1.A BIOGRAPHYDAVID IRVINGF F O C A L P O I NT

2. Copyright by David IrvingElectronic version copyright by Parforce UK Ltd.All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of thispublication may be made without written permission. Copiesmay be downloaded from our website for research purposes only.No part of this publication may be commercially reproduced,copied, or transmitted save with written permission in accordancewith the provisions of the Co pyright Act (as amended). Anyperson who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publi-cation may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims fordamages. 3. To Thomas B. Congdon,who has helped me so much 4. is the son of a Royal Navycommander. Imperfectly educated at Lon-dons Imperial College of Science & Technol-ogy and at University College, he subsequentlyspent a year in Germany working in a steelmill and perfecting his uency in the lan-guage. In he published The Destruction ofDresden. This became a best-seller in manycountries. Among his thirty books (includingseveral in German), the best-known include Hitlers War; TheTrail of the Fox: The Life of Field Marshal Rommel; Accident, theDeath of General Sikorski; The Rise and Fall of the Luftwae; andNuremberg, the Last Battle. The second volume of his ChurchillsWar appeared in and he is now completing the third vol-ume. Many of his works are available as free downloads atwww.fpp.co.uk/books. 5. ContentsPrologue: Arrest The Reichsmarschall! Part : The Outsider A Triangular Aair Storm Troop Commander Putsch Failure of a Mission Asylum for the Criminally Insane Triumph and Tragedy The Speaker Part : The Accomplice Bonre Night Grings Pet Renaissance Man Murder Manager Open Door to a Treasure-House Getting Ready in Four Years The Bridge at Guernica The Very Private Kingdom The BlombergFritsch Aair The Winter Ball Part : The Mediator Blame It on Napoleon Sunshine Girl and Crystal Night Losing Weight Out of Favor Hoping for Another Munich 6. Part : The Predator Doctor Ready to Become Boss Yellow and the Traitors Victory in the West The Art Dealer The Big Decision Warning Britain about Barbarossa Signing His Own Death Warrant Part : The Bankrupt The Instruction to Heydrich The Thousand-Bomber Raid The Road to Stalingrad Fall from Grace Jet-Propelled Exit Jeschonnek Schweinfurt The Blind Leading the Blind Imminent Danger West Total Sacrice Witch Hunt Zero Hour for Hermann Part : The Surrogate Into the Cage Fat Stu On Trial Release Acknowledgments Endnotes Select Bibliography Authors Microlm Records Index 7. IllustrationsGring with his mother and sisters The World War ghting ace Gring proudly displays his Blue Max Carin von Fock Gring and Carin in Venice The interior of Carinhall Hitler and Gring at Carins reburial Gring addresses the Prussian parliament Hitler and his commanders at Armed Forces Day Gring weds Emmy Sonnemann Gring frisks with a pet lion cub The animal kingdom salutes Gring Grings motor yacht Carin Hitlers commanders-in-chief A rare candid shot of Hitler Emmy and Edda Gring at Fischhorn Castle Gring in his Nuremberg prison cell Gring and Hess in the dock Gring savors prison fare Gring and Lieutenant Jack G. Wheelis Nuremberg physician Dr. Ludwig Pcker Brass bullet and glass cyanide vial Postmortem 8. . Arrest the Reichsmarschall!The place reeked of evil. Standing in the wet darkness of thiswrecked bunker in Berlin, Captain John Bradin of the U.S.Army snapped his cigarette lighter shut, scooped an untidyarmful of souvenirs o somebodys desk, and groped his wayback up the dark, winding staircase to the daylight.In the warm sun the haul seemed disappointing: a brassdesk lamp, cream-colored paper with some handwriting on it,blank letterheads, imsy telegrams typed on Germany Navy sig-nals forms, and a letter dictated to my dear Heinrich.Bradin took them home and forgot about them. Fortyyears passed. In Berlin the bunker was dynamited, grassed over.The lamp ended up dismantled on a garage oor, the yellowsheaf of papers moldered in a bank vault in South Carolina.Bradin died without knowing that he had saved vital clues to thelast days of Hermann Grings extraordinary career papersthat reveal all the hatred and envy that his contemporaries in 9. . the Nazi party had nursed toward him over twelve years andtheir determination to see his humiliation and downfall in theselast few thousand minutes of Hitlers Thousand-Year Reich.The desk that Captain Bradin had found was Martin Bor-manns. Bormann had been the Nazi partys chief