Goering's charmed life

stona said:

Goering did come from a relatively well to do background,unlike most nazi leaders. Whether someone is Aryan or not is a nonsense anyway,except to a nazi. It's a term properly applicable to a group of languages not a mythical race of people.

Goering was a competent politician and one of the brighter of the nazi leadership. He was one of the parties most successful organisers in the inter war years.
His performance at Nuremberg,once clean,particularly against the first (US) prosecutor,Jackson,was impressive whether we like or not.
I've read transcripts of the trials. It is boring,laborious and not recommended

Transcripts of Goering's cross examination are here for those who want to read what he actually said in his defence.

Goering Transcript

The discussion about disclosure at the start of the second transcript would make any modern day lawyer uncomfortable. The prosecution has done away with one of the foundation stones of all legal systems based on English Common Law.

Part 4,with the British prosecutor,covers the execution of the Great Escapees.

You don't have to like the man or what he stood for. I certainly don't,but to dismiss his entire carreer in terms of the drug addled "fat man" of popular propaganda is not a useful way of understanding how the nazis came to and excercised power with such dreadful consequences for all of us. Battering your way through the transcripts of these trials is.

Steve

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This wasn't a history class, Steve, and this guy got enough due process. Granted, he was good at what he did. And that's to include everything you just said. But this was a trial and in no sense of the term was he railroaded in it.

VBF-13 said:

This wasn't a history class, Steve, and this guy got enough due process. Granted, he was good at what he did. And that's to include everything you just said. But this was a trial and in no sense of the term was he railroaded in it.

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I never suggested otherwise. He got the verdict he deserved,he was as guilty as it was possible to be. The sentence was inevitable.You won't find me crying over Hermann Goering.

I do feel it is important to make rational assessments of all these men,however distasteful that may be. We must learn the lessons of history and that involves a certain honesty on our part.

Cheers
Steve

davebender said:

I agree.

Why didn't Goering get appointed Chancellor rather then Hitler?

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To break a political deadlock, Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor as a weak but charismatic figurehead who could unite the country while controlled by the powers that be, essentially the military. Bad call.

Balljoint said:

IMO Hitler was a raging romantic with an uneven talent –or more likely a knack- for detail and tactics, but was unable to even spell strategy or logistics. He was quite ready to take Germany down as it failed to attain his objectives. He largely succeeded but was frustrated by intervention by those refusing his orders.

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and that was the big difference between him and hirohito....which i found a little surprising. after the japanese defended just about everything to the death one would imagine the emperor would echo the same sentiments. and i think that is why america and the allies werent too enthused about invading mainland japan. but he chose the rational consequence where hitler was so upset thinking the nation let him down he offered them up for sacrifice ( and punishment) instead of suing for a peace to save what he could. then of course he cowardly took his life. i am high jacking my own thread...

i dont think there is any discrepency that goering WAS a good leader and WAS capable. but that at some point his perversions and addictions got the best of him and the lw suffered. it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had galland or someone else replace him in late 43/ early 44...or was that too late?

stona said:

Goering did come from a relatively well to do background,unlike most nazi leaders. Whether someone is Aryan or not is a nonsense anyway,except to a nazi. It's a term properly applicable to a group of languages not a mythical race of people.

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Not in the term the Nazis used it. To the Nazis it was that super human mythical race.

Well, that is pretty much what you are saying anyhow.

stona said:

I do feel it is important to make rational assessments of all these men,however distasteful that may be. We must learn the lessons of history and that involves a certain honesty on our part.

Cheers
Steve

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Absolutely.

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

Not in the term the Nazis used it. To the Nazis it was that super human mythical race.

Well, that is pretty much what you are saying anyhow.

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I reckon we're on the same song sheet here

You are right to say that the term did,of course,have a different meaning to the nazis.

It was all part of their racist ideology, supported by fraudulent pseudo science. They spend a lot of time and money doing archeological and anthropological research,all over the world,which amazingly always gave them the results that they wanted, That's a topic for another time and place.

Where's Indiana Jones when you need him ?

Cheers

Steve

bobbysocks said:

it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had galland or someone else replace him in late 43/ early 44...or was that too late?

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Too late! After Operation Gomorrah which devastated Hamburg, Goering, in one of his better moments, teamed with Galland to jointly petition Hitler to repurpose the LW to the defense of the homeland, i.e. to return units from the Soviet Union and concentrate on the production of fighters and training of pilots. Hitler went ballistic and condemned the concept as "defensive". Goering attempted to go one on one with Hitler and was savaged. The outcome was a switch to FLAK as the primary defense, a directive for the LW to emphasis "offensive" bombers and an abandonment of the fighter effort, though this was tempered somewhat by the usual end-run around Hitler. The P-51B didn't show up over Berlin until six months later.

