Göring organised storm troopers, took over the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, formed the Gestapo, set up the first concentration camps, and took charge of the economy for the Nazi ‘Four Year Plan’.
A fine horseman and a crack shot, Göring was able to combine his enthusiasm for hunting with a sincere concern for wildlife, and opposition to vivisection. In his youth he had been something of a womaniser but two contented marriages provided him with a stability that many of the other top Nazis did not have. He met his first wife, a countess, after flying through a snowstorm and landing on a frozen-over lake in Sweden. His passenger – a wellknown explorer who’d engaged Göring to fly him home – offered him hospitality in his castle. It was there that Göring met his future wife.
For pleasure Göring read detective stories, his favourite authors being Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett, but he could talk with some authority on subjects as varied as mountaineering and the Italian Renaissance. And he could do so in Italian if need be.
Göring’s rise to power gave him a life-style rarely equalled in the twentieth century. He had castles, several hunting estates with grand lodges, and town houses too. The most remarkable of all was Karinhall – named in memory of Göring’s first wife – built between two lakes, with formal gardens, fountains and bronze statues, as well as a large section of private countryside. His servants were dressed in comic-opera outfits: knee-length coats with rich facings, high white gaiters, and silver-buckled shoes. There was a swimming pool, a vast library, gymnasium, art gallery, and one of the world’s most elaborate model-railway layouts. His study was larger than most houses, and in its ante-room there was a wall covered with photographs inscribed with varying degrees of enthusiasm: Boris, King of Bulgaria, ‘to the great marshal’, Prince Paul, Regent of Yugoslavia, ‘with thanks’, Hindenburg, ‘to Göring’.
The pink, girlish complexion, overweight body and many childish indulgences masked a personality capable of superhuman self-control. Göring, wounded during the 1923 putsch, became a morphine addict as a result of his treatment. He eventually cured himself of this addiction by willpower alone.
Five feet nine inches tall, Göring was dynamic – a fluent and persuasive enthusiast with a powerful handshake and clear blue eyes – and many of his antagonists fell prey to his charm.
Göring’s civil power as Air Minister, his military rank as Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe, and his political status made him incomparably more powerful than any other military leader in Germany. To retain his advantage, Göring was quick to point out to Hitler any failing of his rivals: the army Generals. The power and prestige of pre-war Germany had been largely due to the show of air-power that Göring’s Luftwaffe had staged. Hitler responded by treating the Luftwaffe as a privileged ‘Nazi’ service, while describing his army and navy as ‘Imperial’ legacies of the old regime.
As a confidant of Hitler, and by 1940 named as Hitler’s successor, Göring had personal access to the supreme command. As a ‘General’ who gave the army the closest possible co-operation, Göring was important to the men of the General Staff. As the air ace who inherited von Richthofen’s command, Göring had an unassailable authority among his own flyers.
In 1940 the victories in the west gave the 47-year-old Göring new power, and new tastes of luxury. He went shopping for diamonds in Amsterdam, and took a suite at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. Göring liked Paris so much that he decided to move into a fine house on the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré. That this was the British Embassy – now unoccupied except for one caretaker – made it no less attractive.
Göring took the German ambassador with him to inspect the property but when they explained the purpose of their visit, the custodian said, ‘Over my dead body, your Excellency’, and closed the door in their faces.
As far back as 1933, Hitler had authorised Göring to start a national art collection which would remain in Göring’s hands for his lifetime but then become a public collection. The conquests of 1940, and the way in which the European currencies were all pegged artificially lower than the German mark, gave new impetus to this collection. Many art treasures were simply seized: ‘ownerless’ Jewish collections and ‘enemy possessions’ were taken into new custody. To obtain paintings from unconquered countries, Göring simply swapped his surplus. A dealer in Lucerne, Switzerland, received 25 French Impressionist paintings in exchange for 5 Cranachs and 2 German Primitives.
The regal splendour of Göring’s life-style was completed by his train. Code-named ‘Asia’, its vanguard was a pilot train which accommodated the staff – civilian and military – in comfort that extended to bathing facilities. There were also low-loaders for cars, and freight wagons for Göring’s shopping.
The train in which Göring travelled, and sometimes lived, was specially weighted to provide a smooth ride. This luxury meant two of Germany’s heaviest locomotives were needed to move it. One coach was designed as bedrooms for himself and his wife, and a study. Another coach was a modern cinema. A third was a command post with a map room. A fourth was a dining car.
There were also carriages for his senior commanders and for guests, some of whom (Milch, for example) had a whole carriage to themselves. At front and back, there were special wagons with anti-aircraft guns and crews, although whenever possible the train was halted near tunnels as protection against air attack.
In the spring of 1940 Göring, who liked to be called ‘the Iron Man’, ordered his train west to Beauvais in France, a suitable place to command his Luftwaffe for the attack upon England. Few doubted that Der Eiserner was about to lead his Luftwaffe to a unique military victory. To do it would be nothing less than a personal triumph.
The Rise of the New German Air Force
In November 1918, a defeated Germany was forbidden the use of military aviation. Since there was at that time virtually no other sort of aviation, about a hundred large companies were without work.
AEG (manufacturer of the G.IV twin-engined bomber) had already planned for such a contingency. As early as 1917, they had formed Deutsche Luftreederei, an airline which would use the aircraft they built. So within three months of the war’s end, the world’s first civil aeroplane airline* connected Berlin with Leipzig, Weimar and Hamburg.
Professor Hugo Junkers, another German aircraft manufacturer, was just as quick to adapt to the changing times. On the very morning that the Armistice was signed, he had held a senior staff conference to discuss the changeover to manufacturing civil aircraft. By 25 June 1919 – three days before the signing of the Versailles Treaty – the outstanding Junkers F-13 was test flown. And while the other transports in use were cumbersome old wood-and-fabric biplanes, Junkers’s new machine was an all-metal cantilever monoplane, and such a breakthrough in design that sales were made in spite of the thousands of war surplus aircraft that were available at give-away prices. It was a period when many wartime flyers formed one-man airlines. But the manufacturers were in the most advantageous position to prosper, and Junkers had shares in several airlines.
Professor Hugo Junkers came from an old Rhineland family. He was a scientist, a democrat and a pacifist. He was also a genius. While working on gas-stove design he became interested in the efficiency of layered metal plates for heat transfer. He built himself a wind tunnel to study the effect of heated gases on various shapes, and ended up as the most important pioneer of metal aircraft construction.
By 1918, as the First World War ended, Hugo Junkers was already 60 years old. He was a white-haired old man with a large forehead and clear blue eyes. He had a large family but was ready to ‘adopt’ brilliant newcomers.
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