Hitler's Henchmen (4/12) : Goering - The Marshal
For educational purposes
Half warmonger, half comedian Goering more than any of the Dictator's other aides, embodied the face of the Nazi regime.
A decorated war hero with the common touch, Goering was instrumental in making Hitler and the Nazi Party socially acceptable.
Although considered a lackey and stooge he still wielded immense power and privilege.
After the initial triumphs of the war, Goering embarked on a downward spiral of narcotic addiction and narcissism.
Morphine and power had destroyed his grip on reality and after a number of military disasters discredited his reputation the once poweful General was on the same path of destruction as Germany.
Newly released secret documents from domestic and foreign archives illuminate Goering's many-faceted brutal personality.
Half warmonger, half comedian Goering more than any of the Dictator's other aides, embodied the face of the Nazi regime.
A decorated war hero with the common touch, Goering was instrumental in making Hitler and the Nazi Party socially acceptable.
Although considered a lackey and stooge he still wielded immense power and privilege.
After the initial triumphs of the war, Goering embarked on a downward spiral of narcotic addiction and narcissism.
Morphine and power had destroyed his grip on reality and after a number of military disasters discredited his reputation the once poweful General was on the same path of destruction as Germany.
Newly released secret documents from domestic and foreign archives illuminate Goering's many-faceted brutal personality.
Transcript
00:30Hermann Wilhelm Göring, second in command in the Third Reich, verbose plutocrat, ruthless
00:47collector of public offices, president of the Prussian Council of State, commander-in-chief
00:53of the Air Force, master of the Reich Forests and of the Reich Hunt, president of the Reichstag,
01:03Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich, defendant number one at the Nuremberg Trials.
01:24He was very fat and always had these many adorning orders and that amused you, of course,
01:37because you always had the feeling that maybe he would have liked to become an actor.
01:41For us, he was the head of the family and if we had any worries, we could come to him.
01:57But, as I said, if I may put it so figuratively, we always stood firm in front of him.
02:05For us young people, of course, he was the ideal.
02:09He was an old fighter jet, a polymeric carrier from the First World War.
02:13At that time, we still had the First World War. It changed very quickly.
02:34He fled on to the battlements of his castle in his own dream world.
02:45Goering hated school and often ran away.
02:48His mother commented, Herman will be either a great man or a great criminal.
02:58Prussian Cadet College was supposed to knock sense into the unruly boy.
03:04Surprisingly, here he changed into an ambitious cadet officer.
03:08The separation from his family seemed to be a relief to him.
03:13Proudly, he wore his first uniform.
03:22In 1911, he passed the junior officer's exam with top marks.
03:28Two years later, he passed his school final exams, received his commission
03:34and became a lieutenant in an infantry regiment.
03:37The first footage of young Goering in search of new adventures.
03:49He thought he was more likely to find them in the air than on the ground.
03:53Shortly after the start of the war, he joined the Imperial Flying Corps,
03:57got his pilot's license and flew combat for the first time in 1916.
04:14His courage and action earned him the command of a fighter squadron
04:18and the highest German order for special bravery.
04:22Pour le mérite.
04:24Four months before the end of the First World War,
04:27he rose to the command of the Richthofen squadron.
04:38He was the successor of the most famous fighter pilot of his time.
04:51He was to live off this glory for a long time.
04:56The post-war era was a time of confusion.
05:00Goering was one of those soldiers who felt angry and betrayed
05:04and thought the Treaty of Versailles a disgrace.
05:12He desperately wanted to go on flying.
05:14As that wasn't possible in Germany, he went to Sweden,
05:17where he sold German parachutes and eked out a living
05:20doing the mail run and taking people for joy rides.
05:27One of these jobs took him to the estate of a Swedish aristocrat,
05:31a new adventure.
05:34He fell head over heels in love with the attractive Karin von Cantzow.
05:38The countess, five years his senior,
05:40was swept away by the charm of the dashing German aviator.
05:48In a fit of romance, she left her husband and child
05:52and followed her lover to Germany,
05:55where they married a year later.
06:02Protests against the Treaty of Versailles were mounting.
06:06Goering sought contact with like-minded people.
06:09At a meeting of the National Socialist German Workers' Party,
06:12he met Adolf Hitler.
06:18And we are blessed with fate.