On the basis of this result along with several other strange decisions by Hitler, it's my personal belief that Hitler had already recognized that the war was lost and had resorted to pursuit of the honorable, i.e. offense rather than the cowering defense. Just a thought that's well short of being conclusive.

Hydrogenation plants (to produce aviation gasoline) require at least three years to build. Aircraft engines require about five years to develop and get into full production. EZ 42 gyro gunsight required 7 years development at low priority plus 3 years development at high priority. MG151 cannon required about 5 years to develop and get into mass production.

The most important Luftwaffe decisions were made during 1935 to 1939. That's when Germany needs a new Luftwaffe CiC if you want to achieve results radically different from what happened historically.

davebender said:

The most important Luftwaffe decisions were made during 1935 to 1939.

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Williamson Murray makes a compelling argument to support that view in his "Strategy for Defeat". The Luftwaffe was as unprepared for a long haul as the rest of the German military-industrial establishment.

Whether a different Luftwaffe leadership would have been able to prepare the Luftwaffe better under the political leadership of the time is unlikely. As late as 1944 the old Gauleiters were complaining when Speer wanted to direct materials from cosmetics manufacture to war production. German women needed their lip stick and of course a Gauleiter with a cosmetics factory in his district probably had a finger in the pie.

Steve

stona said:

It was all part of their racist ideology, supported by fraudulent pseudo science. They spend a lot of time and money doing archeological and anthropological research,all over the world,which amazingly always gave them the results that they wanted, That's a topic for another time and place.

Where's Indiana Jones when you need him ?

Cheers

Steve

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It also has to be remembered that it was utterly knowingly cynical too, a crass tool for manipulation of the uneducated.
Hitler is on record complaining of Himmler's so-called scientific research into the ancient Aryans (IIRC commenting about how all his work did was show how German ancestors were scrabbling around in caves as the Greek Empire rose).
Goring too is on record as saying 'I will decide who is Jewish'.
It's all so horribly appalling given the millions who suffered these 'policies'.

My understanding of Goring is that while Hitler spent the war bent over maps it was Goring who, until Speer largely took charge, ran the German economy (the 4yr plan has been mentioned).
I have not read but am also aware of his 'star' performance at Nuremberg.
He capitalised on the presence of the Russians as judges given their role in the beginning of WW2 (quite fairly in my opinion) but even there he misjudged the point entirely.
You can't justify the invasion of a country on the various pretexts claiming one as that of preemptive striking when there are documents quoting the nazi leadership as saying it would be a cake-walk.

I'm remembering a History Channel program about Nuremberg (Alec Baldwin was in it) and they talk about how Goring's joining the nazi party was a complete fluke (he was off to see some mistress got talking into going to a meeting instead?), I've no idea if this is based on the interviews of the US psychologist Gustave Gilbert or invention but something strikes me as being probably right.

I think the man was obviously a war hero to his country from WW1 but a total opportunist and with a narcissism ('my LW'?) often found in leaders but in him it was to a damaging (for Germany the LW) degree.
Mind you with a lunatic like Hitler in charge how would anyone expect to spend years in their orbit looking consistent, rational sane?
But he chose the bed he lay in - and with his aircraft manufacturer Swedish connections he could surely have stayed well out of early 20's German politics, even doing as he saw it his duty to Germany directly in other areas and nobody would have thought anything of it.

But as they say, hindsight, eh?

Goering studied in Munich during 1920/21 and it was here that he was first exposed to the fervent right wing politics of that era (and city). He joined the NSDAP in October 1922 and claimed that it was his disillusionment with Weimar politics and politicians that prompted this. He had been a member of the NSDAP for nearly two years before leaving for Sweden in 1924. He returned in 1928 and was elected to the Reichstag that same year.He was elected as speaker of the Reichstag in 1932,that's why it was he who signed many of the infamous racial laws,something that Jackson made a big deal of at Nuremberg.

His attitude to Hitler is summed up in this quote.

"If the Catholic Christian is convinced that the Pope in infallible in all religious and ethical matters, so we National Socialists declare with the same ardent conviction that for us too the Führer is absolutely infallible in all political and other matters."

Cheers

Steve