FIELD-MARSHAL GOERING

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 October 1939, Page 12

FIELD-MARSHAL GOERING

“MOST DANGEROUS MAN.” Herr Hitler, in his speech in the . Reichstag announcing that war againstj Poland had begun, and that he was, about to leave for the front to take] charge of the campaign, slated that il anything happened to him ills successor as Fuhrer of the Reich was to be Marshal Goering. Although there has been much rivalry and jealousy between those Nazi leaders closely associated with Hitler, Goering has generally been regarded as the man most likely to succeed him.. He holds a number of exalted positions, such as President of the Council of Ministers Premier of Prussia, 'Air Minister of the Reich, President of the Reichstag, a general of infantry, and a geneial ol police. . . Hermann Wilhelm Goering, who is 46 years of age, is described by Miss Martha Dodd, who spent nearly five years in. Germany (1933-37), while her father was American Ambassador at Berlin, as “the most vicious, reckless, and dangerous man in Nazi Germany. Ambitious on a grandiose scale, brutal and ruthless, cold, and full of vengeance fanatic and conscienceless, he would lead Germany into possibly further extremities of misery and bloodshed.”

Goering was born at Rosenheim, Bavaria, on January 12. 1893, and at the age of 19 he was appointed to an infantry regiment as an ensign. Soon after the outbreak of the Great War he transferred to the air force, and became a member of the squadron led by the famous ace Richthofen, which became known as the Richthofen Circus. He won distinction as a Avar pilot, and was awarded the coveted medal, Pour le Merite. It is said that he shot down more enemy planes than any other .member of the squadron, with the exception of Richthofen. During the war he became a drug addict, and it is said that his reckless deeds of daring were carried out while' lie was under the influence of morphine. According to Miss Dodd some of the people who have come into contact with Goering in recent years declare that he is still a drug addict. It is quite 'certain that, for some years after the war ended he was a slave to the drug habit, and that in consequence he was placed in the Langbro Asylum in Sweden after a doctor had certified that, he was of unsound mind. Goering’s friends deny that- he was ever an inmate of. an asylum in Sweden, but his enemies support their case by a photographic reproduction of a registration card of the Yangbro Asylum showing that Captain Hermann Wilhelm Goering was admitted to that asylum on September 1, 1925. After leaving the asylum he was employed in Stockholm by an aviation company. He married Baroness von Foch, a woman of considerable wealth, who had divorced her former husband, a Swede named Captain Kantzow There was a son of this first marriage, who was left in the custody of his mother; but subsequently the father instituted legal proceedings to obtain the custody of the child. Among the evidence produced on his behalf was a certificate signed by Karl A. Lindberg, a police doctor at Stockholm, stating that “Captain Goering is a morphia addict, and his wife, Frau Karin Goering, nee Baroness Fock, suffers from epilepsy, and their home must therefore be regarded as unfitted for her son, Thomas Kantzow.” Goering became associated with Hitler at an early stage of the Nazi movement. He was wounded in the Munich Putsch of 1923, and to escape arrest after the failure of the Putsch Jie crossed to Austria and started an hotel at Innsbruck. This venture was not a success. Then he went to Sweden, where, as already stated, he spent some time in the Langbro Asylum. After returning to Germany he was elected a Nazi Deputy to the Reichstag in 1928. He is generally regarded as one of the chief culprits who set fire to (he Reichstag on the night of February 5. 1935, a crime which the Nazis tried, in 'a clumsy fashion, to fasten on the Communists. He was one of the leading spirits in the “blood bath” of June 30-July 1. 1934. when a number of prominent men in the Nazi partv suspected of plotting against Hitler were murdered. Hitler, in a subsequent speech in the Reichstag, gave the number of deaths as 77, but, according to foreign newspaper correspondents in Berlin, the actual number was nearly 300, “exclusive of suicides.”

TWO WIVES. Goering- was a devoted husband to his first wife, Baroness von Fock. After her death he built a costly mausoleum on one of his estates in Germany, and bad her body removed there from Sweden. Miss Dodd gives an interesting account of how this ceremony was carried out. “When Goering brought the body of his first wife from Sweden to rest in his estate near Berlin he was considerate enough to invite the whole diplomatic corps to participate in the ceremony of his grief.” she writes. “They all met at his lodge, were assigned places in open carriages drawn by horses, and were galloped cheerfully all over the estate, beingshown the prize animals and enclosures for hunting. Some diplomats could go hunting if they wished, and other kinds of sport were available for the rest. My father was rather chilled from driving in the open, and his good taste was deeply offended. However, lie stayed a little while, racing over the land with the equally bored Italian Ambassador’s wife. Goering, after about an hour of this, having decked; himself out in bis fetching green hunting costume, dashed back to the lodge to change his uniform. In another and more formal attire he met the diplomats again and took them to the grave of his deeply loved wife, Karin, who died of tuberculosis around 1931. “Goering's vanity and egotism are colossal, his mind and emotion as morose ami grandiose as those of Hitler himself. He has made a fetish of Kar-in-worship (i.e.. his first wife), which must, be very trying to the second Frau Goering. Apparently ideally married to a beautiful and nobly-born woman, he seemed unable to recover either privately or publicly from Karin's death. He has a portrait of her in his town house, before which he keeps a candle burning eternally, and his flagrant ceremonious and public worship of her tomb in Schorfy Heide, his country estate, indicates to what extent an unhealthy and morbid imagination can

Goering's second wile, was a wellknown actress, Emmy Sonnerniann. .She was iiis mistress lor several years before they married, and in those days Goering tried to compel people to pav homage Io her as though she were his wife. On one occasion lie took her with him on a trip to Balkan countries and “tried to force the highest society in each of these countries to accept, her, invite her along with him. and give her the homage that, would be due to his wife.” states Miss Dodd.

“These royal and diplomatic, circles refused to do it, and when Goering returned to Heflin he was reprimanded for his presumption and had his future course of action mapped out for him." He was told by Hiller that he must (nd his association with Emmy Sotinermaitn or marry her. He choose the lal.icr course, and as a result site has become oflicially the first lady in Nazi Germany (Hitler being a bachelor), ami is accepted ns such by diplomatic circles in Berlin. “Kmmy Sonnermaini is a gracious blonde woman, over 35, with coils of golden hair wound around her head, blue eyes, and a more than generous figure, a German's idea of a Gretchen grown properly matronly," stalos Miss Dodd. “Her blooming lines ami her nice, but not intellectual face do not (letrtid from a certain poi-.e mid In icio < lieei'i'iilness she reieals in social giltlieriims."