Goering’s main line of defense was to broaden his shoulders and take full responsibility for his loyalty to the Führer, to whom he had taken his oath of allegiance, and for his part in establishing a system of authoritarian government in which he believed wholeheartedly and which he knew was necessary in order to restore Germany to health and strength as Europe’s first nation. What angered him was any attempt to implicate him personally in acts of inhumanity. The concentration camps were Himmler’s affair, and he knew nothing of the atrocities conducted there in secret; he was on leave during the period when the R.A.F. prisoners were shot for escaping from Stalag Luft III; he was concerned with breaking the stranglehold of the Jews on the German economy and not with breaking their bodies. When regrettable things happened, as of course they must in times of violent change or of war, he always punished the wrongdoers—provided the matter was within his jurisdiction and was brought to his notice. So the arguments went on, interminably, hour after hour, in the fifth month of the court’s session. Jackson labored on, often, it seemed, following Goering with his questions rather than leading him. For instance, the question of why Goering had not sought to warn the German people of the dangers involved in going to war with the Soviet Union:
JACKSON: And yet, because of the Führer system, as I understand you, you could give no warning to the German people; you could bring no pressure of any kind to bear to prevent that step, and you could not even resign to protect your own place in history.
GOERING: There are quite a few questions here. I should like to answer the first one.
JACKSON: Separate them if you wish.
GOERING: The first question was, I believe, whether I took the opportunity to tell the German people about this danger. I had no occasion to do this. We were at war, and such differences of opinion, as far as strategy was concerned, could not be brought into the public forum during the war. I believe that has never happened in world history. Secondly, as far as my resignation is concerned, I do not wish even to discuss that, for during the war I was an officer, a soldier, and I was not concerned with whether I shared an opinion or not. I had merely to serve my country as a soldier. Thirdly, I was not the man to forsake a man to whom I had given my oath of loyalty, every time he was not of my way of thinking. If that had been the case there was no need to bind myself to him from the beginning. It never occurred to me to leave the Führer.
JACKSON: Insofar as you know, the German people were led into the war, attacking Soviet Russia, under the belief that you favored it?
GOERING: The German people did not know about the declaration of war against Russia until after the war with Russia had started. The German people, therefore, had nothing to do with this. The German people were not asked; they were told of the fact and of the necessity for it. [IX, p. 192]
Goering sometimes talked as if he were a teacher explaining obvious points of principle to students whom he considered dull and unperceptive:
Of course, a successful termination of a war can be considered successful only if I either conquer the enemy or, through negotiations with the enemy, come to a conclusion which guarantees success. That is what I call a successful termination. I call it a draw when I come to terms with the enemy. This does not bring me the success which victory would have brought, but, on the other hand, it precludes defeat. This is a conclusion without victors or vanquished. [IX, p. 193]
Jackson, and occasionally the president himself, tried to force Goering to answer just yes or no, not adding his points of explanation until afterward. This went entirely against Goering’s nature and led to frequent abortive interchanges: JACKSON: By the time of January 1945, you also knew that you were unable to defend the German cities against the air attacks of the Allies, did you not?
GOERING: Concerning the defense of German cities against Allied air attacks, I should like to describe the possibility of doing this as follows: Of itself—
JACKSON: Can you answer my question? Time may not mean quite so much to you as it does to the rest of us. Can you not answer yes or no? Did you then know, at the same time that you knew the war was lost, that the German cities could not successfully be defended against air attack by the enemy? Can you not tell us yes or no?
GOERING: I can say that I knew that, at that time, it was not possible. [IX, p. 193] . . .
JACKSON: I ask you just a few questions about Austria. You said that you and Hitler had felt deep regret about the death of Dollfuss, and I ask you if it is not a fact that Hitler put up a plaque in Vienna in honor of the men who murdered Dollfuss, and went and put a wreath on their graves when he was there. Is that a fact? Can you not answer that with “yes” or “no”?
GOERING: No, I cannot answer it with either “yes” or “no” if I am to speak the truth according to my oath. I cannot say, “Yes, he did it,” because I do not know; I cannot say, “No, he did not do it,” because I do not know that either. I want to say that I heard about this event here for the first time. [IX, p. 208]
On the question of his loyalty to Hitler he remained adamant.
JACKSON: And there was no way to prevent the war from going on as long as Hitler was the head of the German government, was there?
GOERING: As long as Hitler was the Führer of the German people, he alone decided whether the war was to go on. As long as my enemy threatens me and demands absolutely unconditional surrender, I fight to my last breath, because there is nothing left for me except perhaps a chance that in some way fate may change, even though it seems hopeless.
JACKSON: Well, the people of Germany who thought it was time that the slaughter stopped had no means to stop it except revolution or assassination of Hitler, had they?