06:25Goering was impressed equally by the speech and by the speaker.
06:30From the moment I saw and heard him, I was totally under his spell.
06:37He joined the National Socialists
06:39and turned Hitler's run-down stormtroopers into a powerful private army.
06:43As chief of the SA, he donned the first of the uniforms he dreamt up himself.
06:50Instead of spending time with his friends in the party,
06:53he sought the company of discontented generals and other nationalistic groups.
06:59To smooth the way for Hitler, in 1923 he staged a putsch,
07:03which was aimed at toppling the government in Berlin,
07:06but which was crushed at the outset in Munich,
07:09under fire from the Bavarian police, the rebels fled in all directions.
07:16Seriously wounded, Goering escaped to Austria with Karin.
07:20A warrant had been issued for his arrest.
07:28Pain forced him to a hospital in Innsbruck.
07:31He had surgery and was given morphine twice a day,
07:34the beginning of a lifelong entanglement.
07:39Hitler, in prison in Landsberg,
07:42asked Goering to go to Italy and make contact with Mussolini.
07:54The job suited the Goerings to a tea.
07:57Their hotel on the Grand Canal.
07:59An atmosphere of elegance.
08:01The German owner sympathised with the Nazis.
08:04Goering was a man of his word.
08:06The German owner sympathised with the Nazis.
08:09Goering sent grandiloquent dispatches to Rome.
08:13But Mussolini refused to see him.
08:16Hitler was not yet creditworthy enough for the Duce.
08:22A wasted year in Italy, in Germany he was forgotten.
08:28They returned to Sweden
08:30in the hope that Karin's parents would support them.
08:34In a tiny flat in Stockholm, Goering wrestled with his addiction.
08:39He couldn't afford his daily dose.
08:42He lost control, became violent
08:45and finally was put into a mental hospital
08:48for the dangerously unstable.
08:51The doctor's analysis was shocking.
08:56Brutal and hysterical patient with a very weak character.
09:01Suicidal,
09:03depressive,
09:05egocentric,
09:07anti-Semite.
09:09Karin's parents tolerated their son-in-law
09:12only because of their daughter, seriously ill herself.
09:19In Germany, democracy was being given a trial run,
09:23even by its enemies on the left and the right.
09:26When Hindenburg became Reich President,
09:29it was time for Goering to return.
09:35After some initial hesitation,
09:37Hitler took him back into the party leadership.
09:42The highly decorated war hero came just in time
09:45to win over the high society of Berlin for Hitler.
09:48At last, he had a position of influence.
09:59Hitler was the only one who could save Germany
10:02from the catastrophic situation
10:04that Germany was in after the First World War.
10:11He certainly showed him
10:14an unwavering loyalty,
10:17even on the inside.
10:20Hitler certainly realized
10:22that Goering was one of the most reliable
10:25and successful employees.
10:29Especially since he was the only one
10:32who had access to all circles
10:35and had an eye.
10:37From the Crown Prince to the plutocracy,
10:40Goering asked them all for donations,
10:42such as Krupp
10:47and Thyssen
10:50and Hjalmar Schacht.
10:52They all made donations
10:54to put Hitler on the road to power.
10:57Goering was drawn along in Hitler's wake.
11:01First, to membership of the Reichstag
11:04and finally to its presidency.
11:09The Weimar Republic was dismantling itself.
11:13The enemy was within.
11:23Goering in power as a minister under Hitler,
11:26the dictator valued Goering
11:28as a cool, calculating henchman
11:30who kept his head in crises.
11:32He came to an agreement
11:34with the former Chancellor Papen.
11:36He won over the press mogul Hugenberg
11:38as an ally against the Moribund Republic.
11:49But Goering had another,
11:51more effective lever on power.
11:56The weapon in the heart of the castle
12:01was the shield
12:04of the faithful people.
12:09As Prussian Minister of the Interior,
12:11he didn't mince words.
12:14I knew that I had to take over
12:16the most difficult task,
12:18because here lies the key
12:20to the entire power position.
12:22I will return with an iron broom
12:24to all those who,
12:26exclusively because of their
12:28red or black intentions,
12:30and to suppress all national aspirations
12:32in office and office seats,
12:34go out.
12:36Those were not hollow words.
12:38Goering used the Reichstag fire
12:40as an excuse for the merciless
12:42persecution of his political opponents.
