by Tim Townsend
While Goering’s personal anti-Semitism was restrained, compared to the obsessions of other Nazi leaders, because of his position at the top of the Nazi hierarchy, it was Goering who gave some of the most genocidal orders of the Second World War. On July 31, 1941, he sent an order to Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, or RSHA. “I hereby charge you with making all necessary preparations with regard to organizational and financial matters for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe,” Goering wrote. It was the order that put in motion the Holocaust. Six months later, Nazi leaders met in Wannsee, outside of Berlin, to work out the logistics of the mass slaughter of Europe’s Jews.
The timing of Goering’s most famous order coincided with the end of his favor with Hitler. In 1940, Goering led Operation Eagle, the air attack on Great Britain. Tactical errors doomed the mission, and consequently Operation Sea Lion, the planned Nazi invasion of England. In 1941, the Luftwaffe failed to produce victories on the Russian front, and later it couldn’t defend Germany’s own soil from enemy bombers. Hitler blamed the change in momentum in the war on Goering and began isolating him, handing responsibilities and influence to his rivals—Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Albert Speer.
In February 1945, as the war began to look lost for Germany, Goering was at Carinhall packing up as many rugs, tapestries, and artworks as he could before Russian tanks arrived. He supervised the packing of his drinking glasses, shot four of his favorite bison that roamed on the estate, and drove away toward Berlin.
Emmy and Edda had been sent off to relative safety in Bavaria a month earlier with four truckloads of art. More art kept coming in the weeks after their arrival. A few hours after Goering fled Carinhall, engineers from the Luftwaffe’s paratroop division, following Goering’s orders, mined the mansion with dynamite and turned it to rubble.
Goering reported to Berlin, and on April 20, Hitler came out of his bunker underneath the Reich Chancellery for the final time to celebrate his birthday. It was not a happy one. The Russians were already circling the city, preparing to seize it. After a final good-bye with the führer, Goering fled to Obersalzberg, a Nazi mountain retreat south of Munich, where he rejoined Emmy and Edda; there he received word from General Alfred Jodl that Hitler intended to shoot himself before being taken by Soviet troops. Goering reviewed a 1941 decree—locked away in a steel box—in which Hitler had designated him his successor: “If I should be restricted in my freedom of action, or if I should be otherwise incapacitated,” it read, “Reich Marshal Goering is to be my deputy or successor in all offices of State, Party and Wehrmacht.”
Goering believed that Hitler had been cut off in his Berlin bunker, and on April 23, he sent word to Hitler that he would take control of Germany unless he heard back by 10:00 P.M. that evening with different orders. In the bunker, Hitler had become hysterical and morose, and he spent his time concentrating on the logistics of suicide. He reacted to Goering’s telegram with apathy, giving no hint that he believed Goering’s actions to be disloyal.
Indeed, the day before, he had suggested that Goering could handle final negotiations with the Allies better without him. But Hitler’s secretary, Martin Bormann, who despised Goering and had been hounding Hitler for months to dismiss him, was intent on portraying the reichsmarshal as engineering a coup d’état.
Bormann was soon handed another telegram from Goering to be passed along to the Nazi foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. The message requested that Ribbentrop join Goering in Bavaria by midnight unless he’d had alternative instructions from the führer. The message was enough ammunition for Bormann to convince Hitler that Goering was attempting to cut off his power. Hitler flew into a rage, and Bormann drew up a document that rescinded the 1941 transfer-of-power decree and ordered Goering to give himself up to avoid execution. Then Bormann sent another telegram to the SS, ordering Goering’s arrest for treason.
Goering had no intention of taking control of Germany without Hitler’s permission, but the SS had surrounded his house below Obersalzberg, in Berchtesgaden, where he’d holed up with his staff, wife, and daughter. The next morning, Allied bombs destroyed Hitler’s residence and most of Goering’s. As Goering and the SS surveyed the destruction, Goering turned to one of the SS leaders and asked that a message be sent to Hitler. “Tell him that if he believes I have betrayed him, I am prepared to be shot.”
