Goering (61 page)

Hassell Diaries
, pp. 23-24. Milch in conversation with H.F. considered that Goering knew something at any rate of the record of Blomberg's wife before he married her. Milch was present when Hitler was confronted with the homosexual boy who was prepared to become Fritsch's accuser. See also Wheeler-Bennett,
Nemesis of Power
, Gerald Reitlinger's SS, and Schellenberg's
Memoirs
, p. 32.

A complete copy of the transcriptions is held at the Wiener Library in London, and it is from this that our quotations are taken.

Goering's activities during the night of the
Anschluss
and the following day receive particular attention in
Survey of International Affairs,
1938, II, pp. 62-64; Namier,
Europe in Decay
, pp. 174- 76; Wheeler-Bennett's
Munich
; and Henderson's
Failure of a Mission
. See also
Documents on German Foreign Policy
, Series D, II, pp. 157, 164, 168, 183, and
Documents
on British Foreign Policy, Series III, I, pp. 32, 36, 40, 44.

Transcript of Goering's telephone call to Ribbentrop held at the Wiener Library.

See Documents on British Foreign Policy
, Third Series, I, Nos. 152, 241, 439.

For the statements made by Goering in this paragraph see I.M.T., IV, 67; Trial Documents R-140 and USA 160;
Survey of International Affairs
, 1938, III, pp. 43-44, 530-32; and Shirer, Rise and
Fall of the Third Reich
, pp. 476-77.

See
Survey of International
Affairs
, 1938, II, pp. 302-3.

This famous document was quoted endlessly at Nuremberg. Our transcription is taken from the copy held by the Wiener Library.

Trial Document PS 710. Quoted in Reitlinger,
Final Solution
, p. 21.

Goering's methods of work were described to H.F. by Milch, Bodenschatz, Brauchitsch, Wohltat and Schwerin von Krosigk and supported in an interrogation of Diels that took place on October 22, 1945. Kesselring's quotation comes from his
Soldat bis zum Letzten,
p. 160. Speer's statements come from a series of interrogations conducted during August and September 1945.

Bernd von Brauchitsch described this conversation to H.F.

See
Documents on
German Foreign Policy
, Series D, II, Nos. 248 and 284;
Documents and Materials relating to the Eve of the Second World War
(U.S.S.R. Ministry of Foreign Affairs), I, pp. 149-50.

Richthofen's request is recorded in
Documents on German Foreign Policy
, Series D, III, No. 695.

Ibid
., II, No. 816.

Ibid
., IV, Nos. 68, 69 and 112. Also Bullock, op. cit., p. 440, and Shirer,
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
, p. 433.

Goering also admitted this at the time to Henderson. See British Blue Book, pp. 18-19. And see Wheeler-Bennett,
Munich
, p. 344.

Goering, of course, carried such instruments for other purposes. Milch told H.F. about this point of detail.

See Alfieri,
Dictators Face
to Face
, p. 25.

See
Documents on
British Foreign Policy
, Series III, V, Nos. 377 and 510.

See
German-Polish Relations
, May 28, 1939, and
Documents on German Foreign Policy
, Series III, V, Nos. 658-659. Also Henderson,
Failure of a Mission
, pp. 225-27.

See
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression
, VI, pp. 718-31.

For reference to these meetings of the Council, see I.M.T., XVIII, p. 67; for the British ambassador's report see
German-Polish Relations
, p. 119, and
Documents on British Foreign Policy
, Series III, VII, No. 263; for reference to the Vogler report, see Louis P. Lochner,
Tycoons and Tyrants
, p. 58.

Goering had for some time been pressing for an increase in the importation of raw materials from Russia; see Shirer,
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
, pp. 476-77. For Bodenschatz's visit to the embassies, see Namier,
Diplomatic Prelude
, p. 189.

There can be little doubt as to Goering's sincerity in not wanting war; this attitude is not at variance with his opportunism. That war was probably inevitable at some distant date in the future he obviously accepted, but he hoped that hostilities would be postponed as long as possible for his own comfort as well as for the good of Germany. This attitude coincided with that of Hitler's generals and led them to consider replacing Hitler by Goering when the Führer forced the war on them sooner than they wanted it.

For a fuller consideration of Goering's dealings in art see Chapter 8.

The names of the seven businessmen were given at the Nuremberg trial; see I.M.T., IX, p. 230. The names as they are reproduced are misspelled in a number of instances. They should read: Charles McLaren and C. F. Spencer, who were directors of John Brown and Co.; S. W. Rawson, a Sheffield manufacturer; Sir Robert Renwick; Brian Mountain; A. Holden; and T. Mensforth, a member of a large electrical firm.

Apparently Goering made his famous boast on a number of occasions. See Shirer,
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
, p. 517n.; Semmler,
Goebbels
, p. 97n. Meier is the most common of all German names.

See Halifax,
Fulness of Days,
p. 209.

See above page.

See Namier,
Diplomatic Prelude
, p. 331. Goering seems to have been the last person Hitler informed of this cancellation. Compare the situation later when he was not consulted by Hitler over the reply sent to the British ultimatum. See also the quotation from an interrogation of Goering after the war given in Shirer,
op. cit
., p. 557,

At Nuremberg Goering strenuously denied behaving to Hitler in this manner.