12:47And they had all these black lists,
12:49and because of these black lists
12:51these people had to be arrested.
12:55We were interrogated for nights,
12:57as I said, locked up in a cellar,
12:59without food.
13:03You were beaten with your head
13:05against the wall.
13:07Things like that happened all the time.
13:16I felt the worst
13:18that I was even locked up.
13:20As a young man,
13:22at the age of 17,
13:24I never thought I would
13:26become an illegal citizen.
13:28Violence for the founder of the
13:30Gestapo was patriotism.
13:47In the Prussian State Council,
13:49he abolished majority rule.
13:51That anonymous concept
13:53which raised the cowardice of numbers
13:55to the rank of master.
13:57The master was now a man
13:59who had camps built to hold dissidents.
14:01The concentration camps
14:03which soon aroused revulsion
14:05all over the world.
14:19He then said about the concentration camps
14:21that it could only be
14:23a transitional solution
14:25due to the rather turbulent
14:27conditions in the Reich
14:29at the time.
14:31And that in the future
14:33there would be
14:35a new government
14:37and a new government
14:39and a new government
14:41and a new government
14:43and a new government
14:45and a new government
14:47and a new government
14:49where people in the future
14:51are allowed
14:53in verdict
14:55their freedom.
14:57A promise that was never kept.
14:59Instead G�ring
15:01worked frantically
15:03at the expansion of his power.
15:05The establishment of
15:07an aviation ministry
15:09provided him with a new post
15:11and German industry
15:13with a flood of new orders.
15:17At first he used covert means to realise his dream of a German air force. His goal was
15:39an independent flying corps, modelled on the one in fascist Italy. Another instrument of
15:50power that Goering created for himself was a phone tapping headquarters, which went by
15:55the innocuous name of Research Office.
16:26And it was eavesdropping on the entire Reich. For example, on SA stormtrooper Boss Röhm
16:34conspiring with his NCOs. Fearful of a putsch by Röhm which never happened, Goering and Hitler
16:40plotted a massacre of the leadership of the SA. In his old cadet college, Goering had 43 alleged
16:48rebels shot, while Hitler tied it up amongst the party comrades in South Germany. The first mass
17:00murders in the Third Reich, they were just the prelude.
17:18To cheers from the party, the last trace of humanity died.
17:48He set out to rob them, systematically. In the end, he got authorisation to go ahead with the
17:59Holocaust. SS leader Heydrich got a blank cheque from Goering for the systematic extermination of
18:07millions of Jews. An armchair assassin who just occasionally relented.
18:15He kept a lot of people in front of KZ and all these things, and you know that. And above all, Goering
18:22was the one who forced and fought for these things. For his colleagues, for his actors who had a
18:31Jewish wife and so on. And of course, Mr. Goering was very generous. You have to say that.
18:38I don't think there was a Nazi leader who couldn't say that he had helped a Jew or a Jew's friend.
18:48That was so to say. The world still closed its eyes. Many diplomats enjoyed the company of
18:58the urbane Goering. He used his passion for hunting as a chance to conduct secret talks,
19:04in which he pursued his own goals. Unlike Hitler, Goering dreamt of a German economic
19:13empire which would extend, above all, down to Southeastern Europe. The first step,
19:18Anschluss, union with Austria. Goering pressed ahead where Hitler held back.
19:23Hitler's triumphant march into his homeland was the result of Goering's coldly calculated tactic
19:35of coercion. But Goering thought Hitler's next plan, the seizure of the Sudetenland,
19:40too risky. In secret talks with the West, he tried to reduce the risk. To British ambassador
19:51Henderson, he promised the four best German stags if Great Britain caused no trouble during
19:57the Sudetenland crisis. He wanted peace because he had too much to lose. But Hitler's auxiliary
20:07troops in the Sudetenland were mobilised. Goering pulled out all the stops. He cunningly
20:15involved his Italian Axis partner, asking him to mediate. But drew up the agreement himself,
20:22which Mussolini then presented at the Munich conference as his own proposal.
20:26While Goering's influence seemed on the surface to be at its peak,
20:33it was obvious behind the scenes that he'd lost his direct link to Hitler.
20:45The dictator favoured aggressive expansion. His henchmen, coercion at the negotiating table.
