Goering Page 13
Goering remained unmarried for three and a half years. It was in 1932 that he first met the woman who was to be his second wife; this was the actress Emmy Sonnemann, whom he saw in a play at Weimar and to whom he asked to be presented. At first she refused ; she was very vague about politics and was uncertain whether it was Goebbels or Goering who wanted to meet her. She soon met him, however, under more formal circumstances at a reception, and Goering became a close friend, seeking relaxation in her company away from the battleground of the Reichstag and the negotiations that led to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. When, on August 30, 1932, he was elected president of the Reichstag, the first letter he sent out on the presidential stationery was a note to Emmy Sonnemann at Weimar, which read, “Ich liebe dich. H.” He had been a widower for less than a year, and this handsome blond woman in her middle thirties gave him the admiring sympathy of a warm and very feminine nature that his temperament, essentially dependent under the hard crust of masculinity that he displayed to the public, always needed.”18
Emmy Sonnemann had been married to an actor named Köstlin, but the marriage had ended in divorce. At the time she first met Goering her mother had just died, and the sentimental attachment they felt for each other was nurtured by the losses both of them had endured. Emmy Sonnemann’s reputation as an actress was a sound one, though confined for many years to the State theaters of such cities as Hamburg, Vienna and Weimar, the city associated with Goethe and Schiller and her favorite center.
Although there was talk of love between Emmy and Goering as early as August 1932, no formal engagement was to be announced until March 9, 1935. During this period Goering was, of course, deeply involved in his activities of state. But the gap is a long one, and there were rumors of his attachment to other actresses, more especially to the opera singer Margarete von Schirach, sister of the Nazi youth leader Baldur von Schirach, and to Käthe Dorsch.19 Though Goering loved Emmy, he also wanted to remain faithful to the memory of his first wife. Carin was never to be forgotten, and he always remained in touch with her family. He flew to Rockelstad Castle for the marriage of Carin’s niece in June 1933 and at the same time visited his wife’s grave in the cemetery at Lövoe.
When Goering became Premier of Prussia in April 1933, he was entitled to another official residence in addition to that of president of the Reichstag. But, like most men tasting the first fruits of power, he was dissatisfied with the stale palaces of a dead regime; he wanted to express himself through something new. While Goebbels, who had been appointed Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment in March 1933, was tearing down the stucco and changing the interior decoration of the Leopoldpalast on the Wilhelmplatz (“I cannot work in the twilight,” he said), Goering decided to clear a site on the corner of Prinz Albrechtstrasse and Stresemannstrasse, the name of which he had had changed by the local authority to Hermann Goeringstrasse. Here he built himself a town house at the taxpayers’ expense next door to the new headquarters of the Gestapo, for whose activities Diels had commandeered the premises of the Berlin Folklore Museum. The new palace was completed early in 1934.
From this period, Goering’s financial status was inextricably entangled with the perquisites and prizes of office. His officially declared salaries were relatively small: president of the Reichstag, 7,200 marks a year; Cabinet minister, 12,000 marks; Air Commissioner, 3,000 marks; president of the Prussian State Council, 12,000 marks. Some of these offices carried expense allowances or exemptions from taxation. Hitler was always prepared to enable Goering to entertain lavishly when it was necessary. In addition, Goering began, by virtue of his powerful positon, to gather substantial business interests in the form of shares, and the influential newspaper, the Nationalzeitung of Essen, became his particular mouthpiece.
Thyssen states that many industrialists, including himself, thought that Hitler would re-establish the monarchy. Goering was known to have been the guest of the former Kaiser at his residence in Holland, and, although Goering told Thyssen that the Crown Prince had made deprecating remarks to him about Hitler after a dinner party, the Prince was invited to occupy a prominent box at the first of Goering’s Opera Balls. Certain of the industrialists were impressed by this show of favor to the Hohenzollerns.