See the
Hassell Diaries
, pp. 69-72. On the same day, August 31, Thyssen claims he sent a telegram to Goering urging him to secure a period of truce “to gain time for negotiation”; later, on September 22, he sent him a memorandum from his place of exile in France demanding, among other things, that the German public be told that he, Thyssen, was against war. Goering, according to Thyssen, demanded that he come back and recant, in which event he would suffer no recrimination for what he had done and said. Thyssen refused. See his
I Paid Hitler
, pp. 33, 36, 39-43 and 45.

The text Goering gave Dahlerus is fuller than that which was subsequently published. See Dahlerus,
The Last Attempt
, and Namier,
Diplomatic Prelude
, pp. 430-31-

See Henderson,
Failure of a Mission
, pp. 275, 282. Also Namier,
Diplomatic Prelude
, p. 377n. It would seem that Goering gave Henderson a copy of the note withheld from him by Ribbentrop.

The strategy of blitzkrieg was expounded as early as 1921 by the Italian General Douhet in his book
The Command of the Air
(see Fitzgibbon,
The Blitz
, Chapters 1 and 2). Goering knew Douhet's book and admired it.

Taylor,
March of Conquest,
p. 25.

This significant statement by Goering was reported to H.F. by Bodenschatz. However, both Bodenschatz and Brauchitsch deny that Goering had secret intentions to join any conspiracy against Hitler.

See documents belonging to this period in
Documents on German Foreign Policy,
Series D, V.

See I.M.T., II, p. 421 et
seq.,
and IV, p. 71.

Galland quotes the following monthly figures for the production of fighter, as distinct from bomber, aircraft: 1940, 125; 1941 (under Udet), 375; beginning 1942, 250; 1943 (under Milch), 1,000; autumn 1944 (under Speer), 2,500. The ratio of fighters to bombers in 1939 was about 1 to 3; in 1940, only 1 to 4, Official American surveys conducted after the war emphasize the astonishingly low level of the German output of armaments during the period 1940—42; British production was in fact higher than that of Germany, which still seemed to be thinking in terms of a short war. British production figures for fighter planes during the middle months of 1940 reached almost 500 a month. Himmler's intelligence service was far more accurate in these matters than Goering's, but Goering naturally preferred to gather comfort from the lower figures given him by his own men. See Schellenberg,
op. cit.,
p. 125.

See Rossi, The Russo-German Alliance,
p. 109.

Ciano's Diary,
1939—43, p. 210. See also Wiskemann,
op. cit.
, p. 180, and Rossi,
op. cit.,
p. 54.

Shirer,
Berlin Diary
, p. 299.

Trial Document EC 606.

General Student reported this to Liddell Hart. See the latter's
The Other Side of the Hill,
P.149.

During 1938 General Felmy had been told to prepare a plan for the annihilation of British resistance by air attack. The plan he produced was intended to prove that the Luftwaffe could not achieve this; the operation would be beyond its likely strength. Goering scrawled his wrath on the plan: “I did not ask for a study that sets forth the possibilities and establishes our weaknesses—these I alone know best of all.” Jeschonnek sent the plan back to Felmy with an oral message that if Goering “commits the Luftwaffe against England in a concentration of all squadrons, then will the heavens over London grow dark.” Felmy foresaw such awkward problems as the need for an exceptionally strong fighter cover for Goering's bombers and the lack of any training in navigation in flight over the sea. See Ansel, p. 191, and Rieckhoff, pp. 16–17 and 110.

Goering refused Raeder's request that the Luftwaffe should mine Scapa Flow and the estuaries to hamper the British fleet during the movement of German ships to Norway.

Rieckhoff in
Triumph oder Bluff?
gives an extraordinary picture of the Luftwaffe command, with the technical men at loggerheads with the designers and manufacturers, and many of the senior officers, promoted too rapidly, anxious to cover up deficiencies and save face before Goering and Hitler, who soon had a totally false impression of the forces at their disposal. The ground organization was given a tremendously luxurious look in order that the morale of the young flyers, as the elite of the master race, should be kept as head-in-cloud as possible.

A copy of Halder's diary is deposited with the Wiener Library. Jodl's diary can be found in
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,
IV, pp. 377—411.

Shirer,
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,
p. 733. Halder in his pamphlet
Hitler as Warlord (
published first in German in 1949) anticipated the accusation against Goering expressed in his letter to Shirer. There he wrote (p. 30): “The encirclement of the French and British forces, which was the aim of the whole occupation, had been on the point of being achieved, when Goering warned Hitler against leaving such a success to the generals, suggesting that if he did they might win a prestige with the German people which would threaten his own position. Goering offered the services of his Air Force to complete the destruction of the almost encircled enemy, without any help from the Army.” This accusation was based, according to Halder, on statements made in 1946 by two senior Air Force officers. Other factors in the decision were Hitler's desire to conserve the armored divisions for the conquest of France, and the fact that the territory round Dunkirk was unsuitable for tanks. Also, the almost miraculous evacuation from the harbor and the beaches was certainly not foreseen as possible.