20:52Hitler wanted action. Goering, trans-action. His delight at the peaceful solution to the
20:59crisis was not shared by Hitler. Ribbentrop was appointed foreign minister. He shared
21:06Hitler's views on war and tried to check Goering's influence. And so the second most
21:14powerful man in the Reich happened to be at a health resort in San Remo when German troops
21:19marched into Prague. He was torn between his loyalty to Hitler, who wanted war and war alone,
21:40and his own desire to enjoy peace. It was clear to Goering that he could only stay second in
21:47command to Hitler if he offered unconditional loyalty, although he knew that Poland was the
21:53next target on the list. But secretly, he tried to avert the impending conflict. He
22:08contacted the British government through a Swedish industrialist and considered flying
22:12to England himself. His research office kept him informed about negotiations between Poland
22:25and the Western powers. But this time, they were prepared to invade, and Goering implored
22:48Hitler, let's stop playing this dangerous game, to which Hitler replied, I've been a gambler all
22:54my life. With that, the points were switched for a descent into ruin. Goering retreated to the
23:09Schorfheide. He'd had a hunting lodge built there, the last word in luxury and ostentation. It was
23:17called Karin Hall after his first wife. The gentleman of the house had a taste for the
23:25massive and the grandiose. His contacts with industry enabled him to maintain the standard
23:31of living due to his dignity. The firm of Reimsma alone paid him one million Reichsmarks a year.
23:37Thus provided, he indulged in another of his pleasures, hunting.
23:43In this state-owned private idyll, Goering was the leader, as master of
24:13the German forest and hunt. A uniform to suit every office, the ruler in the costume of a
24:23bohemian. I just happen to be a Renaissance man. I love splendor.
24:29There can be no splendor without self adoration. The splendid carriages of a
24:50new era. For the Renaissance man, they were one of the joys of life.
25:00Another of the joys was women. After Karin's death, he took a new wife, the actor Emmy Sonneman.
25:07The church wedding angered the party ideologues, but with Hitler as witness, no one dared to protest
25:18openly. Goering's new wife, addressed as High Lady in Public at Goering's request, made her
25:29own contribution to the opulent lifestyle at Karin Hall. At the Goerings, there was now a
25:40constant coming and going of Emmy's former colleagues. Gustav Grünkins flirted with power
25:46and was appointed director of the State Theatre. An appearance at the Universal Studios. The film
25:56people felt flattered, but there were other reactions.
26:26Goering's most modest house, a Bavarian farm on the Obersalzberg. Always with him, his pets.
26:57The tracks were cleared for Herman's love of play. He had a model railway in each of his houses.
27:08To flee reality in a style suited to his station, he had a yacht, the Karin II. Before the eyes of
27:24the nation, he acted the affable Sun King. His name became the emblem of a vast personal cult.
27:30Behind the mask of dear Uncle Goering, there hid an unscrupulous, power-hungry man who had
27:49more than fulfilled his mother's prophecy that he would become either a great man or a great
27:54criminal. He had become both.
28:25For the man who doted on children, there was a surprise on the way. Emmy bore him a daughter,
28:32Edda. A joke of the time claimed that the letters of her name stood for everlasting
28:38debt to the dutiful adjutant. Since his wound during Hitler's putsch, Goering had thought he
28:43was sterile. Edda's godfather, another kindly uncle. Lovers of children and brothers in arms.
28:54Many years previously, Hitler had nominated his most devoted paladin as his successor,
29:02thus forcing Goering to adopt his mania for Lebensraum and follow him to war.
29:14With the Air Force, Goering secured his own power base. In the former chief of Lufthansa,
29:22Erhard Milch, he found an ambitious organiser. Other commanders were not so well suited.
29:28You have to see that almost the entire high general staff of the Air Force had no flying experience.
29:41There were a few from the First World War, but they sat on the level of the division commanders,
29:49so they didn't have much to say either. And the whole staff, the whole Air Force staff,
29:54was occupied by people who had no idea about the air force, but also had little or hardly any
30:01flying experience. And with their thoughts, the air force was built up at that time.
30:12Goering, the puppet master, engineered the intrigues that resulted in the dismissal of the commanders-in-chief
30:18of the Wehrmacht and the army. Goering calculated that he had a good chance of being appointed successor,
30:25but Hitler took the post himself and fobbed off his power-hungry vassal with the title of General Field Marshal.
