited Mondorf as British political adviser to General Eisenhower and spent two hours with Goering, who had a touch of bronchitis and was lying on an iron bedstead in his cell, wrapped in a flowered dressing gown. Goering received his visitor warmly and responded easily and readily to the questions about the war that Kirkpatrick put to him. He claimed that Hitler had launched into war at the moment most favorable to Germany, but that he had made a grave mistake in not taking the advice Goering had himself given him in 1940, to go through Spain with or without Franco’s consent and capture Gibraltar and North Africa. Hitler, he said, thought he could win the war without Franco, but had he gained control of North Africa he could with safety have attacked Russia and America. As for the war in the air, the Battle of Britain was the turning point, even though, in Goering’s view, it was a draw; nonetheless, it had been a grave disappointment to him. Later on, the strategic bombing of Germany had come just in time to save Britain from destruction by rockets and flying bombs. Goering evidently enjoyed the talk, and he begged Kirkpatrick to come again; he appeared to realize that he was doomed, but “he viewed his future with fortitude and made no effort to explain or excuse.” The contrast between him and Ribbentrop, who was in a state of moral collapse, was very marked.1

  Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, the psychiatrist in charge of the prisoners, found Goering most co-operative. The doctor had been given some account of Goering’s drug addiction at the time he was taken prisoner. Goering told him he had resorted to paracodeine, which is a mild derivative of morphine, to help him bear toothache in 1937, and had used it ever since. Apparently no mention was made of the periodic cures administered by Kahle. His average daily dose of the very mild tablets that were specially prepared for him was about one hundred. This, Dr. Kelley claims, amounted in all to only three or four grains of morphine, which is not a substantial dose; his mind would remain unaffected by it. Goering took these tablets as an active habit, like chain-smoking, keeping a bottle of a hundred by him and consuming its contents every day. There was no secret about this; he would put them in his mouth during conferences and chew them like gum. They did not stimulate him, but they eased any pain there was in his body. Dr. Kelley found no great difficulty in breaking him of the habit; he simply challenged him to give it up as a strong man who should be ready to bear pain in the cause of good health.

  He also found him unbelievably narcissistic about his body. Goering knew precisely the length and width of his scars, and he was meticulous in the care of his skin. He had a fine leather toilet case containing a multitude of preparations, including face lotions and powders for his body. According to Dr. Kelley, Goering thought his physique the finest in Germany. His underclothes were of the softest silk. He brought into captivity his three celebrated rings set with huge stones, one a ruby, one an emerald and one a blue diamond; he chose each day the ring with the stone that seemed best to suit his mood. His cigar and cigarette cases, his pens and his pencils, were all of gold, and he had four jeweled watches with him. He also carried an enormous unset emerald, about one inch by half an inch in dimension, which he claimed to be the largest he could procure. Yet although Goering was so conscious of his worth and his importance, he was among the easiest of the prisoners to handle. He was readily adaptable and ac
cepted his misfortune with comparatively good grace. His sole concern, apart from his acute anxiety about his family, was to maintain the mystique of his authority and a recognition of his high place in the history of his country. He never once thought of himself as a criminal. He boasted to Dr. Kelley, “Yes, I know I shall hang. You know I shall hang. I am ready. But I am determined to go down in German history as a great man. If I cannot convince the court, I shall at least convince the German people that all I did was done for the Greater German Reich. In fifty or sixty years there will be statues of Hermann Goering all over Germany.”

  The admiring form of interrogation which Goering had so much enjoyed ended at Augsburg. At Mondorf he was subject to rigorous investigation by officers with code names, who probed into the details of his personal affairs. As his health improved—and his cure was not altogether easy for him, for he twice suffered from withdrawal symptoms during the period when his paracodeine was being reduced—he became increasingly co-operative. But the range of the questioning to which he was subjected began to make him realize the enormous weight of criminal responsibility that the Allies considered he should bear. He gathered that some kind of public charge was to be preferred against him together with the other Nazi leaders and military chiefs.

