Göring: A Biography

Göring: A Biography

A B I O G R A P H Y

D A V I D I R V I N G

F

FOCAL POINT Copyright © uf731uf739uf738uf739 by David Irving

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uf769uf769 To Thomas B. Congdon,

who has helped me so much

uf769uf769uf769 uf764uf761uf776uf769uf764 uf769uf772uf776uf769uf76euf767 is the son of a Royal Navy

commander. Imperfectly educated at Lon-

don’s Imperial College of Science & Technol-

ogy and at University College, he subsequently

spent a year in Germany working in a steel

mill and perfecting his fluency in the lan-

guage. In uf731uf739uf736uf733 he published The Destruction of

Dresden. This became a best-seller in many

countries. Among his thirty books (including

several in German), the best-known include Hitler’s War; The

Trail of the Fox: The Life of Field Marshal Rommel; Accident, the

Death of General Sikorski; The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe; and

Nuremberg, the Last Battle. The second volume of his Churchill's

War appeared in uf732uf730uf730uf731 and he is now completing the third vol-

ume. Many of his works are available as free downloads at

www.fpp.co.uk/books.

uf769uf776 Contents

Prologue: Arrest The Reichsmarschall! uf731

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Part : The Outsider

uf731uf6e7 A Triangular Affair uf731uf739

uf732uf6e7 Storm Troop Commander uf735uf730

uf733uf6e7 Putsch uf736uf735

uf734uf6e7 Failure of a Mission uf738uf736

uf735uf6e7 Asylum for the Criminally Insane uf731uf730uf739

uf736uf6e7 Triumph and Tragedy uf731uf731uf739

uf737uf6e7 The Speaker uf731uf734uf730

uf769uf769

Part : The Accomplice

uf738uf6e7 Bonfire Night uf731uf734uf739

uf739uf6e7 Göring’s Pet uf731uf736uf733

uf731uf730uf6e7 Renaissance Man uf731uf737uf737

uf731uf731uf6e7 Murder Manager uf731uf739uf732

uf731uf732uf6e7 Open Door to a Treasure-House uf732uf731uf733

uf731uf733uf6e7 Getting Ready in Four Years uf732uf732uf737

uf731uf734uf6e7 The Bridge at Guernica uf732uf734uf732

uf731uf735uf6e7 The Very Private Kingdom uf732uf735uf738

uf731uf736uf6e7 The Blomberg–Fritsch Affair uf732uf738uf730

uf731uf737uf6e7 The Winter Ball uf732uf739uf734

uf769uf769uf769

Part : The Mediator

uf731uf738uf6e7 Blame It on Napoleon uf733uf731uf732

uf731uf739uf6e7 Sunshine Girl and Crystal Night uf733uf733uf733

uf732uf730uf6e7 Losing Weight uf733uf734uf737

uf732uf731uf6e7 Out of Favor uf733uf735uf738

uf732uf732uf6e7 Hoping for Another Munich uf733uf737uf731

uf776 uf769uf776

Part : The Predator

uf732uf733uf6e7 Doctor Ready to Become Boss uf733uf739uf734

uf732uf734uf6e7 Yellow and the Traitors uf734uf731uf730

uf732uf735uf6e7 Victory in the West uf734uf731uf739

uf732uf736uf6e7 The Art Dealer uf734uf733uf737

uf732uf737uf6e7 The Big Decision uf734uf735uf731

uf732uf738uf6e7 Warning Britain about Barbarossa uf734uf736uf734

uf732uf739uf6e7 Signing His Own Death Warrant uf734uf738uf733

uf776

Part : The Bankrupt

uf733uf730uf6e7 The “Instruction” to Heydrich uf735uf730uf731

uf733uf731uf6e7 The Thousand-Bomber Raid uf735uf731uf731

uf733uf732uf6e7 The Road to Stalingrad uf735uf732uf733

uf733uf733uf6e7 Fall from Grace uf735uf734uf732

uf733uf734uf6e7 Jet-Propelled uf735uf735uf738

uf733uf735uf6e7 Exit Jeschonnek uf735uf736uf736

uf733uf736uf6e7 Schweinfurt uf735uf738uf739

uf733uf737uf6e7 The Blind Leading the Blind uf736uf730uf735

uf733uf738uf6e7 Imminent Danger West uf736uf731uf737

uf733uf739uf6e7 Total Sacrifice uf736uf732uf739

uf734uf730uf6e7 Witch Hunt uf736uf734uf734

uf734uf731uf6e7 Zero Hour for Hermann uf736uf736uf731

uf776uf769

Part : The Surrogate

uf734uf732uf6e7 Into the Cage uf736uf738uf735

uf734uf733uf6e7 Fat Stuff uf737uf730uf730

uf734uf734uf6e7 On Trial uf737uf731uf737

uf734uf735uf6e7 Release uf737uf733uf739

Acknowledgments uf737uf735uf739

Endnotes uf737uf736uf734

Select Bibliography uf738uf731uf732

Author’s Microfilm Records uf738uf732uf730

Index uf738uf732uf733

uf776uf769 Illustrations

Göring with his mother and sisters uf732uf734

The World War uf769 fighting ace uf733uf736

Göring proudly displays his “Blue Max” uf733uf738

Carin von Fock uf734uf733

Göring and Carin in Venice uf738uf739

The interior of Carinhall uf731uf738uf738

Hitler and Göring at Carin’s reburial uf732uf730uf731

Göring addresses the Prussian parliament uf732uf731uf732

Hitler and his commanders at Armed Forces Day uf732uf731uf737

Göring weds Emmy Sonnemann uf732uf732uf734

Göring frisks with a pet lion cub uf732uf734uf736

The animal kingdom salutes Göring uf732uf736uf732

Göring’s motor yacht Carin uf769uf769 uf733uf731uf739

Hitler’s commanders-in-chief uf733uf736uf731

A rare candid shot of Hitler uf733uf737uf737

Emmy and Edda Göring at Fischhorn Castle uf736uf738uf737

Göring in his Nuremberg prison cell uf737uf731uf732

