Goering (33 page)

Goering arranged a final meeting between Dahlerus and Hitler, at which the Führer performed lunatic gesticulations in order to emphasize his ability to fight Britain. Even Goering turned his back on the spectacle, though as they went in he had spoken with pride of his new right of succession. When they returned together to Goering's palace, Dahlerus noted that the works of art were still being packed off for safety. They met again that afternoon to discuss the same vain topic. By now Britain had delivered her conditions for not going to war with Germany. Goering was plainly caught up in the war fever, as if for him the die was finally cast. He presented Koerner and Gritzbach with swords of honor in Dahlerus' presence and ordered them to fight with glory. That night Berlin was blacked out for the first time.

Dahlerus, still persistent in hope, visited Goering on his train early on Saturday, September 2, and learned that Mussolini had offered to mediate. He carried the news at once to the British embassy and with the speed of Mercury dashed back and forth between the British and German centers, until he finally ended up by spending the whole afternoon lunching at the Esplanade with Goering, who had returned to Berlin and seemed, in spite of waging a war in the air against Poland, to have considerable time at his disposal. The British were demanding the withdrawal of German troops from Poland as the prerequisite for any further talk of negotiation, whether inspired by Mussolini or anyone else; this was followed by the firm ultimatum handed to Ribbentrop the following morning, Sunday, September 3. Dahlerus was told of the ultimatum by the embassy an hour before Ribbentrop, and he tore through the streets of Berlin in a German staff car to Goering's train, which was stationed near Potsdam, to give him this final news. The drive out of Berlin took forty minutes.

Goering seemed to know little of what was going on, to be “at sea,” as Dahlerus put it. He was utterly surprised by the British ultimatum, which expired at eleven o‘clock, and as he talked he seemed to be able only to lay the blame for the war and its extension on Britain. He telephoned Ribbentrop while Dahlerus was out of the room, and when they met again it was plain to Dahlerus that Ribbentrop had won the struggle for influence over Hitler. At this moment of supreme decision, Hitler made no approach himself to Goering, whom only a brief while before he had proclaimed the second man of Germany. Dahlerus, speaking from a telephone in a vestibule situated between the dining car and the kitchen, pushed his way through the blocked telephone system to the Foreign Office in London to implore the British government not to ask too much of Germany—a standstill, possibly, as distinct from a withdrawal. He then begged Goering to offer to fly to London and conduct negotiations himself on Hitler's behalf, leaving before eleven o'clock although it was now already past ten. Goering rang Hitler.

Again Hitler gave his consent. While Bodenschatz hastened off to make arrangements for a plane, Dahlerus wormed his way once more through telephone connections to the Foreign Office in London, only to be told that Goering's visit could be considered only after Hitler had replied to Chamberlain's ultimatum. By now only twenty-five minutes was left, and Goering was angry at this further example of what was, in his opinion, British intransigence. He asked Dahlerus to leave him and spoke again to Hitler. Then he came out, said nothing of how Hitler had responded, and sat in a chair under the beech trees. He looked hopeless and disappointed. The idea of a momentous visit to Britain had appealed to his imagination. Now, like the rest of the Germans, he had to sit and wait for the Second World War to begin. About half an hour later Koerner brought him the news that Britain had declared war. It was then, and only then, that he was summoned to the Chancellery.

Dahlerus saw him once more, on the following day. Goering promised to conduct the war as humanely as possible and said Germany would initiate no hostilities against France and Britain. Meanwhile, war in Poland would take only a month, and her territories would then be divided between Germany and Russia. He only hoped the rapid defeat of Poland would compel Britain and France to have second thoughts about extending the war. Goering talked on and on, until Dahlerus grew fearful of missing his train. He was tired and all he wanted now was to return to Sweden.

At the Chancellery the previous day Goering had turned to Schmidt, who had brought the British ultimatum to Hitler, and said, “If we lose the war, then God have mercy on us.”

T
HE GERMAN INVASION of Poland was completed in three weeks. The Polish Air Force resisted bravely, but many of their machines were destroyed on the ground during the first two days of the war. By September 17, when the Russians moved in to occupy their share of Polish territory, the struggle was all but over. On October 5 Hitler rode in triumph in the streets of Warsaw.

The strategy that had conquered Poland was new in warfare and was used with devastating suddenness and savagery—the combined operation of Brauchitsch's fast-moving mechanized ground forces, commanded by Guderian, and Goering's air arm, commanded by Richthofen.
¹
The Luftwaffe struck first, using the blitzkrieg method to destroy the Polish Air Force and annihilate the Army; when the Poles attempted to make a final resistance in Warsaw, the city was bombed by men who had been well rehearsed at Guernica. When the German blitz was over, movie cameras in aircraft flying low over the endless streets of roofless, gutted houses pried on the bones of Warsaw for
The Baptism of Fire
, Goering's film of praise for the might of the Luftwaffe. Once more the Stukas dropped screaming from the sky to hurl their bombs into the smoking streets, and the handsome blond airmen grinned in the summer sun.

The immediate success of this blitzkrieg confirmed both Hitler and Goering in their long-standing prejudice in favor of the bomber, a prejudice which was in the end to cost them the defeat of the Luftwaffe. The theory was that wars could be won cheaply and quickly from the air; the enemy's defense could be broken or immobilized, and the fast-moving panzer divisions could move in and occupy relatively undefended territories in a matter of days. The quick and bloodless occupations of Austria and Czechoslovakia could be followed now by the equally swift, if bloody, conquest of large territories in Europe. “Leave it to my Luftwaffe,” became Goering's favorite boast, and in a broadcast from a munitions factory on September 9 he threatened fearful retaliation if British or French planes attempted to bomb Germany. This might, he said, be a long war.

The Luftwaffe was designed for short-range operations; the production of heavy, long-range bombers had been suspended as early as 1937. The emphasis from then onward was on the production of medium bombers, dive bombers (such as the Junkers 87) and fighters (such as the Messerschmitt 109); Germany did not develop a heavy bomber of the kind that was used later by the Allies and that she needed desperately when the range of the war front extended. Telford Taylor claims that the Luftwaffe “was shaped by aviators who were amateur soldiers, and soldiers who were amateur aviators.”
²
The old high-spirited aces, such as Udet and Robert Ritter von Greim, found themselves serving alongside soldiers such as Generals Albert Kesselring and Hans Jeschonnek. In any case, the Luftwaffe was to be controlled as much by Goering's personal vanity as it was by Germany's war needs, and most of those to whom he gave authority came into conflict with him when the Luftwaffe began to face defeat. Nevertheless, the German Air Force was never designed to have the strategic independence from the Army that both the British and the Americans gave to their air forces. In addition to the friction that developed at Goering's headquarters, there was friction also between Goering and the high commands of the other services, more especially at first between Goering and Raeder, Hitler's energetic and far-seeing naval Commander-in-Chief.

Goering's Luftwaffe intelligence misinformed him about the capacity of the Royal Air Force. The experiment of using the Graf Zeppelin during May and August 1939 to test Britain's radar defenses failed to give him the information he needed, and Major Schmid, his chief of intelligence, responded to his vanity by underestimating the strength of the R.A.F.'s fighters in the same year.

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 let 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.