Goering convinced the SS that they should all get out of Obersalzberg and take refuge at Mauterndorf Castle, one of Goering’s homes, about 150 miles away in Austria. It took the convoy thirty-six hours to reach Mauterndorf, and when they arrived, they learned that Hitler had stripped Goering of his titles and party membership and had replaced him as successor with Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz. Goering and his family heard about Hitler’s suicide on April 30 as they sat around a radio. A week later, Germany surrendered, ending the war in Europe.
The Americans had been looking for Goering since he had been in Berchtesgaden. After Goering arrived in Mauterndorf, he sent a note to Seventh Army Headquarters in Kitzbuhel, Austria, detailing the terms of his surrender. But when the Americans reached the predetermined destination—Fiéschorn Castle, near Zell am See, Austria, about fifty miles south of Berchtesgaden—Goering was not there. He’d become impatient waiting for the Americans and had gone to find them.
On May 7, Brigadier General Robert Stack, assistant division commander of the Thirty-Sixth Infantry Division, decided to search for Goering with two men. When they found him, the reichsmarshal and his entourage of eighty were having lunch on the side of the road. By 11:30 P.M., in a convoy of twenty-five vehicles led by Stack, Goering and his family entered Fischorn. Goering was now more leery of the SS than the Americans, so Stack allowed him to keep a hunting knife, a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, and two machine-pistols, along with his reichsmarshal’s baton—topped with a diamond-encrusted swastika and encased in green felt—the symbol of his rank.
The Goerings believed they had chosen a better fate by giving themselves up to the Americans, instead of surrendering to the Russians. Goering’s wife, Emmy, later wrote:
Very fortunately for us, General Stack was a man of great tact. He had brought an interpreter with him and although my husband spoke English perfectly he had every word translated, since every detail was so important. I heard everything. Stack had telephoned to General Eisenhower to tell him of Hermann’s letter.
The American commander-in-chief had said that he was ready to see Hermann and was waiting for him to come the next day with General Stack. We were all now under Eisenhower’s personal protection and were able to move into the castle of Fischorn at Bruck, near Zell-am-See until we knew whether Burg Veldenstein, Hermann’s house, was still standing. We would then go and live in it. Eisenhower had given his word that my husband would be able to see him and leave again in freedom.
But no such accommodations had been made. The American officers in charge of Goering in Augsburg had kept up the ruse of friendliness to see what information he might give up. They let him drink and he did so each night, often until 2:00 or 3:00 A.M. After two weeks, the Americans transferred Goering to the division command post at Kitzbuhel’s Grand Hotel, a resort in Austria. Goering shared a drink with Stack and two other American generals, and the four men ate chicken, peas, and mashed potatoes together.
Then Goering was stuffed into a Stinson L-5 Sentinel, a two-seater plane that barely held his 264 pounds, and flown to Seventh Army Headquarters and Interrogation Center in Augsburg, Germany.
In Augsburg, the army stripped Goering of his military decorations, which included his Grand Cross of the Knight’s Cross with Swords and Diamonds and his Pour le Mérite, his reichsmarshal dagger (described as the Mona Lisa of daggers), his gold epaulets, the huge diamond ring on his fourth finger, and his prized solid gold baton. Goering was questioned for two weeks.
Goering asked to speak with Eisenhower, and on May 20, he stepped off the plane, expecti
ng to be whisked off to meet the general. Instead, he arrived in Andrus’s office at Mondorf. Goering was wearing his sky blue Luftwaffe uniform, and he had brought with him sixteen matching, monogrammed suitcases, a red hat box, and his valet, Robert Kropp. Goering was sweating profusely. For some reason, his fingernails and toenails were painted bright red.
Since his capture Goering’s valet had dragged around Goering’s gold Luftwaffe badge with diamonds, a Movado travel clock, a gold cigarette case inlaid with amethyst and monogrammed by Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, a gold-and-velvet cigar box, a Cartier watch set with diamonds, a gold pencil, an emerald ring, a diamond ring, a ruby ring, a diamond brooch, and a gold stickpin with a swastika made of diamond chips.