executive Hitlers predatory Mephistopheles. The handwriting was Bor-manns too desperate pages that mirrored the atmosphere ofhysteria in the bunker as the suspicions grew among its inhabi-tants that Gring had betrayed them.The rst telegram that Bormann had scrawled onto thecream-colored paper was addressed to SS Obersturmbannfhrer[Lieutenant Colonel] Bernhard Frank, commander of the SSdetachment on the mountain called the Obersalzberg that wasGrings last retreat: Surround Gring villa at once and arrest the former Reichsmarschall Hermann Gring at once. Smash all resistance. It was the late afternoon of April , . Russian troopshad already reached Berlins seedy Alexander-Platz district. Thebunker was lling with battle casualties, and the scent of treasonwas mingling with the mortar dust in the air. There were whis-pers of betrayal by Albert Speer, the young, ambitious muni-tions minister, and by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentropas well. And now strange messages signed by Gring himself hadbegun reaching the bunkers signals room. As heavily bandaged ocers clomped about the constrictedtunnels clutching dispatches on the battle outside, Bormannswept his desk clear of debris and scribbled a second signal to theSS unit on the Obersalzberg: 10. . You will pay with your lives if Fhrers order is notexecuted. Find out where Speer is. . . . Utmost cau-tion, but act like lightning. He was in his element. For Germany a nightmare might beending, an ordeal in which the dark hours had blazed with airraids, and nearly every family had suered the agony of be-reavement, imprisonment, deportation, or persecution. But inthe caged mind of Martin Bormann the entire battle had nar-rowed down to this: a nal settling of scores with Gring. Forfour years he had labored to depose Gring, conspiring, hopingthat the fat air-force commander would make one mistake toomany and now he had, and the telegrams were piling up onBormanns desk to prove it. Bormann dashed o a third vengeful directive, this time toPaul Giesler, the partys gauleiter in Munich:Fhrer has ordered immediate arrest of Reichsmar-schall Gring by SS unit Obersalzberg because ofplanned high treason. Smash all resistance. OccupySalzburg, etc., airelds immediately to prevent hisight. Advise all neighboring gauleiters, SS, and policeat once. Bormanns own days might be numbered, but at least he wouldhave cooked Grings goose as well.Berlin was dying, Hitler and Bormann were trapped there, andGring was doing nothing at all about it. With his plump wife,Emmy, and their little daughter, Edda, he was in his lavishlyappointed mountain villa on the Obersalzberg, three hundred 11. . miles to the south. It was April , three days since hed seen ei-ther the Fhrer or his once all-powerful secretary. Sucking acigar, he motioned to his valet, Robert, to pour out another co-gnac. Then he kicked o his boots, revealing ankles clad in ex-quisite red silk stockings, leaned back, and reected.At rst he had half-expected Hitler to join him down here,but late the day before, his adjutant had woken him with a gar-bled message from Berlin: General Karl Koller, chief of air sta,had just phoned from Kurfrst, air-force headquarters, to re-port that the Fhrer had collapsed and planned to stay put.Collapsed might that not mean that Hitler was alreadydead? That possibility had brought Gring wide awake. PhoneKoller, he ordered his adjutant. Tell him to y down here atonce.The Reichsmarschall knew that Hitler had always regardedhim as his successor. Now was the time to make it happen.Koller strode into the Obersalzberg villa at noon the nextday, saluted, and at his commander in chiefs behest read out hisshorthand notes of the previous day. Air Force General EckhardChristian, he said, had phoned him from the bunker with thecryptic message, Historic events. Im coming straight over totell you in person. When Christian arrived, he told Koller,The Fhrer has collapsed and says its pointless to ght on. . . .Hes staying on in the bunker, will defend Berlin to the last andthen do the obvious. General Alfred Jodl, chief of the armedforces operations sta, had conrmed all this to Koller at mid-night. Hitler had turned down Jodls suggestion that they swingall the western armies around against the Russians TheReichsmarschall will have to do that! was all he had said. Some-body had suggested that there wasnt one German who wouldght for Gring. Theres not much ghting left to be done,Hitler had said bitterly, and if its a matter of dealing, the 