GOERING PLAN

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 150, 22 December 1945, Page 8

GOERING PLAN

ATTACK IN 1941

TRIPLE SOUTHWARD DRIVE

Marshal Goering had an alternative plan to the invasion of Britain in 1940, and when his Luftwaffe was beaten out of the skies over Britain in September, 1940, he made every effort to persuade Hitler to put it into effect, writes Ossian Goulding, London "Daily Telegraph" special correspondent in Berlin.

The full account of the "Goering plan" will be given at the Nuremberg trials. If put into operation it would have confronted Great Britain with a major military crisis which might well have cut us off entirely from the Mediterranean. Fortunately, its creator reckoned without his leader's weakness for mystic inspiration—the rock on which so many German General Staff plans were to founder during nearly five more years of war. When he realised that the invasion of Britain was impossible, Goering, after consultation with several of Germany's leading military scientists, decided to strike against Britain s liteline to her Dominions —the Mediterranean passage. Always at the back of his mind in those days was the knowledge of the scheduled attack on Soviet Russia, an enterprise which he opposed on every possible occasion, and of the success 'of which he had the gravest doubts. GIBRALTAR, MALTA, SUEZ. He therfore proposed to Hitler the following scheme:-(l) To deliver a lightning blow southward to the Mediterranean Sea, cutting off Britain from the use of these waters and from the Suez Canal. (2) When that had been accomplished, to offer Britain the right to resume peaceful traffic through the Mediterranean and continued enjoyment of her Dominion and colonial rights—one suspects on a very temporary basis—provided she stopped _ the war against Germany and jomed in a "crusade against Bolshevism. The plan found favour at first with Hitler and was, in fact, within an ace of being translated into terms of action. Details were worked "out, equipment was assembled, and troops massed at striking points. But the signal to march was never given. Three army groups were to take part in a tri-pronged offensive. The first, under Field-Marshal yon Rundsteat was to strike through Spain againsv rihraltar The second under memMaSalvonßock, was aimed. through Greece across the Central Mediterranean The third, "n.der Field-Marshal yon List, was to drive down through Turkey; Syria, and Palestine against Cairo.

FORCE TO INVADE SPAIN. Strangely enough, plans prepared for Rundstedt's offensive were what ultimately wrecked the whole scheme in Hitler's eyes. Goering and his advisers were confident of taking Gibraltar They had assembled along the Pyrenees 15 infantry and armoured divisions, three A.A. divisions armed with Bbmm nlateau if resistance was tougher than supposed, and several batteries of neSS siege guns for the bombardment o batteries .and emplacements These guns, which were seen first at Bordeaux station, were carried on railway mountings so wide that they straddled two lines of rails. Meanwhile, careful diplomatic soundings had revealed that the Government of Franco Spain was unlikely to offer serious resistance at that time to a German march. Similar feelers put out in Portugal, whose coastline Goering intended to occupy for the use of U-boats against Britain s South Atlantic trade, revealed a very different, -• uncompromising attitude. Germany was informed in no uncertain Ss that if she invaded Portuguese territory she would have to fight her way in.

HITLER AND PORTUGAL. It was at this point that the strange, inexplicable madness of Hitler intervened. The man who had invaded Belgium, Holland, Norway, and Denmark, all peaceful neutral States, without a tremor of conscience now derided that it would lowct Germany s prestige in the eyes of the world if she went to war with Portugal. He ordered the whole plan for an offensive n'rainst the Mediterranean to be called off fof the^akl of Portugal's neutrality. At least, no better explanation of the sudden cancellation of the plan has yet been given, not even by Goering himself to his interrogators when he feff into Allied hands. "One morning, ne says, the plan was ready to go forward- the next he received notice from the ruhre" that the Mediterranean operation was to be suspended. And h^'an^Ts-plrafely^nSr^ forcements to Gibraltar-a battalion of the Devonshire Regiment was the firAnd° a gs°'day after tranquil day slid by the defenders wondered What has happened? Why are they not coming? —precisely as other men were watchin? and wondering on the Channel coast hundreds of miles away to the