GOERING: A revolution always changes a situation if it succeeds. That is a foregone conclusion. The murder of Hitler at this time, say January 1945, would have brought about my succession. If the enemy had given me the same answer, that is, unconditional surrender, and had held out those terrible conditions which had been intimated, I would have continued fighting whatever the circumstances. [IX, p. 194]
He denied that he had made any attempt to oust Hitler during the last days of the war.
GOERING: I can answer only for myself; what Himmler did I do not know. I neither betrayed the Führer nor at that time negotiated with a single foreign soldier. This will, or this final act, of the Führer is based on an extremely regrettable mistake, and one which grieves me deeply—that the Führer could believe in his last hours that I could ever be disloyal to him. It was all due to an error in the transmission of a radio report and perhaps to a misrepresentation which Bormann gave the Führer. I myself never thought for a minute of taking over power illegally, or of acting against the Führer in any way. [IX, p. 194]
Goering’s spirits soon rose to the point where he felt he could afford to joke with the court. The opportunity came when he was asked whether he was responsible or not for the Reichstag fire.
GOERING: That accusation that I had set fire to the Reichstag came from a certain foreign press. That could not bother me, because it was not consistent with the facts. I had no reason or motive for setting fire to the Reichstag. From the artistic point of view, I did not at all regret that the assembly chamber was burned; I hoped to build a better one. But I did regret very much that I was forced to find a new meeting place for the Reichstag, and, not being able to find one, I had to give up my Kroll Opera House, that is, the second State opera house, for that purpose. The opera seemed to me much more important than the Reichstag.
JACKSON: Have you ever boasted of burning the Reichstag building, even by way of joking?
GOERING: No. I made a joke, if that is the one you are referring to, when I said that after this I would be competing with Nero and that probably people would soon be saying that, dressed in a red toga and holding a lyre in my hand, I looked on at the fire and played while the Reichstag was burning. That was the joke. But the fact was that I almost perished in the flames, which would have been very unfortunate for the German peopl
e, but very fortunate for their enemies. [IX, p. 196]
At other times he answered with asperity, for example when he was pressed on the question of German acquisition of Austria and the Sudetenland.
JACKSON: You still have not answered my question although you answered everything else. They were not taken from you by the Treaty of Versailles, were they?
GOERING: Of course Austria was taken away by the Versailles Treaty and likewise the Sudetenland, for both territories, had it not been for the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St. Germain, would have become German territories through the right of the people to self-determination. To this extent they have to do with it. [IX, p. 202]
In the private notes he kept during the trial, Sir Norman Birkett (later Lord Birkett), Lawrence’s alternate as president of the tribunal, made this most significant comment on Goering on March 18:
Goering reveals himself as a very able man who perceives the intention of every question almost as soon as it is framed and uttered. He has considerable knowledge, too, and has an advantage over the Prosecution in this respect, for he is always on familiar ground. He has knowledge which many others belonging to the Prosecution and the Tribunal have not. He has therefore quite maintained his ground and the Prosecution has not really advanced its case at all. Certainly there has been no dramatic destruction of Goering as had been anticipated or prophesied.
The following day he added, “Goering has now taken complete control and dominates the whole proceedings . . . and unless he is controlled the Trial will get more and more out of hand.” Goering, he thought, had in fact made the occasion a “free platform . . . to explain and expand his ideas and beliefs for future generations of Germans,” and “he was able to present at least a plausible case on about every aspect of the matter.”
As Birkett considered it from the judges’ bench, the cross-examination of Goering was a very critical moment, and, if unsuccessful, could only too easily threaten the fundamental value of the whole trial. The prestige of the tribunal as a solemn indictment of the Nazis and as a precedent in the administration of international justice was at stake. After the weary months spent in stating the elaborate case for the prosecution, with its inevitable overlaps, repetitions and expressions of national feeling, the fact that Goering was taking the stand had filled the courtroom once more and concentrated the attention of the world on this most prominent witness from the dark and defeated world of the Nazis. His counsel had given him every chance to place his actions and those of Hitler in a favorable light. Now was the chance to demolish the specious structure of his case while the world watched the valiant reassertion of humane and civilized values.
Goering presented the tribunal with a grave problem. His lengthy answers were for the most part just relevant enough to make it difficult for the president to intervene and stop him, except from time to time in a general way. As Birkett noted at the time, “This was where the cleverness of Goering was fully shown.” He held the stage for two days with “cleverly constructed statements which were not strictly answers to the questions at all.”
The result was that he proved more than a match for Jackson, who gradually began to show a certain lack of self-confidence. The parry and thrust of the cross-examination, the series of leading questions that carried the witness forward to some carefully prepared trap in which he would suddenly find himself placed in a difficult and unanswerable position, never occurred. Goering knew his documents, knew his answers, always was ready with his explanations and plausible excuses which only became more plausible as his confidence grew at the expense of the prosecution.