Göring and Hess in the dock uf737uf731uf738

Göring savors prison fare uf737uf732uf737

Göring and Lieutenant Jack G. Wheelis uf737uf733uf736

Nuremberg physician Dr. Ludwig Pflücker uf737uf735uf732

Brass bullet and glass cyanide vial uf737uf735uf737

Postmortem uf737uf735uf738

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Arrest the Reichsmarschall!

The place reeked of evil. Standing in the wet darkness of this

wrecked bunker in Berlin, Captain John Bradin of the U.S.

Army snapped his cigarette lighter shut, scooped an untidy

armful of souvenirs off somebody’s desk, and groped his way

back up the dark, winding staircase to the daylight.

In the warm sun the haul seemed disappointing: a brass

desk lamp, cream-colored paper with some handwriting on it,

blank letterheads, flimsy telegrams typed on Germany Navy sig-

nals forms, and a letter dictated to “my dear Heinrich.”

Bradin took them home and forgot about them. Forty

years passed. In Berlin the bunker was dynamited, grassed over.

The lamp ended up dismantled on a garage floor, the yellow

sheaf of papers moldered in a bank vault in South Carolina.

Bradin died without knowing that he had saved vital clues to the

last days of Hermann Göring’s extraordinary career uf6de papers

that reveal all the hatred and envy that his contemporaries in

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the Nazi party had nursed toward him over twelve years and

their determination to see his humiliation and downfall in these

last few thousand minutes of Hitler’s “Thousand-Year Reich.”

The desk that Captain Bradin had found was Martin Bor-

mann’s. Bormann had been the Nazi party’s chief executive uf6de

Hitler’s predatory Mephistopheles. The handwriting was Bor-

mann’s too uf6de desperate pages that mirrored the atmosphere of

hysteria in the bunker as the suspicions grew among its inhabi-

tants that Göring had betrayed them.

The first telegram that Bormann had scrawled onto the

cream-colored paper was addressed to SS Obersturmbannführer

[Lieutenant Colonel] Bernhard Frank, commander of the SS

detachment on the mountain called the Obersalzberg that was

Göring’s last retreat:

Surround Göring villa at once and arrest the former

Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring at once. Smash all

resistance.

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It was the late afternoon of April uf732uf733, uf731uf739uf734uf735. Russian troops

had already reached Berlin’s seedy Alexander-Platz district. The

bunker was filling with battle casualties, and the scent of treason

was mingling with the mortar dust in the air. There were whis-

pers of betrayal by Albert Speer, the young, ambitious muni-

tions minister, and by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop

as well. And now strange messages signed by Göring himself had

begun reaching the bunker’s signals room.

As heavily bandaged officers clomped about the constricted

tunnels clutching dispatches on the battle outside, Bormann

swept his desk clear of debris and scribbled a second signal to the

SS unit on the Obersalzberg:

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You will pay with your lives if Führer’s order is not

executed. Find out where Speer is. . . . Utmost cau-

tion, but act like lightning.

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He was in his element. For Germany a nightmare might be

ending, an ordeal in which the dark hours had blazed with air

raids, and nearly every family had suffered the agony of be-

reavement, imprisonment, deportation, or persecution. But in

the caged mind of Martin Bormann the entire battle had nar-

rowed down to this: a final settling of scores with Göring. For

four years he had labored to depose Göring, conspiring, hoping

that the fat air-force commander would make one mistake too

many uf6de and now he had, and the telegrams were piling up on

Bormann’s desk to prove it.

Bormann dashed off a third vengeful directive, this time to

Paul Giesler, the party’s gauleiter in Munich:

Führer has ordered immediate arrest of Reichsmar-

schall Göring by SS unit Obersalzberg because of

planned high treason. Smash all resistance. Occupy

Salzburg, etc., airfields immediately to prevent his

flight. Advise all neighboring gauleiters, SS, and police

at once.

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Bormann’s own days might be numbered, but at least he would

have cooked Göring’s goose as well.

Berlin was dying, Hitler and Bormann were trapped there, and

Göring was doing nothing at all about it. With his plump wife,

Emmy, and their little daughter, Edda, he was in his lavishly

appointed mountain villa on the Obersalzberg, three hundred

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