Milch gave this information to H.F.

According to Butler and Young in
Marshal without Glory
(p. 202), Goering even tried, in vain as it happened, to take over the British embassy as a private residence.

Shirer,
Berlin Diary
, p. 435. During July Goering again met Dahlerus and suggested that the King of Sweden might attempt to set up a peace conference between the Germans and the British. See I.M.T., IX, pp. 220–21.

On July 22, 1938, Goering had spent a day on the new German destroyer
Hermann Schumann.
He showed his contempt for the Navy by saying, “From the summer of 1939, Germany will possess air formations that present such a threat to the British fleet that utilization of its home bases will be rendered impossible.” He was fond of saying, “I will need the Navy only as submarine weather-reporting stations in the Atlantic.” (Ansel,
op
. cit., p. 111.)

At the start of the Battle of Britain the R.A.F., it is estimated by Ronald Wheatley in his book
Operation Sea Lion
, had some 600 to 700 fighters in service; the Luftwaffe had some 950 fighters, 1,000 level bombers and 300 dive bombers. Denis Richards, official historian of the R.A.F., puts the number of German aircraft on active service, including units available from both Scandinavia and France, as 250 dive bombers, 1,000 level bombers and 1,000 fighters, whereas the British had only some 700 fighters with which to oppose them. Rieckhoff, however, makes (op. cit., p. 82) a sobering comment on Luftwaffe statistics, proving that a unit supposed to have forty-five planes available could have, say, twenty in operation one day and literally none the next through damage, nondelivery, overhaul, engine maintenance, mechanical alteration, radio repair. Hence Goering was often deploying paper aircraft and cursing their nonappearance over Britain.

The German losses in the fortnight August 23 to September 6 were 378 aircraft; the British losses were 277. In the following fortnight, during the London blitz, Germany lost a further 262 planes, to the British loss of 144. When the day raids ended in October Galland put the losses at about one third of the bombers and one quarter of the fighters. Meanwhile in aircraft production Britain outpointed Germany by constructing 9,924 planes during 1940 to Germany's 8,070 (see Shirer,
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,
p. 781).

See Koller's statement to Frischauer in
Goering,
p. 213. Milch gave his opinion to H.F. that Hitler had by no means given up the idea of invading Britain at some time in the future, and that it is unlikely that the thought of invading Russia had taken definite shape in his mind as early as this.

See Rossi,
The Russo-German Alliance,
p. 121.

See I.M.T., IX, p. 136; Shulman,
Defeat in the West,
quoting an interrogation of Goering by the Americans, pp. 56—57; and Student's statement to Liddell Hart,
op. cit.,
pp. 231-33.

Milch in conversation with H.F. For the background to Goering and Student's visit to Hitler see Liddell Hart, op. cit., pp. 228–31.

Trial Document PS 2718.

I.M.T., III, p. 6;
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,
V, p. 378. See also I.M.T., III, pp. 4—7; IV, pp. 75—76; VI, pp. 151—54; and Trial Documents PS 2718 and 1743 and USSR 10.

For the full text in translation of this conference,
see Hitler's Europe,
II, pp. 230–36. For Goering's excuses about this conference see I.M.T., IX, p. 317 et
seq
.

I.M.T., IV, p. 75, and VII, pp. 231–32.

See I.M.T., IV, p. 79, and IX, p. 250. See also Shirer,
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,
p. 964. On May 20, 1941, Goering had banned all voluntary emigration by the Jews from France and Belgium on the grounds that this cut across the main evacuation scheme and so anticipated the “final solution” which was now so close at hand. See Reitlinger,
Final Solution,
p. 82.

See I.M.T., IV, pp. 71-72.

It has been suggested that Goering was directly responsible for driving Udet to suicide. Bernd von Brauchitsch denies this; in conversation with H.F. he claimed that Udet was literally worried to death by work for which he was unsuited and because of trouble with a woman.

Ciano's Diplomatic Papers,
pp. 464–65.

See I.M.T., IV, pp. 71—73, and XV, p. 183 (Documents PS 1666 and 1183). See also
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,
IV, p. 183.

I.M.T., VII, p. 167 et
seq.;
IX, p. 322
et seq.;
and XV, p. 203. Documents USSR 170.

See Schellenberg,
op.
cit., pp. 216—17, 300—301, 344.

For these initial meetings with Goebbels see his
Diaries,
pp. 96
et seq.
and 142—43.

Papers relating to the Pieper case are preserved in the Wiener Library.

See Schacht,
My First Seventy-six Years,
pp. 418–19.

For the relations of Goering and the Rommels, see Young,
Rommel,
pp. 179–80, and
The Rommel Papers,
pp. 366—69.

See
Ciano's Diary,
1939–43, pp. 529–32.

Halder,
Hitler as Warlord,
p. 6.

The generals in giving their opinion of Goering had little love to spare. See Liddell Hart,
op. cit.
, pp. 130, 456, and Shulman,
op. cit.
, pp. 85–86.

Schwerin von Krosigk gave this information to H.F.

Semmler,
Goebbels,
p. 60.

I.M.T., IX, p. 200.