Andrus found a huge stash of pills among Goering’s things, and Ashcan’s doctors soon learned that Goering was addicted to Paracodin, the German equivalent of Vicodin, and that he swallowed forty pills a day. He told Andrus he needed the pills “for his heart.” Goering’s morphine addiction had over the years turned into a reliance on pills.
The reichsmarshal’s medical checkup at Ashcan wasn’t good: “A very obese man about 53 years of age, perspiring profusely, short of breath but not acutely ill. . . . His skin is moist, pale and sallow, except his face, which is flushed. There is also a marked irregular tremor of both hands and he appears to be extremely nervous and excited.”
Guards also found a brass shell containing a vial of cyanide—enough to kill a dozen men—inside a tin of Nescafé. They found another sewn inside one of Goering’s uniforms.
In a letter addressed to Eisenhower, Goering complained about the conditions at Mondorf: it was damp, there were no electric lights, he didn’t have a comb, his pipe had been taken away.
Over the next few months in Mondorf, army doctors slowly weaned Goering from his addiction, and by the middle of August he was clean and twenty pounds lighter.
From the time he arrived at Mondorf until the night of the executions at Nuremberg eighteen months later, Goering held a position of influence and authority among his Nazi colleagues. He had been the most popular of the Nazi leaders with the German people, nicknamed “Der Dicke,” the Fat One, to his delight, by the people. He was the highest-ranking Nazi official still alive, and soon enough he would be the star of the Nuremberg trials.
As Gerecke sat in Goering’s cell, the former reichsmarshal unloaded a considerable amount of charm on him. He spoke quickly and politely, asking about Gerecke’s family and promising to come to chapel services.
Gerecke was a natural listener, but he also knew Goering was doing everything in his power to impress him. From that moment until Goering’s death, Goering only called Gerecke “Pastor,” never “Chaplain.”
“What did Mr. Hess say about coming to chapel?” Goering asked.
Gerecke told him that Hess had declined his invitation.
“That’s too bad,” Goering said. “I’ll tell you, Pastor, I’m going to do this for you. I’m going to try to persuade Mr. Hess to come to chapel.” Later in the day, during one of the prisoners’ exercise walks, Gerecke listened from a window above the courtyard as Goering did as promised and tried to convince Hess to come to chapel.
“Why did you turn down the Pastor’s invitation?” Goering asked.
Hess told him.
“Listen, Herr Hess. Since the Führer is dead, it might do us both good if we were both seen in chapel services,” Goering said. “Pastor Gerecke might say something nice about us.”
“I have no intention of going to chapel!” Hess said.
The next time Goering saw Gerecke, he apologized for his failure to persuade Hess to come to chapel. Goering, on the other hand, never missed a service.
“Another day with the men upon whom all the world has set its eyes, and mostly for condemnation,” Gerecke wrote to Alma on November 19, four days after he’d arrived in Nuremberg. “Well, maybe so but there’s something going on inside their hearts since I have been seeing them that can only be measured in spiritual values.”
He told Alma that the previous day he’d preached to another congregation of German prisoners, the high-ranking Nazis living on a different level of the prison, who were to be witnesses in the trial of the major war criminals. It was, Gerecke wrote, his “first German sermon in 15 years, and it wasn’t too easy.” The Nazi witnesses encouraged Gerecke though. “They said they were truly moved from the way I presented the Gospel to them.”
The chapel had been packed. Hess’s former secretary was there. She told Gerecke it was the first service she’d been to since the Nazis had taken over Germany. General Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, who had directed the bomb attacks on air bases in southeast England during the Battle of Britain and was later commander of German forces in Italy, was “moved to tears” during Gerecke’s sermon. “He is one gentleman who stands out above the lot, I think,” Gerecke wrote.
In his monthly report for November, Gerecke wrote that although Nuremberg was “a city of ruins, nothing has been left undone to make my stay as pleasant as possible.”
CHAPTER 7
His Soul Touches the Stars
He who covers up his faults will not succeed; He who confesses and gives them up will find mercy.