  The constitution of the International Military Tribunal, which was to begin its work at Nuremberg in November, was first laid down at a conference of the prosecutors appointed by the principal Allies, Britain, America, France and the U.S.S.R. Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, Attorney-General of the United Kingdom, presided. On August 8, 1945, an agreement proclaiming the trial was signed at London, and a charter was appended establishing the tribunal and determining its procedure, which was based broadly on British and American practice in the courts of law. A copy of the London agreement was read to Goering at Mondorf.

  After his transfer to the prison of the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg in September, he was confined in cell number 5, which was nine by thirteen feet. Here he had a bed, a chair, a table, a water closet and a washbowl. He was visible in every act except excretion, and his food was supplied to him in his cell through a trap door. He was permitted a shower once a week, and when his cell was periodically searched he had to stand by, stripped naked. During their confinement the prisoners were exercised each morning separately and shaved by a German barber. Only during the period of the trial, which began on Tuesday, November 20, were they permitted some degree of social life together while taking their meals. Throughout they were guarded by the tough and often truculent soldiers of the American First Division; the prison commandant remained Colonel Andrus, who had brought the prisoners from Bad Mondorf.

  It was now that Goering at last received some news of his wife. He was deeply concerned to hear that Emmy was in prison at Straubing, together with her sister Else; here she was constantly interrogated. Edda joined her in prison at her mother’s request, and they were not released until March 1946, when the trial had already run five months at Nuremberg. Goering and Emmy were eventually allowed to correspond with each other.

  The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was one of the most extraordinary events in history. Dr. Stahmer, Goering’s counsel, described it in court as “of significance in shaping new laws” and “of dimensions such as have never before been known in the history of law.” [XXIII, p. 104]a As a technical feat, with its intricate system of multilingual translation through headphones (a system used here for the first time in any trial) and its recordings for world audiences by means of film and radio, it could have been organized only in our own century.

  It is important to realize that it was the Americans who bore the cost of the trial and were responsible for its administration. They held and guarded the defendants; they looked after the courtroom and maintained its equipment. The great mass of German official documents were retained in American hands after they had been discovered and confiscated in the south following the evacuation of the government departments from Berlin. The huge task of reading and preparing these documents against time for use by the prosecution was one of the great contributions of America to the trial. Britain, Russia and France were responsible only for meeting the cost of their own judges and teams of prosecutors, all of whom were engaged in their work for well over a year.

  Nevertheless, the trial was presided over by an Englishman, Lord Justice Lawrence (now Lord Oaksey). He conducted the proceedings with patience, courtesy and firmness, and with an impartiality that won tribute even from the defendants. It was a supremely difficult task to control such a formidable gathering of counsel representing five nationalities with widely differing traditions in court procedure.

  Like all great spectacles of its kind, the trial had its dangers for those who promoted it, since the finer points of legal argument could easily become obscured by other factors which would more readily catch the candid eye of the camera or of the popular press. With the outcome of the trial a foregone conclusion, the human drama lay in how these men whose unlimited power had become a scourge to so many nations would behave under the duress of public investigation and cross-questioning by highly skilled legal minds representing collectively an act of justice by hundreds of millions of people. On the other hand, the state of tension existing in the courtroom at supreme moments of conflict in the trial resulted in an atmosphere of sympathy for any sign of sincerity, courage or ability to fight back that the men in the dock might show. But this has always been the case in trials which attract an unusual degree of public attention.

  Goering knew that he was the star of the court drama, and that the trial would be his final and greatest opportunity to win back some regard for himself and for the regime of which he was now the principal surviving figure. He knew that the whole world would watch him with unique curiosity, that his behavior could make headlines in the world press and that his every gesture could be recorded for history. In spite of the humiliations and the tensions of the past months of captivity, in spite of his knowledge that his captors would most certainly execute him, he prepared himself to give the star performance of his life. He had everything to gain by this, and nothing to lose. He marshaled all the resources of his famous personality—his bluffness, his cynicism, his shrewdness, his humor, his phenomenal memory. He was determined to proclaim his leadership over the rest of the defendants. His captors had helped him by restoring his health and his self-confidence. The “simpering slob” was now an alert and intelligent man ready to do battle.

