Goering—the Nazi lion-tamer

JOHN GUNTHER

On March 6, 1933, one day after the elections in Germany which confirmed

Adolf Hitler's accession to power, Capt. Hermann Goering (not yet a general and not yet recognized as Hitler's No. 1 man) made an appointment—with a portrait painter. The artist worked hard to compress the captain's massive bulk into a reasonably sized canvas, but the work, when finished, was rejected. A friend of Goering's did not like the way the pupils of the eyes were painted. But neither she nor he had reason to object to the artist's fulfillment of the conception of the portrait, as laid down by Goering. The Nazi chieftain wore a velvet smoking jacket, and in his hand, reposing in his capacious lap, was a book conspicuously entitled "Life of Napoleon."

Goering is indeed a decorative and a Bonapartist figure, as the world quickly found out. As a pet, he summoned from the Leipzig zoo and installed in his home a lion cub, with which he was often photographed. The cub grew up, became unmanageable, and Goering got another. There have been others since. All of them, male or female, are named Caesar.

Goering is famous for the variety and flamboyance of his uniforms, but legend has got the better of fact, and, in reality, he wears only about eight. One apocryphal story is that he dons an admiral's garb when he takes a bath. The actual uniforms he does veritably possess no more than signalize his various jobs, which are numerous. Goering is Prime Minister of Prussia, President of the Reichstag, Minister of Aviation, General of Infantry, General of Police, and Hunting Chieftain of the Reich, as well as a Reichsleiter of the National Socialist Party and the S. A., Storm Troops. He has a uniform for each, and also ceremonial uniforms, one in white, one in deep blue. Nowadays, he wears his army general's uniform mostly, plus a sword of his own invention and design.

Usually he is photographed with the cross of the Pour le Merite order (the German decoration equivalent to the Victoria Cross) on his collar, and the story goes that his valet, frantically searching for it so that his master might go to an official function—it had been, he thought, mislaid—found it on the general's pyjamas. When Goering bathes, he is supposed to wear rubber medals corresponding to the originals in his collection. His alleged predicament when he visited a steel factory one day is well, known. His companions were horrified to see him suddenly leave the floor and perpendicularly float upward to the ceiling. What had happened was that a suspended electro-magnet had exerted its pull on the metallically overburdened general.

Gen. Hermann Wilhelm Goering is, next to Hitler, the most remarkable personality in Nazi Germany. He is brusque, vain, ambitious, cruel, impulsive, and electric with vitality, given equally to sudden rages and sudden smiles, a man of action and absolute ruthlessness. But it is not the cold ruthlessness of a character like Goebbels, his rival, who is a plotter, a conspirator, par excellence. Everything Goering does is in hot blood. Witness his amazing behavior in the Reichstag fire trial, when he screamed denunciations at the imperturbable Dimitroff, threatening to "get" him, even if he were acquitted by the court. Goering is a man both of violent passions and great executive ability, a rare—and dangerous—combination. When he visited Mussolini last year, the Duce asked him, as he usually asks visitors, "Have you visited Italy before?" "Yes," Goering said, smiling, "in the war, when I bombed Verona."

The general was born in Rosenheim, Bavaria, on Jan. 12, 1893. This is near Austria and he lived in Salzburg as a youth, climbing the Austrian Alps for sport.

Goering's father was a governor-general of German Southwest Africa, having received his appointment from Bismarck. The official biography of Goering says that he was the brightest boy in his class, that his relations with his parents were harmonious, and that his early hero was Frederick the Great. The war came and young Goering, at twenty-one, entered the aviation service. By the autumn of 1915 he was Leader of the Fifth Pursuit Squadron.

On April 21, 1918, the greatest German flier, Richthofen, was killed; Goering later succeeded to the dangerous command of the celebrated Richthofen squadron. He had already been awarded the Pour le Merite. During the course of the war Goering brought down twenty planes, as against 80-odd for Richthofen. When the Armistice came Goering, deliberately insubordinate, refused to demobilize and surrender the planes of the Richthofen squadron, although ordered to do so by the German General Staff. He flew the remnants of the squadron to Darmstadt, and was finally forced to come to ground.

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The next year he went to Sweden and got a job as a commercial flier. At this time, apparently, his morphia history began. He no longer takes drugs, so far as is known, but for some years he was intermittently an addict. In Sweden, he fell in love and married a woman who profoundly influenced his life, Baroness Karin Fock. He met her, in almost Wagnerian fashion, when he had a forced landing on her estate at Rockelstad, in North Sweden.

