The Waikato Times WEDNESDAY, MAY 16. 1945. TREATMENT OF GOERING

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 22611, 16 May 1945, Page 4

The Waikato Times WEDNESDAY, MAY 16. 1945. TREATMENT OF GOERING

By shaking hands with Hermann Goering and allowing him to bathe, refurbish himself and don his notorious medals to be photographed the American officers no doubt were giving expression to the essential decency that is within them, but they made a mistake. They have caused the Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, to express his regret to the United Nations, and have complicated the Administration of justice to German war criminals. The order had gone forth that the soldiers of the United Nations were not to fraternise with the Germans in any circumstances. The erder was founded in good reasons. If it were wrong for the common soldiers to fraternise with the rank and file of the Germans it was doubly wrong to do honour to the man who built the Luftwaffe, who directed the aerial attacks on unprotected women and children and specifically admitted that he ordered the ghastly raid on Coventry. This differentiation in the face of rank was a serious error. If differentiation were justified it should have been in the severity of the reception of Goering. This matter cannot be dismissed as a storm in a teacup. Goering represented the central problem of Germany. He at one tin... at least was Hitler’s heir apparent. He and his Nazi crew are desperately interested in extricating German leadership from the odium of war guilt and in carrying into the new Germany something of the prestige they have enjoyed in the past decade. Almost every notable German prisoner gives evidence of this intention. They are all seeking sympathy and endeavouring to create the impression that they represent still a powerful force opposed to Bolshevism and Jewry. This will not do among honest United Nations. Germany committed foul crimes against humanity and those crimes cannot be condoned by honourable people. What has Goering done as distinct from the actions of the rest of the Nazi hierarchy to warrant an honourable or cordial reception from his captors? The world should and will remember him when he said: “I have but to touch a button and the sky will be darkened with German planes.” The misery of millions of Britons, Poles, Dutch, Russians, French, yes, and Spanish, as the terror of the Luftwaffe spread over Europe cries out for justice—for the demarkation of this war of terror as the greatest crime in history. Shall anything be done in any way to encourage a repetition of such savagery? Ask its victims. Ask the thousands still languishing in the horrors of Buchenwald and Belsen. Ask those whose sons and brothers and sisters who have been sacrificed in the holocaust which was deliberately created by Goering and his like to satisfy a ghoulish ambition. The world must mark its disapproval of this beastliness if there is to be a wholesome fear of the recurrence of war and a determined attempt to make it impossible. There was a time when a beaten foe could be treated as an honourable man. That time is not now.