Goering (54 page)

Birkett became deeply concerned at this threat to the dignity of the trial which meant so much as a demonstration by the Allies of justice for the defeated as distinct from vengeance upon them. He wrote in his notes:

The first factor creating this situation was the extraordinary personality of Goering himself. Throughout this trial the dead Hitler has been present at every session, a dreadful, sinister and in some respects an inexplicable figure; but Goering is the man who has really dominated the proceedings, and that, remarkably enough, without ever uttering a word in public up to the moment he went into the witness box. That in itself is a very remarkable achievement and illuminates much that was obscure in the history of the past few years. He has followed the evidence with great intentness when the evidence required attention, and has slept like a child when it did not; and it has been obvious that a personality of outstanding, though possibly evil, qualities was seated there in the dock.

Nobody appears to have been quite prepared for this immense ability and knowledge, and his thorough mastery and understanding of the detail of the captured documents. He had obviously studied them with the greatest care and appreciated the matters which might assume the deadliest form. . . .

Suave, shrewd, adroit, capable, resourceful, he quickly saw the elements of the situation, and as his confidence grew, his mastery became more apparent. His self-control, too, was remarkable, and to all the other qualities manifested in his evidence he added the resonant tones of his speaking voice, and the eloquent but restrained use of gesture.

By the time the cross-examination was interrupted in order that Dahlerus could be called to the witness stand, Goering seemed to have emerged at any rate as partial victor. He had been questioned on many matters—the leadership principle and his relations with Hitler, the concentration camps, the S.S., the attack on Russia, the Reichstag fire, the Roehm purge, German territorial expansion, his relations with Schacht, German rearmament and his personal attitude to war. His weakness had been his recurrent evasion, his strength his uninhibited acceptance of responsibility for his part in what he regarded as the most positive aspect of Nazi policy and practice in government. His first major defeat in the trial came from certain admissions drawn from Dahlerus himself, who had come specially from Stockholm to act as a witness on his behalf.

Examined first by Stahmer, Dahlerus was taken point by point through the complicated succession of negotiations which he had undertaken in the belief that they might serve to prevent war between Germany and Britain. The intention, obviously, was to show the trouble to which Goering had gone to encourage these negotiations, all of which, claimed the defense, revealed his personal opposition to the war. It was Maxwell-Fyfe, however, who during the cross-examination first began to question Goering's motives in his dealings with Dahlerus. Was the German intention to avoid war as a means of resolving the Polish question, which Hitler had himself raised, or to keep Britain out of an armed aggression which was already predetermined? Was Goering, in other words, the conscious instrument of Hitler to calm the fears of Britain and prevent her from committing herself to armed intervention in support of Poland? Maxwell-Fyfe pressed several damaging admissions from Dahlerus:

MAXWELL-FYFE: Now, you remember that day that you had the conversation with him, and later on he rang you up at eleven-thirty before your departure?

DAHLERUS: Yes.

MAXWELL-FYFE: I just want you to tell the tribunal one or two of the things that he did not tell you on that day. He did not tell you, did he, that two days before, on August 22, at Obersalzberg, Hitler had told him and other German leaders that he, Hitler, had decided in the spring that a conflict with Poland was bound to come? He did not tell you that, did he?

DAHLERUS: I never had any indication or disclosure on the declared policy on April 11, or May 23, or August 22.

MAXWELL-FYFE: . . . He never told you that Hitler had said to him on that day [May 23] that “Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all, it is a question of expanding our living space in the east.” And I think he also did not tell you that Hitler had said on that day, “Our task is to isolate Poland, the success of the isolation will be decisive.” He never spoke to you about isolating Poland?

DAHLERUS: He never indicated anything in that direction at all. . . .

MAXWELL-FYFE: Goering never told you at the time you were being sent to London [that] all that was wanted was to eliminate British intervention.

DAHLERUS: Not at all. [
IX
,
pp
. 223—24]

Maxwell-Fyfe quoted damaging sections describing Hitler, Goering and Ribbentrop from Dahlerus' book
The Last Attempt
, and gradually maneuvered him into the position of becoming in effect a witness for the prosecution: MAXWELL-FYFE: So that, of the three principal people in Germany, the Chancellor was abnormal, the Reich Marshal, or the Field Marshal as he was then, was in a crazy state of intoxication, and, according to the defendant Goering, the Foreign Minister was a would-be murderer who wanted to sabotage your plane?

[
The witness
nodded
.] [
IX
,
p.
226]

Finally Dahlerus admitted, “At the time, I thought I could contribute something to preventing a new war, I could definitely prove that nothing was left undone by the British, by His Majesty's Government, to prevent war. But had I known what I know today, I would have realized that my efforts could not possibly succeed.” [
IX
,
p
. 230]

Goering, back once more under direct examination by Stahmer in connection with Dahlerus' evidence, did his best to retrieve the situation. But the damage was done, and Goering seemed now to be floundering:

GOERING: During all these negotiations it was not a question, as far as I was concerned, of isolating Poland and keeping England out of the matter, but rather it was a question, since the problem of the Corridor and Danzig had come up, of solving it peacefully, as far as possible along the lines of the Munich solution. That was my endeavor until the last moment. If it had been a question only of eliminating England from the matter, then, firstly, English diplomacy would surely have recognized that immediately—it certainly has enough training for that. However, it did enter into these negotiations. And, secondly, I probably would have used entirely different tactics. [
IX
,
p
. 234]

He dismissed the personal impression of himself, Hitler and Ribbentrop in the latter section of
The Last Attempt
as purely subjective, and the ambiguity of his own position as that of a soldier who was also acting as a diplomat.