12. . Reichsmarschall is better at that than I am.Gring whistled, then acted with a decisiveness that he hadnot displayed for years. He sent for balding, pettifogging Dr.Hans Lammers, the chief servant of the Reich; Lammers alwayscarried around with him a dossier of the constitutional docu-ments relating to the succession. Gring also sent for his closefriend Philipp Bouhler; Bouhler, former head of Hitlers Chan-cellery, had masterminded the Nazi euthanasia program, butnow, like Gring, he had fallen out of favor. Finally, Gring or-dered the ak and Waen SS defenses around the villa rein-forced, and he instructed his adjutant to check out everybodycoming through this cordon.When they had all assembled, Lammers explained in hisprecise, fussy manner that after President Hindenburgs deathin , a secret law had conferred on Hitler the right to nomi-nate his own successor; in April a further law had denedwho should deputize for him. Since then, Lammers continued,Hitler had written certain codicils, and they had been seated inan ocial envelope.Gring impatiently asked to see it. Lammers was uneasyabout unsealing the Fhrers will before he was known to bedead, but he opened the metal casket. The envelope inside borethe legend Fhrers Testament. To be opened only by theReichsmarschall.Gring broke the wax seals and plucked out the contentswith bejeweled ngers. He perused the documents silently, al-most furtively, then beamed and read out loud the rst decree,which said: In the event that I am impeded in the discharge of my duties by sickness or other circumstance, even tempo- rarily . . . I denote as my deputy in all my oces the 13. . Reichsmarschall of the Greater German Reich, Hermann Gring. Fhrers HeadquartersJune , A second decree directed that immediately after my deathGring was to have both government and party resworn in hisname. It was a tricky position. Was Hitler de facto dead? Or hadhe perhaps recovered from his collapse? Suppose Bormann hadpersuaded him to draw up a new will in some rivals favor? Send him a radiogram, suggested General Koller. Askhim what to do. Gring dictated one, and it went o at :.. on April : Mein Fhrer! Acting upon information furnished by Generals Jodl and Christian, General Koller has today given me a version of events according to which in the context of certain deliberations you made reference to my name, underlining that if negotiations should become necessary then I would be better placed to conduct them than you in Berlin. These statements were so startling and serious in my view that I shall consider myself duty-bound to infer that you are no longer a free agent if I do not re- ceive an answer to this by : .. I shall thereupon consider the conditions of your decree as satised, and act for the good of nation and fatherland.May God protect you, he concluded, and see you through. . . Your faithful Hermann Gring. The noblest prize of all now glittered ahead of him headof state at last! He cabled Hitlers air-force adjutant: It is yourpersonal responsibility to ensure that the radiogram is delivered 14. . to the Fhrer in person. Acknowledge, so that in this grave hourI may act in harmony with the Fhrers wishes. Meanwhile he radioed to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel,chief of the high command, to y to the Obersalzberg if by :.. they were no longer getting direct orders from Hitler. Agovernment must be in existence, reasoned Gring, if theReich is not to fall apart. A further radiogram notied Rib-bentrop, the foreign minister, that he, Gring, was about to suc-ceed Hitler in all his oces, and that if Ribbentrop had notreceived orders to the contrary by midnight, either from Hitleror from Gring himself, he was to y down to Gring withoutdelay.These were the suspicious signals that Hitlers radio room hadmonitored in Berlin. But Hitler had recovered from the suicidaldepression that had seized him the day before. With hollow eyeshe shambled around the cement corridors clutching a soggy,tattered map of Berlin, waiting for the relief attack promised bySS troops from the north.Bad enough for Gring that his most serpentine enemies Bormann, Speer, and Ribbentrop all chanced to be in Hitlersbunker on this afternoon of April as his string of radiogramswas intercepted. It was Bormann who carried them in to Hitlersstudy and pressed the imsy naval signal forms into Hitlerspalsied hands. High treason! shouted Bormann.Treachery! Hitler had seen it as the cause of every defeatsince the attempt on his life nine months before. Now