On February 20, 1933, Goering invited a carefully selected group of industrialists to his Reichstag President’s Palace to meet Hitler —among them Schmidt, Krupp von Bohlen, Voegler of United Steel, and Schnitzler and Bosch of I. G. Farben. Goering explained that the purpose of the conference was to create a fund for the March elections. After a speech by Hitler, three million marks was subscribed, and Schacht was invited to administer the fund on behalf of all the right-wing parties. “The elections will certainly be the last for the next ten years,” said Goering confidently to his distinguished audience. To the working classes, on the other hand, the Nazis cynically offered socialism in their election speeches. Heiden reports Goering as saying at a mass rally in the Sportpalast in April, after the elections were over, “Not only has German National Socialism been victorious, but German socialism as well.”20
Thyssen, as one of Hitler’s more loyal supporters, was rewarded by Goering with the office of Prussian state councilor for life, and he attended a few meetings—until Goering turned them from debates into cramming sessions “in a course on National Socialism,” and even Streicher was invited to lecture! Thyssen had been kept in line during the final days before Hitler became Chancellor by a telephone call from Goering warning him that spies had brought information of an incipient Communist putsch in the Ruhr and that Thyssen headed the list of their proposed hostages. “How could I have doubted his words?” writes the pathetic capitalist, the head of German industry. “I therefore began to collaborate openly with the regime.”21
Later, when Thyssen had fled from Germany and, among the comforts of Cap-Ferrat, was dictating his diatribes against the Nazis, he cried out, "What a fool I have been . . .” and went on to reveal his knowledge of the graft practiced by certain leaders of the Nazi Party, Goering particularly. Goering’s debts were as far as possible left unpaid, Thyssen claims; from poverty he rose suddenly to become one of the richest men in Germany, drawing his revenue alike from private and public resources. As Premier of Prussia he became administrator of all the state domains, and these he distributed to himself and others. To Hindenburg, who made him a general in August 1933,22 he gave additional lands at Neudeck, known in Germany as “Naboth’s vineyard” and later as “the smallest concentration camp,” because the President, now eighty-six, spent more and more time there and barely emerged to take part in affairs of state or in social life. For himself Goering took over the vast woodland estate of Schorfheide, where Carinhall was to be built, and staffed it with servants, wardens and gamekeepers who were all supported by the state. Similarly in Berlin his private palace was a state concern. In the Bavarian Alps he was presented by the Premier of Bavaria with a site facing Hitler’s own property; here a villa was constructed.
Soon an organized system of sweetening Goering by presents, in particular presents given on his birthday each January, became accepted as part of the Nazi system. Schacht describes the banquet given by Goering to celebrate his birthday in 1934, and the rich publisher who was allowed the seat of honor beside his host; he had given Goering a shooting brake and four horses. Schacht himself presented Goering with “a very fine picture of a bison.”
Goering had lived on the fringes of big business and on the doorsteps of men of wealth and power since his return to Germany in 1927. He had been brought up in circumstances that led him to believe that the best in life was his due, and that ever since the defeat of Germany in 1918 he had been deprived of this natural birthright. Now the door had swung open and he had stepped immediately into the surroundings of ownership. It was hardly to be expected that he would have developed any refinements of conscience in the roughhouse of German politics during the past five years. Power was for use as well as ornament, and with the new offices and uniforms, t
he ministries, palaces and servants, came the unmitigated hunger for possessions. Goering, fed from youth on the images of the princes of the past, began to accumulate his horde of booty. He liked now to picture himself as a Renaissance grandee.
By 1933 he had become a very fat man, and his weight, approaching its maximum of 280 pounds, gave him great trouble. His energy made him a voracious eater, but only at times. He was, in fact, a sporadic eater, who tended to absorb big meals only when he was entertaining guests at a favorite restaurant, such as Horcher’s. On his own, he would usually take sandwiches and beer, adjusting his eating habits to whatever he was doing, but he frequently roused Kropp in the night and demanded beer and sandwiches, specifying just what cheese or sausage he wanted in them; after this he would go on to his favorite food, which was cake—the sweet, creamy patisserie which, like Hitler, he managed to eat in great quantities. He seldom went to bed before two or three in the morning, and he loved to have films projected privately late at night, another taste he shared with Hitler and also with Goebbels. Kropp, having been kept up to the small hours supplying his master with food, was nevertheless under orders to wake Goering at about six-thirty each morning. He seldom had to rouse him, for Goering suffered from insomnia. He usually found Goering up, shaved and showered; he insisted on shaving himself with an old-fashioned Gillette safety razor, and he always manicured his own hands, taking great care of their appearance. He had a very soft skin and, like most German gentlemen at that time, powdered his face after shaving; this, according to Kropp, was the origin of the rumor that later in his life he used make-up.
In certain matters he was lazy. He disliked having his hair cut, and Kropp always had to bully him into giving time for this to be done by the barber from the Kaiserhof, who was often kept waiting for hours but placated in the end with a generous tip. Above all, Goering was lazy about dressing himself. Although he was cultivating an inordinate taste for dress, he disliked getting into his clothes, and Kropp had actually to dress him. He was fond of wearing specially made coats that reached almost to the ground, making him look not only large but imperious. Tight clothes always troubled him; as often as he could he wore one of the many huge housecoats which he had made specially to avoid constriction round his body.
For sleeping he wore a silk nightgown with puffed sleeves; he disliked pajamas. In the daytime as he became fatter he had to change his clothes more frequently; he sweated to an exceptional degree and went in constant need of clean linen. In vain attempts to control his fat he sometimes went for vigorous walks in the country at weekends.23
When he was promoted a general he began to take an increasing interest in the variety of uniforms his various offices required. His uniforms had always been made at Stechbarth’s, the fashionable Berlin tailors who specialized in service dress. Cap, their chief cutter, spent many years working for Goering, fitting and refitting his clothes to the changing shape of his body. Cap maintains that rumor greatly exaggerated the actual size of Goering’s wardrobe. He had his variety of uniforms (some of which he designed himself), his civilian suits (never more than about twenty of these available at one time to wear), his special garbs (which worried Cap because of their extravagance), and his informal clothes for relaxation. He loved soft leather jackets and fancy waistcoats. Goering often kept Cap waiting for fittings, but then would always be charming and jovial and apologetic. He would even accept advice in good part; once he discarded a heavy fur coat that he had had made, because Cap pointed out with as much tact as possible that the Herr Reichsminister was much too fat for it.