It was my firm determination to do everything to settle in a peaceful way this problem that had come up. I did not want the war; consequently I did everything I possibly could to avoid it. That has nothing to do with the preparations which I, as a matter of duty in my capacity as a high-ranking soldier, carried out. [
IX
,
p
. 236]

After this interlude, Jackson resumed his cross-examination in the later afternoon with some questions relating to the Reich Defense Council and the occupation of the Rhineland. Again he complained of Goering's attempt to avoid answering questions directly by entering at once into lengthy explanations which obscured the issues involved by adding new ones. Then followed the incident which became world news overnight: Goering made Jackson openly lose his temper in court.

JACKSON: Well, those preparations were preparations for armed occupation of the Rhineland, were they not?

GOERING: No, that is altogether wrong. If Germany had become involved in a war, no matter from which side, let us assume from the east, then mobilization measures would have had to be carried out for security reasons throughout the Reich in this event, even in the demilitarized Rhineland; but not for the purpose of occupation, of liberating the Rhineland.

JACKSON: You mean the preparations were not military preparations ?

GOERING: Those were general preparations for mobilization, such as every country makes, and not for the purpose of the occupation of the Rhineland.

JACKSON: But were of a character which had to be kept entirely secret from foreign powers?

GOERING: I do not think I can recall reading beforehand the publication of the mobilization preparations of the United States.

JACKSON: Well, I respectfully submit to the tribunal that this witness is not being responsive, and has not been in his examination, and that it is—[
The witness interposes a few words here.
] it is perfectly futile to spend our time if we cannot have responsive answers to our questions. [
The witness interposes slightly here
.] We can strike these things out. I do not want to spend time doing that, but this witness, it seems to me, is adopting, and has adopted, in the witness box and in the dock, an arrogant and contemptuous attitude toward the tribunal which is giving him the trial which he never gave a living soul, or dead ones either. [
IX
,
pp
. 242—43]

Jackson had flung down his earphones in a rage, and there was a moment of acute tension and embarrassment. This loss of temper destroyed for the moment the dignity of the prosecution, and the president felt obliged to announce an adjournment. Goering was highly pleased with himself and said to the other defendants, “If you all handle yourselves half as well as I did, you will do all right.” The following day Jackson continued his complaints at length about Goering's reference to the United States, until eventually the president suggested that though it was, of course, wrong for Goering to have made this remark, “it is a matter which I think you might well ignore.”

The principal phase of the cross-examination that followed this diversion was concerned with Goering's actions against the Jews. Here evasion became more difficult; he was too directly involved in the documents offered in evidence against him. It was now that the minutes of the notorious Cabinet meeting on the Jewish problem following the pogrom of November 1938 were quoted at length, with every callous remark by Goering read aloud in court. Goering tried to explain away his crudity by saying that it was an expression of his ill-temper with Goebbels. But Jackson continued to read the minutes of this meeting, pressing home every point at which Goering was openly conspiring to use the machinery of state to rob the Jews of their property, including even the insurance on the goods which had been looted from Jewish stores. He read the statement Goering had made at the meeting in which his exasperation at the thought of the huge losses involved in the pogrom was expressed in the remark to Heydrich that he wished two hundred Jews had been killed rather than so many valuable things lost.

JACKSON: Do I read that correctly?

GOERING: Yes, this was said in a moment of bad temper and excitement.

JACKSON: Spontaneously sincere, was it not?

GOERING: As I said, it was not meant seriously. It was the expression of spontaneous excitement caused by the events, and by the destruction of valuables and the difficulties which arose. Of course, if you are going to bring up every word I said in the course of twenty-five years in these circles, I myself could give you instances of even stronger remarks. [
IX
,
p
. 262]

Goering now had to face further damning records of his persecution of the Jews, in particular his decrees designed to eliminate Jewish trade in Austria and the confiscation of art treasures formerly owned by Jews. He had to answer for his requisitioning of labor from among prisoners of war and Russian civilians in the occupied areas, and his anger rose when he was held to account for an order in his name which seemed to imply that German commando forces to hunt partisans should be recruited from among “those with a passion for hunting, who have poached for love of the sport,” and that they could “murder, burn and ravish.” Goering objected strongly to the suggestion of rape.

GOERING: No, it is not correct. I say this because it is a most significant concept which has always particularly contradicted my sense of justice, for shortly after the assumption of power I instigated a sharpening of the German punitive laws on this matter. I want to show, in the light of this word and this concept, that this entire latter part could not have been uttered by me and I deny having said it. I will absolutely and gladly take responsibility for even the most serious things which I have done, but I deny that this statement, in view of my opinions, could ever have been uttered by me. [
IX
,
p
. 279]

Later he said that he never ordered villages to be burned or hostages to be shot, and that he violently opposed the suggestion toward the end of the war that the Geneva Convention should be abandoned so that prisoners of war or flyers descending in parachutes could be shot.

When Maxwell-Fyfe followed, he used methods of cross-examination very different from those of Jackson; his aim was to show that the defendant was lying or evading evidence incriminating to him. He tried to drive Goering into a trap over his knowledge of the shooting of the R.A.F. prisoners who had escaped from Stalag Luft III on the night of March 24, 1944. The shooting went on from March 25 to April 13; Goering claimed that he was on leave when the shootings began, that he was not informed of them at the time, and that he protested violently when at length he learned what had happened.