30:34Goering now let himself be drawn into a war on two fronts, which really he had wanted to prevent.
30:42While his bombers attacked Poland, his brother-in-arms placated him with new proof of his favour.
31:01But he confessed to a friend afterwards.
31:04It's dreadful. Hitler has gone mad.
31:08And two days later...
31:10If we lose this war, heaven have mercy on us.
31:15With numerical superiority of 20 to 1, Goering's new planes had it easy.
31:38Now we stand at the end of the first event of this terrible battle.
31:44And what the air force promised Poland, this air force will keep in England and France.
31:53Sabre rattling in public, peace initiatives in secret.
31:58This time he made Roosevelt an offer.
32:00As Chancellor, he would withdraw from Poland and stop the persecution of the Jews.
32:05The American president reacted positively and guaranteed Germany its 1914 frontiers and the return of the colonies.
32:16But then the warrior lost his nerve.
32:19Instead of protesting against the war in the West, he fled into his dream world.
32:24And had a monstrous command train built, with a saloon car, its own infirmary, goods wagons to hold eight cars and a photographic lab.
32:33There was a permanent staff of 20.
32:45At the first tactical discussions, his lack of knowledge was obvious.
32:49He showed off with grand promises, although the Luftwaffe was nowhere near being equipped for such a campaign.
33:04At Dunkirk, Goering suffered his first defeat when an entire British corps escaped almost unscathed.
33:15The unintentional bombing of Rotterdam was the signal for a murderous air battle.
33:23But these failures were drowned out by raptures of joy at the victory over France.
33:28Goering praised Hitler as the greatest commander of all time and hoped secretly that his frenzy for attack had worn off.
33:36Goering set out for Paris.
33:43In an open Rolls Royce, he cruised through the city on the lookout for treasures of all kinds.
33:50The bon viveur went on a wild shopping spree.
34:02In the Louvre, a huge supply of masterpieces awaited the collector from Karin Hall.
34:08Here were stored all the artworks of the Jews who'd been driven out of Paris, and Goering made sure he got first pick.
34:15Velazquez, Cranach, da Vinci or Cezanne, he helped himself to whatever he liked.
34:31In the end, he issued a directive which helped him get his hands on Jewish property from all over Europe.
34:37He had seen some interesting artworks in Brussels and Amsterdam,
34:41which he didn't want to escape his clutches.
34:45All in all, Goering amassed artworks to the value of several hundred million marks.
34:50He often had them sent home by train on a roundabout route.
34:54Karin Hall became a museum.
34:58In the attic, delusion and reality blurred into a caricature.
35:04From all the occupied territories, trains rolled into Germany, full of stolen art treasures.
35:10And they drew the admiration of the painter from Braunau.
35:17He had found a new post for Goering.
35:20The Reich Marshal became the highest-ranking soldier in Germany.
35:26Air raids on Britain.
35:29Hitler's indecisiveness and Goering's reluctance led to a half-hearted operation which overtaxed Goering's pilots.
35:45London was not a target.
35:49But Churchill held out, no matter how many bomber squadrons Goering sent over the channel.
36:20The dream of dominance in the air shattered under fire from British defences.
36:31By October 1940, 1,700 planes had been lost.
36:35The Luftwaffe's glory faded, just like its commanders'.
36:41The commanding officers could not agree on policy.
36:44Goering refused to set clear priorities.
36:47The fighter planes on the channel, Galland, demanded more pursuit planes.
36:51Discussion of the various types got bogged down and ended in utter confusion.
37:05Even the boldest of sorties couldn't compensate for the superiority of the British planes.
37:10Discontent grew among the pilots.
37:17When the battle of England was over, one began to doubt what was going on with our leadership.
37:25But we didn't expect Goering to do it.
37:28We said it was the bad military leadership we had, that everything went wrong.
37:33The battle of England really went wrong.
37:36Parade of the scapegoats.
37:38Hitler had his sights on Goering, but he passed the blame on to Udet, his head of production.
37:45Field Marshal Milch was sent in as troubleshooter.
37:49He wasn't a pure Aryan.
37:51But as Goering needed him, the Reich Marshal declared,
37:55I decide who's a Jew.
37:59Flight from decisions into the fabled world of childhood.