his ownchosen successor was a traitor too. He turned to Bormann, hisface expressionless. Arrest the Reichsmarschall! he com-manded.Porcine eyes twinkling with anticipation, Bormann hurriedto the radio room and seized more sheets of paper. To navy 15. . commander Grand Admiral Karl Dnitz, based now at Flens-burg in Schleswig-Holstein, he wrote: Urgent! On Fhrers orders: Reich government is not to y to Bavaria. Prevent any ight from Holstein, move like lightning. Block all airelds.And to the SS barracks on the Obersalzberg itself: () Fhrer awaits news mission accomplished fastest. () Have you taken Lammers and other ministers into custody? Arrest Bouhler too.Glimpsing Speer, his face bright with intrigue even at this des-perate moment he had been own in by a sergeant pilot in alight aircraft that had landed him near the Brandenburg gate Bormann added another radio message to the Obersalzberg: Speer has meantime arrived here.These were the pages that would be found ten weeks later, stillon Bormanns darkened desk in the bunker ruins. Among themwas a copy of a letter dated April , which Bormann had sent tomy dear Heinrich Himmler describing Grings treach-ery: In the Fhrers opinion he must have been plotting to do this for some time. On the afternoon of April the day he drove down south G[ring] told Am- bassador [Walther] Hewel [Ribbentrops liaison o- cer to Hitler], Somethings got to be done and now. Weve got to negotiate and I am the only one who can do it. I, Gring, am not blackened by the sins of the Nazi party, by its persecution of the churches, by its concentration camps . . . 16. . He said that obviously our enemies cant deal with somebody unless hes totally blameless and has even, as Gring has himself, condemned many of these things right from the start. The wording of the messages he sent summoning the others [to the Obersalzberg] show clearly enough, in the Fhrers view, what he has been working up to. He [Gring] issued an ultimatum giving him liberty to act in internal and foreign aairs; he even sent for a mobile broadcasting truck. Our detailed investigations are continuing. Its signicant that since quitting Ber- lin our former Reichsmarschall has not taken one step to help the battle for Berlin, but has devoted his entire time to preparing his little act of treachery. In our opinion, anybody else in his situation would have done his level best to prove his loyalty to the Fhrer by rendering swift help. Not so Gring! It doesnt take much to imagine how his broadcast would have run; quite apart from anything else it would have led to an immediate and total collapse of our eastern front.At : .. that evening Bormann phoned Dnitz to repeatHitlers orders that no government elements were to be allowedto y south to join Gring. Its got to be prevented at all costs,he said. Speer sent a similar message to General Adolf Galland,commander of Germanys lite Me jet-ghter squadron. Iask you and your comrades to do everything as discussed toprevent Gring from ying anywhere.Not that Gring was leaving the Obersalzberg that night.As darkness fell across the mountainside, a breeze whipped athin veil of icy snow across the sloughs around Grings villa,covering the tracks of the shadowy gures who were quietlydrawing an armed cordon around the buildings. He now had achilling response to his : .. telegram to Berlin. Decree of 17. . June , , takes eect only when I specically authorize,Hitler had radioed. There can be no talk of freedom to act. Itherefore forbid any step in the direction you indicate.So Hitler was still alive! Panicking, the Reichsmarschallpenned telegrams to Ribbentrop, Himmler, and the Wehrmachthigh command rescinding the messages he had sent out at mid-day. But it was too late. At : .. his telephone lines wentdead. By eight-fty a force of SS men had surrounded the villa,and at ten oclock SS Obersturmbannfhrer Bernhard Frankmarched in, saluted, and announced, Herr Reichsmarschall,you are under arrest!Grings -pound frame quivered with anger and in-dignation. He guessed that it was the word negotiations in histelegram that had irked his Fhrer. Hitler always hated thatword, he conceded to interrogators later. He feared I might benegotiating via Sweden.The Reichsmarschall spent a disturbed night. At : ..Frank returned with another telegram from the Berlin bunker.In this one Bormann accused Gring of betrayal but promisedhe would be spared provided that he agreed to resign for rea-sons of ill health. Gring was swept with feelings of childish re-lief, not because his life was to be spared but because Hitlerseemed not to have stripped him of any oces other than air-force commander: He was still Reichsmarschall, or so he couldargue. Nonetheless, the guard was not removed, and his troubleswere only beginning.Twenty-four hours later, while he lay in bed half awake, hesensed the windows beginning to vibrate gently at rst, thenwith increasing amplitude. A deafening roar swept along thevalleys toward the mountainside. Plates fell o shelves, a closetdoor swung open, and the oor began to heave. The English!cried one of the guards. 