He and his wife returned to Germany in 1921 and lived in a lonely hut in the Bavarian mountains. At loose ends, his morale destroyed, he happened to hear Hitler speak at a gathering in Munich of Nazis protesting some measure of the government. Goering found Hitler a "fanatic mystic"; then and there he became Hitler's, "hair and skin," and the course of his whole life was determined. He called on Hitler and put himself at Hitler's disposal. Presently, in December, 1922, Hitler placed him in charge of the Storm Troops then being first organized. Hitler wanted a "war-time pilot or U-boat commander."

Goering was severely wounded in the Munich beer hall Putsch of November, 1923, when Hitler and Ludendorff were defeated by the Bavarian police. His wife, Karin, nursed him, and helped smuggle him out of Germany into the Tyrol. Then by the circuitous route Italy-Hungary-CzechoslovakiaPoland-Danzig-Denmark they returned to Sweden. His wife came down with tuberculosis. Goering broke down, resumed morphia, and, according to the "Brown Book," went first to an asylum at Langbro and then to the Konradsberg hospital in Stockholm, where he had to be forcibly incarcerated. In 1926 Goering and the other participants in the Munich Putsch were amnestied, and he returned to Berlin.

He became an important cog in the Nazi machine, but for some years he was not as conspicuous as others among Hitler's adjutants.

His wife died in 1932, just before Goering became president of the Reichstag, his first big job. Thereafter his rise was enormously rapid. In January, 1933, Hitler became chancellor and Goering was one of the other two Nazi ministers in a coalition cabinet. He was theoretically subordinate to Von Papen as administrator of Prussia, hut his impetuous and violent handling of events—he assaulted Prussia like a battering ram—completely eclipsed competition. Then came the Reichstag fire, the March Terror, and Hitler— and Goering—were supreme in Germany.

In 1934 he brought his wife's body hack to Germany. Hitler himself attended the reinterment. Previously Goering had built a sort of shrine in his Berlin house, where a portrait of Karin, painted from photographs, stood between candles always lit, and tinted by reflections from a stained glass window set into the wall. A few days after the burial came the June 30 Hitler purge. Goering was given charge of the clean-up in Berlin, while Hitler went to Munich. The story is that Goering was given carte-blanche. No one knows how many died. Goering's first victim would have been Goebbels—the two hate each other poisonously—but Hitler saved Goebbels by taking him along to Munich, according to all "inside" information. Goering called a press conference late in the afternoon of the 30th to tell the foreign correspondents what was going on. Just before leaving, as if in afterthought, he mentioned that among the dead were Gen. von Schleicher and his wife.

Goering lives in a building on Leipzigerplatz which was formerly the residence of a Prussian cabinet minister. He completely renovated the structure and it is now a little palace, richly furnished with pictures and rugs from various of the state galleries. A huge swastika is designed in the tile above the main fireplace.

Karin may still he a dominant spiritual force in Goering's life, but for several years his friendship with a famous German actress, Frau Emmy Sonnemann, was well-known, and in March of this year it was announced that their marriage would be celebrated on April 11. Frau Sonnemann was the friend who did not like the eyes in the portrait painted of the general when Hitler seized power. She was born in Hamburg and has acted in Munich, Vienna, Wiesbaden, and Weimar. Her merits came to Goering's attention and he brought her to Berlin as a star in the Prussian State theater, of which he is the all-powerful patron. Last year he gave her the title of "State Actress." She is a divorcee.

Goering also has a residence in Obersalzberg, on land bequeathed him by the Bavarian government. It is in the immediate neighborhood of Berchtesgaden, where Hitler's summer home is perched almost on the Austrian frontier.

Goering sees Hitler fairly often, usually about twice a week. Hitler has moods, and men come and go in his favor, but Goering, by and large, is certainly his most intimate political associate. The Führer was inclined to play Goering and Goebbels against each other for a time, making them compete for his attention, but lately Goering has had the edge on the propaganda minister. Neither of them is a rival to Hitler himself. If Hitler died, they would certainly fight together for the succession, but 'another man, Hess, would probably inherit it. As long as Hitler lives, Goering and Goebbels are no more than executive officers of his whims and wills, whom he could eliminate almost as easily as he eliminated Papen. Goering has been pumped up by some observers as an immediate potential enemy to Hitler. This is far from the truth. There are virtues Goering lacks, but loyalty is not among them—at least not yet.