38:03While the Wehrmacht was assembling for Operation Barbarossa,
38:07the head of the Luftwaffe was playing with baskets full of jewels,
38:11eating sweets by the kilo and taking refuge in sickness.
38:17As he couldn't prevent Barbarossa,
38:19he betrayed the date of the attack to the Western powers through a Swedish contact.
38:29When the attack began, he reluctantly boarded his special train
38:33and set up his headquarters an hour away from Hitler's Wolf's Lair.
38:37Here, too, he took a huge number of tablets.
38:40In the downward spiral of addiction, grey reality turned into a rose-coloured illusion.
38:52But reality kept catching up with him.
38:55General Udet committed suicide.
38:57It had to be kept from the people.
39:02A few days later, there was another funeral.
39:05Udet's replacement, General Mulders, was killed in a plane crash.
39:10Göring appointed the 29-year-old Galland his successor as head of fighter plane production.
39:17Despite all Göring's protests to the contrary,
39:20the Allies were penetrating deeper into German airspace
39:23with thousand-bomber raids on cities such as Cologne.
39:40And even when town after town sank under rubble,
39:44Göring was still not prepared to deal with the truth.
39:48Hitler upbraided him over the air raids,
39:51so Göring tried to prove how effective the Luftwaffe still was.
39:57His bickering officers, the Luftwaffe,
40:00and the German air force,
40:02so Göring tried to prove how effective the Luftwaffe still was.
40:07His bickering officers did nothing to restrain him.
40:11His general chief of staff, Yeschonek, who was suffering from depression,
40:15agreed that they could airlift supplies to the army cut-off at Stalingrad.
40:20And so the complacent Reich Marshal sent hundreds of thousands of men into a deadly trap.
40:32280,000 soldiers waited in ice and snow for supplies, in vain.
40:37Too few planes flew too many missions.
40:41It was a hopeless undertaking.
41:03What was happening?
41:05Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were being captured by the Soviets
41:09or were starving or freezing to death.
41:33But he didn't.
41:52Total loss of contact with reality.
41:55On the home front, too.
42:02There were attacks and alarms again and again.
42:05Sometimes blind alarms, too.
42:07But even if it was a blind alarm, you were always afraid and your heart would beat.
42:14People died a terrible death.
42:19There was nothing left but horror.
42:33The complete failure of the Luftwaffe made Hitler intervene himself.
42:39In his eyes, Göring had proved himself incompetent.
42:43A few pilots still entertained illusions.
42:46From then on, I was no longer deployed in Russia, but here in the Reichsverteidigung.
42:51But even there, we were still in the view that the mistakes that had been made
42:55had to be attributed to the leadership as a whole, but not to Göring himself.
43:17German officers made one last desperate attempt to end the madness.
43:27The coup against the dictator failed.
43:30The Reich Marshal was immediately on hand with the grovelling suggestion
43:34that even the Wehrmacht should in future salute with the arm outstretched.
43:46The disempowered man of power sought comfort from his own division.
44:16His eyes were completely glassy.
44:19I later found out that he was addicted to morphine.
44:24Then he went into the middle of the grove.
44:27He still had a powerful voice, I have to say.
44:30And he was shouting a speech.
44:33I have to say, it also terrified me.
44:35It was at the lowest level of vulgarity.
44:38He said,
44:40Traitors, marauders, assholes and so on,
44:43they owed the collapse of the Eastern Front
44:47and made an attack on the Führer.
44:51But now clarity has been achieved
44:54and you will kick the Russians in the ass now.
44:58But the Russians got in first.
45:00Soon Russian bombers were appearing in the skies above Berlin,
45:04where there were few intact targets left.
45:11Where did the man responsible for all this misery
45:14find the courage to visit the suffering people?
45:17He had once bragged that he would change his name to So-and-so
45:20or eat his hat if an enemy bomber ever reached the Reich.
45:24He was now greeted with,
45:26Hello, Mr. So-and-so, how's your hat?
45:29Some people teased with a pun on a department store slogan,
45:32a defeat in every city.
45:36The last attempts to force a change of fortune,
45:39the much acclaimed jet,
45:41it came too late and was used wrongly.
45:44Moreover, fuel was in short supply.
45:51The commander-in-chief was merely an onlooker
45:54at an unstoppable disaster.