18. . There had been no radar warning to the villa, because thephone lines were still cut. A hundred yards down the slopes aheavy ak battery bellowed into action as the four-engined Lan-caster bombers came into sight. Smoke generators belatedlypumped out articial fog that snaked lazily down the moun-tainside as thick as a San Francisco pea-souper, and through itspungent fumes came shattering explosions, trampling closer andcloser to the villa.His face chalk white, Gring leaped to his feet. Clutchinghis silk pajamas around him, he shouted, Into the tunnels! Butan SS ocer waved him back at gunpoint.As a second wave approached, the guards nerves crackedtoo. They bundled Gring and his family into the dank, damptunnels drilled into the limestone beneath the villa, rudelypushing him as they stumbled pell-mell down the steps intothe subterranean labyrinth. The lights failed, the ground trem-bled, and Gring shuddered too. It was symbolic of the power-lessness of his air force that enemy bombers could parade oversouthern Germany like this.As the massed Russian artillery began slapping armor-piercingshells and high explosives into the Reich Chancellery buildingabove his bunker, Hitler was still counting on his trusty Hein-rich Himmler to relieve Berlin. Bormann, meanwhile, contin-ued to indulge in sweet revenge. Kicked Gring out of theparty! he sneered in his diary on April . And when GeneralHans Krebs, the last chief of the general sta, notied Keitel,chief of the high command, by radiophone that Hitler hadstripped the Reichsmarschall of all his oces, Bormann grabbedthe phone and shouted, And that includes Reich chief game-keeper too!If Berlin now fell, Bormann wrote to Himmler, Germany 19. . would have to accept peace terms. The Fhrer could never dothat, while a Gring no doubt would nd it quite easy. At anyrate, we stay put and hold out here as long as possible. If yourescue us in time, its going to be one of the wars major turningpoints: because the dierences between our enemies are widen-ing every day. I, for one, am persuaded that once again theFhrer has made the right decision. Others are less convinced orchoose to oer comfortable advice from a safe distance. Theresnot much of a rush to come into Berlin to see the Fhrer now.A few hours later, however, the bunkers teleprinter rattledout the stunning news that Himmler had oered peace talks tothe British through Stockholm.Obviously, fulminated Bormann in his notes on thetwenty-seventh, H.H. is wholly out of touch. If the Fhrerdies, how does he plan to survive?!! Again and again, as thehours tick past, the Fhrer stresses how tired he is of living nowwith all the treachery he has had to endure!Four days later Bormanns writings would be entombed inthe deserted bunker and he, like Hitler, would be dead.The British bombers had lifted Grings luxurious villa o themountainside. Among the ruins lay the torn envelope withshattered seals that had contained the Fhrers testament. In thetunnels one hundred feet beneath the cratered landscape lan-guished Gring with his sta and family still held at gunpointby the SS. By the guttering light of a candle, recalled his per-sonal aide, Fritz Grnnert, a few days later, they threw him intoone of the tunnels and left him there. Nothing was brought toeat, nobody was allowed out.His wife and daughter shivered in their night attire.Gring tried to send a telegram to Berlin setting the recordstraight, but his captors refused even to touch it. He was now a 20. . nobody, like the thousands of politicians, trade-union leaders,and newspapermen whom he had himself incarcerated over thelast twelve years. Hungry and unwashed, and craving opiates tokill the pain of ancient injuries, he wallowed in self-pity. He hadno doubt that Creature Martin Bormann was behind all this I always knew it would come to this, he wailed to Grnnert. Ialways knew Bormann would grow too big for his boots and tryto destroy me.As the