  He was defeated by factors over which, in the end, he had no effective control. Many of the defendants broke away from his influence, and some displayed forms of abject penitence that made a degraded setting for Goering’s last adventure in power. Of the senior defendants, men who had ranked close to the Reich Marshal, Ribbentrop was in a state of collapse, Hess was mentally unbalanced, and Schacht, Neurath and Papen were anxious only to disassociate themselves as much as possible from the proceedings, while Speer was a clear-minded penitent who became a most valuable ally for the prosecution. Frick, former Governor General of occupied Poland, retired into a form of religious hysteria, weeping and praying in his cell. Robert Ley had managed to commit suicide in October after a period of desperation and depression. The service chiefs, Keitel, Jodl, Raeder and Doenitz, deserted the cause under the plea that to a soldier orders are orders; they had done what they were told to do and had had no share in formulating the disastrous policy of Hitler. One by one they deserted “the fat one,” and he was left the sole protestant of Hitler’s greatness, facing alone the overwhelming odds of the evidence amassed against him and the regime he represented.

  The final defeat for Goering was the sheer length of the trial itself. It lasted 218 days; the verbatim record of its proceedings published at Nuremberg was to fill twenty-three large volumes. Goering himself was eventually buried under the terrible weight of documents and the endless array of argument. The public became bored by the trial, and everyone concerned in it grew tired and irritated. This, quite as much as his
ultimate failure to establish a credible defense, destroyed the publicity Goering sought to achieve. He was no longer news; all that could be said for him was that he stuck it out to the last bitter day, sitting with his head in his hands or with his chin resting on his chest, deep in thought or lost in depression.

  Behind the scenes, another drama was being staged under the watchful eyes of the American prison psychologists. As soon as the actors left the stage of the courtroom, this second group of investigators took over the examination. Sitting with the prisoners at meals, visiting them like father confessors in their cells, reporting on them, recording their attitudes of mind, their behavior alone and with each other, their shifts of temperament and slides of fortune, the professional psychologists added their particular voices to the story of the trial. Dr. G. M. Gilbert was the psychologist responsible for the observation of Goering. The prisoners were also kept busy interviewing their lawyers and, except for those who chose to be as uninterested as possible, concentrating on the trial and the conduct of their defense.

  The trial itself has been the subject of considerable debate. There were those who maintained that the tribunal, though unprecedented, was correctly conducted according to international law. And there were those who considered that the court had no actual legal basis and was solely a grave indictment by the victor of the vanquished, a solemn record for history of the overwhelming evidence that the principles for which the Nazis stood were vile and inhuman. Each country, as we have seen, had its team of prosecutors; that for the United States was led by Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson of the Supreme Court, that for Great Britain by Sir Hartley Shawcross and Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, that for France by Auguste Champetier de Ribes, Charles Dubost and Edgar Faure, and that for the U.S.S.R. by General Rudenko and Colonel Pokrovsky. The case was made to rest primarily on recaptured German documents, the authenticity of which was never in doubt, and the nineteen defendants were given ample opportunity to defend themselves against the charges, which summarized in legal terms the extent of their crimes. Their regime had been responsible in one way or another for the death of some thirty million people, and the history of a quarter of a century of agitation, violence and oppression had to be traced and proved and argued during the nine months of the trial. Outside the Palace of Justice lay the ruins of Nuremberg, the once beautiful medieval city which had been chosen as the center for the greatest spectacles of the Nazis’ power and national pride, and which was now to become the center for their exposure and degradation. Inside the Palace, Goering, Jodl and Keitel wore drab uniforms without insignia of rank, while the rest of the defendants appeared in civilian clothes; by the charter of the tribunal they had been deprived of their position as heads of state or superior orders. Apart from Goering, they looked weary and insignificant, and he too succumbed as the months of examination wore on.