—PROVERBS 28:13
AT 10:00 A.M. ON November 20, 1945, Lord Geoffrey Lawrence, president of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), began the proceedings of what the world’s press called “the trial of the century.”
A succession of six prosecutors consumed the entire first day by reading the indictment aloud. During the course of the reading, French assistant prosecutor Pierre Mounier used the word genocide to describe the Nazi crimes in France. Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin had coined the word and had urged prosecutors to include it in the indictment, and now it was being used in public for the first time.
For most of the Nuremberg prosecutors, the trial’s opening was their first opportunity to see the defendants all together. To American prosecutor Telford Taylor, the defendants seemed nondescript as a unit. “Until they began to react individually to the trial itself, it would have been difficult to deduce, from visual scrutiny alone, what manner of men they were,” Taylor wrote.
Historian Eugene Davidson said that the Allies chose these defendants because they were “the foremost representatives of the men and groups who had brought Hitler to power and kept him there against the aroused wrath and armed forces of almost the entire world.” The Nuremberg trial would create a record for history, and while it may not have documented every moment of the war’s infamy, Davidson wrote, “It would reveal one vast concentration of evil that could be exorcised.”
The next day, Lawrence asked the defendants to plead guilty or not guilty. Goering stood and took a microphone handed to him by a guard. Holding a sheet of paper, he said, “Before I answer the question of the Tribunal whether or not I am guilty—”
Lawrence shut him down. “Defendants are not entitled to make a statement,” he said.
Goering stared at Lawrence for a moment, then said, “In the sense of the indictment, not guilty,” and sat down. Many German defendants who pleaded not guilty in subsequent trials, including Adolf Eichmann during his 1961 trial in Israel, used Goering’s phrasing.
When Goering sat down, Rudolf Hess took the microphone and simply shouted “Nein!” to which Lawrence responded, through laughter in the courtroom, “That will be entered as a plea of not guilty.”
Most of the remaining defendants pleaded simply “not guilty,” though Fritz Sauckel, the Reich’s labor minister, and Alfred Jodl, a general and Hitler’s closest military adviser, both invoked God. “I declare myself in the sense of the Indictment, before God and the world and particularly before my people, not guilty,” Sauckel said.
“Not guilty,” Jodl said. “For what I have done or had to do, I have a pure conscience before God, before history and my people.”
Lawrence then called upon American chief prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson, whose opening statement is one of the mo
st famous pieces of legal oratory in history. Taylor said that nothing else in the trial “matched its force, perception and eloquence,” and that nothing else in “modern juristic literature . . . equally projects the controlled passion and moral intensity” of its language. Jackson had spent more than a month writing and rewriting it. On the podium in front of him were sixty-one typed pages. He said “the privilege” of opening the trial imposed “a grave responsibility.”
“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored,” Jackson said, “because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
Jackson then turned his attention to the defendants in the dock, whom he described as “broken.” “The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people,” he said. “It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched.”
What made the Nuremberg trial significant was not the individual fates of the twenty-one defendants, but rather the trial’s challenge to the “sinister influences that [would] lurk in the world long after [the prisoners’] bodies . . . returned to dust.” Jackson went on:
They have so identified themselves with the philosophies they conceived and with the forces they directed that any tenderness to them is a victory and an encouragement to all the evils which are attached to their names. Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.
Jackson’s statement previewed the prosecution’s case and included hints at the evidence it would bring before the court: first, Jackson mentioned how 33,771 Jews had been killed by SS Einsatzgruppen death squads over a two-day period in a ravine called Babi Yar near Kiev “in retaliation for some fires that were set off there,” and then he mentioned the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto that killed 56,065 Jews. Jackson then read letters from some of the defendants to others about the annihilation of millions of Soviet prisoners of war. He cited evidence of a “medical experiment” at Dachau in which prisoners were frozen in cold water and then “rewarmed with animal heat.” “The victim, all but frozen to death, was surrounded by bodies of living women until he revived and responded to his environment by having sexual intercourse,” Jackson said. “Here Nazi degeneracy reached its nadir.” Jackson spoke for four hours, stretching his opening statement through most of the afternoon of the trial’s second day.