days passed, however, he saw the guards dgetinguneasily, arguing quietly among themselves. The residualauthority that Germanys top-ranking soldier still exuded wassomething not to be tried with. On April , SS Standarten-fhrer (Colonel) Ernst Brausse, one of Himmlers legal sta, ar-rived. He promised to send o Grings signal, but the atmos-phere was still unnerving. Nobody could contact anybody else,said Grnnert later. There were dreadful scenes, with every-body crying even the men. At the end the whole thing wasdownright shameful.Late on April , a new SS unit took over and removedGring from his military sta. As they parted, Gring, tuggingo some of his rings to give to the men as mementos, suggestedthat evil was afoot. It seems likelier that Himmler had decided totake the Grings out of Bormanns personal domain. TheReichsfhrer SS undoubtedly realized that, in the nal End-kampf, a live Reichsmarschall was a more readily negotiabletrump than a dead one.Whatever the reason, the escort relaxed. Gring was evenasked where he would like to be conned. He aably mentionedMauterndorf Castle, forty miles beyond Salzburg. Early on April, he took leave of his bodyguard with a God be with you untilwe meet again, climbed in the back of his armor-plated May-bach limousine with little Edda while Emmy sat in the front, and 21. . waved grandly to the chaueur to drive o. A short while later,escorted by an SS platoon in trucks, the cavalcade rattled overthe Mauterndorf drawbridge and into the castle yard.He had spent part of his childhood here at Mauterndorf.It had belonged to his Jewish godfather. He promptly resumedhis pasha life-style, and something of the old Gring bonhomiereturned. Fine wines and a case of Dutch cigars were brought upfrom the cellars for Gring to share with Colonel Brausse.Emmy made only one appearance in the great halls of the castle,and on that occasion she spent the whole evening weeping toHermann about everything they had lost. Once Brausse sawGring icking through a diary he had written as a boy; andonce Gring fetched his family genealogy and showed Braussehow he could trace his bloodline back to most of the countrysemperors as well as Bismarck and Goethe.There was, of course, an animal cunning in all this. Theprisoner wanted to establish rapport with his captor. In this heat rst seemed to have succeeded. Visiting General Koller a dayor two after the arrival, Brausse assured him, You know,Grings a splendid fellow. I wont do him any harm.All the time Gring kept his ears and his pale blue eyeswide open. On the radio he heard Berlin announce his retire-ment but still there was no mention of his losing the Fhrersuccession. On April , Brausse showed him a new signal fromthe bunker: Shoot the traitors of April if we should die.Gring murmured dismissively, Bormanns handiwork again!and saw Brausse nodding in sage agreement.But on May , when the radio announced Hitlers death,the SS colonel did, in fact, telephone Field Marshal Albert Kes-selring, commander in chief in the south, to inquire if he shouldnow execute Gring. Kesselring advised him not to but no-body wanted to order the Reichsmarschalls release, either. 22. . Humiliated, Gring sent his doctor to plead with GeneralKoller. Koller passed the buck to Kesselring, and Kesselringpassed it on to Grand Admiral Dnitz, who vouchsafed no re-ply. Dnitz, no friend of the once-haughty Hermann Gring,probably relished his humiliation now.That afternoon, May , an air-force general drove pastMauterndorf with an air-signals regiment and saw the unmis-takable shape of Gring strolling along the fence with his SScaptors.Gring beckoned him over. Tell Koller to act now! hehissed angrily. Tell him that I, as Germanys most senior gen-eral, must be sent to meet Eisenhower. Tell him I am the mostpopular of our generals, particularly in the United States.Koller still did nothing.On the sixth, Kesselring nally ordered the Reichsmar-schalls release. Characteristically, Gring romanticized this mostundignied end to his custody into a more heroic version: Hisown air-force troops, pulling back in exhaustion from Italy, hadrouted the SS unit and freed their beloved commander in chief.While he was standing there, said a British interrogator a fewdays later, reporting Grings account, surrounded by SS men,members of Number Air Signals regiment passed by. Uponseeing him, they ran forward to greet and cheer their belovedcommander. Gring, swiftly sizing up the situation and ndingthat the Luftwae men outnumbered the SS, ordered them