Birkett became deeply concerned at this threat to the dignity of the trial which meant so much as a demonstration by the Allies of justice for the defeated as distinct from vengeance upon them. He wrote in his notes:
The first factor creating this situation was the extraordinary personality of Goering himself. Throughout this trial the dead Hitler has been present at every session, a dreadful, sinister and in some respects an inexplicable figure; but Goering is the man who has really dominated the proceedings, and that, remarkably enough, without ever uttering a word in public up to the moment he went into the witness box. That in itself is a very remarkable achievement and illuminates much that was obscure in the history of the past few years. He has followed the evidence with great intentness when the evidence required attention, and has slept like a child when it did not; and it has been obvious that a personality of outstanding, though possibly evil, qualities was seated there in the dock.
Nobody appears to have been quite prepared for this immense ability and knowledge, and his thorough mastery and understanding of the detail of the captured documents. He had obviously studied them with the greatest care and appreciated the matters which might assume the deadliest form. . . .
Suave, shrewd, adroit, capable, resourceful, he quickly saw the elements of the situation, and as his confidence grew, his mastery became more apparent. His self-control, too, was remarkable, and to all the other qualities manifested in his evidence he added the resonant tones of his speaking voice, and the eloquent but restrained use of gesture.
By the time the cross-examination was interrupted in order that Dahlerus could be called to the witness stand, Goering seemed to have emerged at any rate as partial victor. He had been questioned on many matters—the leadership principle and his relations with Hitler, the concentration camps, the S.S., the attack on Russia, the Reichstag fire, the Roehm purge, German territorial expansion, his relations with Schacht, German rearmament and his personal attitude to war. His weakness had been his recurrent evasion, his strength his uninhibited acceptance of responsibility for his part in what he regarded as the most positive aspect of Nazi policy and practice in government. His first major defeat in the trial came from certain admissions drawn from Dahlerus himself, who had come specially from Stockholm to act as a witness on his behalf.
Examined first by Stahmer, Dahlerus was taken point by point through the complicated succession of negotiations which he had undertaken in the belief that they might serve to prevent war between Germany and Britain. The intention, obviously, was to show the trouble to which Goering had gone to encourage these negotiations, all of which, claimed the defense, revealed his personal opposition to the war. It was Maxwell-Fyfe, however, who during the cross-examination first began to question Goering’s motives in his dealings with Dahlerus. Was the German intention to avoid war as a means of resolving the Polish question, which Hitler had himself raised, or to keep Britain out of an armed aggression which was already predetermined? Was Goering, in other words, the conscious instrument of Hitler to calm the fears of Britain and prevent her from committing herself to armed intervention in support of Poland? Maxwell-Fyfe pressed several damaging admissions from Dahlerus:
MAXWELL-FYFE: Now, you remember that day that you had the conversation with him, and later on he rang you up at eleven-thirty before your departure?
DAHLERUS: Yes.
MAXWELL-FYFE: I just want you to tell the tribunal one or two of the things that he did not tell you on that day. He did not tell you, did he, that two days before, on August 22, at Obersalzberg, Hitler had told him and other German leaders that he, Hitler, had decided in the spring that a conflict with Poland was bound to come? He did not tell you that, did he?
DAHLERUS: I never had any indication or disclosure on the declared policy on April 11, or May 23, or August 22.
MAXWELL-FYFE: . . . He never told you that Hitler had said to him on that day [May 23] that “Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all, it is a question of expanding our living space in the east.” And I think he also did not tell you that Hitler had said on that day, “Our task is to isolate Poland, the success of the isolation will be decisive.” He never spoke to you about isolating Poland?
DAHLERUS: He never indicated anything in that direction at all. . . .
MAXWELL-FYFE: Goering never told you at the time you were being sent to London [that] all that was wanted
was to eliminate British intervention.
DAHLERUS: Not at all. [IX, pp. 223—24]
Maxwell-Fyfe quoted damaging sections describing Hitler, Goering and Ribbentrop from Dahlerus’ book The Last Attempt, and gradually maneuvered him into the position of becoming in effect a witness for the prosecution: MAXWELL-FYFE: So that, of the three principal people in Germany, the Chancellor was abnormal, the Reich Marshal, or the Field Marshal as he was then, was in a crazy state of intoxication, and, according to the defendant Goering, the Foreign Minister was a would-be murderer who wanted to sabotage your plane?
[The witness nodded.] [IX, p. 226]
Finally Dahlerus admitted, “At the time, I thought I could contribute something to preventing a new war, I could definitely prove that nothing was left undone by the British, by His Majesty’s Government, to prevent war. But had I known what I know today, I would have realized that my efforts could not possibly succeed.” [IX, p. 230]
Goering Page 44