Other responsibilities besides those arising from the creation of a police state were placed on Goering during 1933, and one of the most important of these was the development of Germany as an air power.24 On May 5, 1933, the office of the Reich Commissioner of Aviation became the Air Ministry, and Goering was appointed Air Traffic Minister, since the pretense was still to be kept up that Germany was not planning the establishment of an air force. The flying clubs and gliding clubs were merged into the German Air Club and the German Air Sport Union under Bruno Loerzer, assisted by Ernst Udet and other famous names in German aviation. Goebbels’ press began to take up the theme of flying and the need for an air force, and a great National Flying Day was organized at the Tempelhof Airport on June 15.
In the Pact of Paris made in 1926, Germany had been permitted to establish “air police” units and means of defense in the air. Goering at once took advantage of this and set up the Reichsluftschutzbund, the German Air Defense Union, an organization which gave him control of antiaircraft artillery and civilian air-raid precautions. On April 29 he announced the formation of this German Air Defense Union and issued a manifesto to the German people warning them of the vulnerability of a disarmed Germany to attack from the air; the nations surrounding them, he claimed, had ten thousand war planes which could at an hour’s notice fill the skies of Germany. Everyone was urged to join the Union as an air-raid warden and prepare his home for defense against attack; a journal called the Syren was published for the movement and a training scheme set up. A small subscription was charged. In order to provide an appropriate “incident” to use as a lever with the Allied powers, on June 23 all the newspapers published a scare article headed “Red Plague over Berlin: Foreign Planes of an Unknown Type Escaped Unrecognized; Defenseless Germany.” Blood-Ryan, Goering’s prewar English biographer, says that he telephoned Goering the same day and asked for his views. Goering replied, “Yesterday’s incident shows how defenseless Germany really is. I have not one single plane which I could have sent up in defense and pursuit. I am going to do my utmost to build at least a few police planes to be prepared against any further attacks. These police planes will not become a question of military defense, they are an absolute necessity.”
Soon Goering’s ministry was in touch with the British embassy in Berlin asking for export permits from the British government so that “police” planes and engines might be bought from British manufacturers. The permits were granted. Hanfstaengl recollects helping to entertain Sir John Siddeley in Berchtesgaden in the late summer of 1933, and how Sir John and Goering “sat out on a balcony with great illustrations and blueprints of British military aircraft it was hoped Germany would buy.”25
Goering began to gather round him his old associates of the First World War. Colonel Karl Bodenschatz joined him as personal assistant and chief adjutant, and Erhard Milch became State Secretary of his ministry. In the spring of the same year a young Lufthansa trainee-flyer, Adolf Galland, who had already undergone secret instruction which anticipated the needs of a fighter pilot, was summoned to Berlin. He found himself in the presence of Goering, who explained that he and certain other pilots were to be sent to Italy for further secret training in the Italian Air Force; the young man, though impressed by Goering’s enthusiasm, was “amazed at his girth and displacement.” He returned from Italy “an almost perfectly trained fighter pilot” in the autumn; in February 1934 he passed from civil flying to the “active list” and in October received his commission. He adds, significantly, that Hitler’s purge of Roehm and the S.A. in June 1934 “aroused little excitement in the garrison . . . it seemed to be mainly an ‘internal party affair.’ ”26 Galland was later to become one of Goering’s senior officers in the Air Force and one of his sternest critics.
Although the existence of the German Air Force was not formally acknowledged until March 1, 1935, Goering set about building up the air consciousness of Germany in every way he could. Industry was ordered to produce aircraft for civil flying and transport. Under cover of the expansion of civilian air services, pilots and planes were developed side by side.
Once commissioned, Galland found himself (though a civilian in appearance) expected to train other fighter pilots at Schleissheim, which he describes as the first fighter school of the German Luftwaffe. Goering himself came in February 1935 to explain what the Luftwaffe was to be, and the uniform they were soon openly to wear was put on display. In April Gal
land was attached to the fighter group commanded by Wolfram von Richthofen, near Berlin ; he found both airfield and quarters only half finished, but a new Heinkel-51 fighter was safely delivered. He would soon be ready for Spain.
The foundations for all this work were laid during 1933. During weekends Goering liked to break away from his desk and his conferences whenever he could and visit the forests north of Berlin. As if to reward him and make his sport part of his official duties, Hitler permitted him to become Reich Master of the Hunt in May 1933 and also Master of the German Forests, for which a special ministry was established in 1934. As Hitler’s Master of the Hunt, Goering designed himself a special uniform including a white silk shirt with his favorite puffed sleeves, over which he wore a sleeveless belted jacket of soft leather.