tocharge. . . . It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life[Gring said to the interrogator] to see them present arms totheir commander in chief again. Once freed of the SS, Gring sent a radiogram up to Ad-miral Dnitz, oering to handle the negotiations with the en-emy. 23. . Grand Admiral! Are you fully aware of the deadly intrigue hatched by Reichsleiter Bormann to eliminate me? . . . Bor- mann waged his campaign against me entirely by means of anonymous radiograms . . . to SS Ober- sturmbannfhrer Frank on the Obersalzberg. . . . Reichsfhrer Himmler will conrm to you the out- landish scale of this intrigue. I have just learned that you are planning to send Jodl to Eisenhower for talks. I consider it absolutely vital . . . that parallel to Jodls negotiations I approach Eisenhower unocially as one marshal to another . . . I might create a suitably personal atmosphere for Jodls talks. In recent years the British and Americans have displayed a more benevolent attitude to me than to our other political leaders.The ghting had all but ended. Gring sent his adjutant o bycar to contact the Americans, bearing a laissez-passer and twosecret letters, addressed to Marshal Eisenhower and U.S. Armygroup commander General Jacob L. Devers. The letter to Eisenhower, verbose and tedious, read in part: Your Excellency! On April , I decided as senior ocer of the German armed forces to contact you, Excellency, to do everything I could to discuss a basis for preventing further bloodshed . . . On the same date I was arrested with my family and entourage at Berchtesgaden by the SS. An order for us to be shot was not carried out by our captors. I was simultaneously expelled from the National Socialist party. The public was informed by radio that I had been retired as air-force com- mander in chief because of a severe heart ailment . . . Under the decree appointing me deputy Fhrer I had the law on my side. I have only today managed by force of circumstances and the approach of my own 24. . air-force troops to regain my liberty . . .Despite everything that has happened during myarrest, I request you, Excellency, to receive me with-out any obligation whatever on your part and let metalk to you as soldier to soldier. I request that yougrant me safe passage for this meeting and accept myfamily and entourage into American safekeeping. Fortechnical reasons I would propose Berchtesgaden forthis purpose. . . .My request may perhaps appear unusual to YourExcellency, but I make so bold as to state it, since I amreminded that the venerable marshal of France,Ptain, once asked me for such a meeting at an hourof similar gravity for his own country. . . . Your Ex-cellency will understand what emotions inspire me atthis most painful hour, and how very grieved I was tobe prevented by arrest from doing all I could longbefore to prevent further bloodshed in a hopelesssituation.The accompanying letter asked Devers to radio this message toEisenhower immediately. It is unlikely that Eisenhower ever re-ceived it.Gring then sent Eisenhower a message suggesting Fisch-horn Castle at Zell am See, fty miles away, near Salzburg, fortheir historic meeting. He lingered at Mauterndorf, claiming tobe awaiting a reply, but in fact he hated to leave this castle childhood memories of his parents and of games of knights inarmor clung to its walls. Besides, Russian troops, AustrianCommunists, or Bormanns assassins might be lurking beyondthe castle keep.At midday on May , an irate Koller phoned and told himthat a top American general, the deputy commander of the th(Texas) Division, had put on all his medals and nery anddriven through the lines to Fischhorn Castle. You asked for 25. . that rendezvous, said Koller. Now keep it. Grumbling andhesitant, Gring climbed into the twelve-cylinder Maybach andset o with his family and what remained of his sta. He wasuniformed in pearl gray, with a tentlike greatcoat that appedopen over his fat paunch to reveal a small Mauser pistol on hisbelt.Some thirty miles short of Salzburg they encountered theAmerican posse. Tired of waiting, the American ocers had setout to fetch him. Both convoys stopped, facing each other.Brigadier General Robert I. Stack, a burly, white-haired Texan,met Gring, saluted smartly. Gring returned the courtesy, us-ing the old-fashioned army salute, not the Hitler one.Do you speak English? asked Stack.The Reichsmarschall smiled wearily. His face was abbyand lined, the famous John Barrymore prole betraying a hintof his eagerness to meet Eisenhower, mingled with sorrow that along adventure was over.I understand it better than I speak, he apologized.He apologized again, for not being better dressed. TheG.I.s pealed with laughter at his vanity.Emmy began to cry. Her husband chucked her under thechin and said that everything was going to be all right now these were Americans.Stack motioned toward his American sedan. As HermannGring clambered in, he muttered something under his breath.Twelve years, he growled. Ive had a good run for mymoney. 