46:05When the howling of rocket launchers,
46:07known as Stalin's organ pipes,
46:09announced the final offensive,
46:11the solicitor's family man had his wife and daughter taken to Bavaria
46:15and his treasures hidden in a mountain tunnel.
46:18Long before, he had deposited millions of marks in Switzerland.
46:23His Fuhrer's birthday forced him to make one last visit to the bunker
46:27under the destroyed Reich Chancellery.
46:31Then he drove back to Karin Hall,
46:34blew up his house and set off for the Obersalzberg.
46:42Three days later, totally misjudging the situation,
46:46he made an attempt to grab the crown.
46:52In a telegram to Hitler,
46:54he suggested he become Hitler's successor.
46:58If I don't have a reply before 10pm,
47:01I shall act in the interests of the people and the fatherland
47:04according to your decree.
47:07Hitler and his remaining vassals saw this as an ultimatum.
47:11Could the devoted paladin really want to overthrow him?
47:17He was immediately stripped of all his offices.
47:20SS men took him into protective custody at one of his castles.
47:28From here, he tried to make contact with General Eisenhower.
47:31In long and wordy letters,
47:33he made unwieldy offers of armistice and hoped for talks,
47:37marshal to marshal.
47:39His letters went unanswered.
47:46Instead, Goering was ordered to go to a meeting
47:49with the American General Stack
47:51and politely but firmly arrested.
47:54His comment speaks volumes.
47:57At least I've had 12 good years.
48:07A few days later, GIs discovered Goering's art treasures.
48:11They couldn't believe their eyes.
48:16The moment of truth.
48:25THE GALLERY SIGN
48:41The gallery sign for the robbers' den.
48:46THE GALLERY
48:53The second-in-command in the Third Reich, live.
48:56American journalists wanted to see that
48:59while other pictures were still in their heads.
49:15THE GALLERY
49:37He claimed to have known nothing about any of that.
49:40Having shed some weight and his addiction,
49:43at the Nuremberg trials he acted the innocent victim
49:46of malevolent victors.
49:49A master of deception.
49:54Very resourceful.
49:57Very vain.
49:59Exceedingly vain.
50:04And very proud of himself.
50:06Very self-confident.
50:09Goering had one more opportunity
50:11to parade his excessive self-confidence.
50:14Much to the anger of the prosecutor,
50:17the court gave the floor to the filibusterer for 58 hours.
50:21A torture for the reporters, too.
50:25He tried to represent the No. 1, the Reich Marshal,
50:30against the other defendants.
50:34And then to deny the cowardly person
50:37personal guilt for these terrible crimes
50:41that were committed at the time
50:44when he thought he was the No. 2 behind Hitler.
50:51Before I answer the question of the court,
50:55whether I confess guilty or not guilty,
50:59I confess guilty or not guilty.
51:04No remorse, no regret, no understanding.
51:08Even now the same senseless persistence.
51:12The judge's gavel forced him to be brief.
51:16You must plead guilty or not guilty.
51:22I confess guilty in the sense of the indictment.
51:25When he was in the witness stand,
51:28he played his role very effectively.
51:33As an actor, as he imagined it,
51:36an actor on the world stage.
51:38I have never expressed my understanding
51:42that one race over the other is called the master race,
51:48but emphasized the diversity of the races.
51:56That's a doctrine that Göring didn't believe in.
52:01I think he said at one time
52:04that he was a faithful paladin of the Führer,
52:08and that meant believing in and espousing
52:13and following all of the principles
52:16that the Führer had decreed.
52:19The court found the accused Göring
52:22guilty in all four cases of the indictment
52:25and sentenced him to death by hanging.
52:38After sentencing, he wrote three letters
52:41to his wife, to the prison chaplain
52:44and to the Allied Control Council.
52:47I would have let myself be shot without any further ado,
52:51but it is not possible to execute
52:53the German Reich Marshal by the rope.
52:56I choose instead the death of the great Hannibal.
53:00Unlike the great Hannibal,
53:02Göring availed himself of a capsule of cyanide,
53:05which an American officer and hunting friend
53:07had procured for him.
53:12Everyone has to die,
53:14but to die as a martyr makes one immortal.
53:17One day you will lay our bones in marble coffins.
53:23Göring's bones, like those of all the men executed,
53:27were cremated and scattered in a tributary of the Isar,
53:30at Dachau.
53:47To be continued...