26. . A Triangular AairHermann Gring the Fhrers chosen successor; last com-mander of the legendary Richthofen Squadron; commander ofthe storm troopers and of the German Air Force; speaker of theGerman Parliament, prime minister of Prussia, president of thePrussian State Council; Reich master of forestry and game; theFhrers special commissioner for the Four-Year Plan; chairmanof the Reich Defense Council; Reichsmarschall of the GreaterGerman Reich; chairman of the Scientic Research Council Hermann Wilhelm Gring, holder of all these titles, styles anddignities, architect of the Gestapo, the concentration camp, andthe giant industrial conglomerate bearing his name, was born inBavaria on January , . His father was a haughty German colonial ocial, hismother a simple peasant girl, his godfather a Jew. Dutiful re-searchers would trace his ancestral line back to one MichaelChristian Gering, who in was appointed economic control- 27. . ler (commissarius loci) to His Majesty, Frederick the Great, kingof Prussia, and to Andreas Gering, who had been a pastor nearBerlin a hundred years before that.His parents had married in London in May . For Dr.Heinrich Ernst Gring, then age fty-six, it was the secondmarriage. For Franziska (Fanny) Tiefenbrunn Catholic,open-faced, irtatious, and over twenty years his junior it wasthe rst. Dr. Gring, Protestant, grave, tedious, was a formerjudge like his father, Wilhelm. He already had ve children byhis rst marriage and he would have ve more by Fanny, withHermann the second of her two sons.Under Prince Otto von Bismarck, Heinrich had become acolonial governor. In the Iron Chancellor had launchedGermany on a brief era of colonization in Africa, northernChina, and the South Pacic. Bismarck had sent Dr. Gring toLondon to study the problems of colonial empire, then to Ger-man Southwest Africa (todays Namibia) as minister resident, orgovernor. He rendered the mineral-rich, beautiful colony safefor traders there is a Gring Strasse in its German-speakingcapital, Windhoek, to this day struck up a friendship withCecil Rhodes, the British imperial pioneer, then left with Fannyto a new posting as consul general in the disease-ridden formerFrench colony of Haiti. Fanny produced their rst child, Karl-Ernst, in and bore two daughters, Olga and Paula, beforereturning to Bavaria carrying Hermann in her womb.It was in the Marienbad Sanitarium at Rosenheim that theremarkable subject of our story entered the world in January. Six weeks later his mother returned to the Caribbean,leaving him to spend his infancy in the care of a friend of hers atMirth near Nuremberg; this friend, Frau Graf, had two daugh-ters, Erna and Fanny, some three years older than Hermann.Three years later Dr. Gring brought Fanny back to Ger- 28. . many to retire. Hermann told one psychiatrist some monthsbefore his death that this was his earliest memory as the ladyintroduced to him as his mother stooped to hug him, hepounded this strangers face with both tiny sts.In March a younger brother, Albert, had been born atRosenheim. Albert remained the black sheep of the family. Hebecame a thermodynamics engineer, fell out with Hermann asthe Nazis came to power, and moved to Austria, where he ap-plied for citizenship in the hope that this would put a safe fron-tier between himself and his domineering brother.In Hermanns father retired from government serviceand they moved to Berlin. Gring told Nuremberg psychiatristPaul L. Schroeder fty years later that he recalled riding in ahorse-drawn coach to Berlin a passing farm cart broke onewindow, and he remembered seeing a man badly cut, with trick-ling blood. Three years old by then, he had only the vaguestmemories of life in the pleasant Berlin suburb of Friedenau. Hisolder sisters spoiled him, and his father indulged his whims asthough he were the favorite; Hermann venerated rather thanloved the old gentleman there were sixty-four years betweenthem, and his father was as old as the grandfathers of hisfriends.As he grew up, Hermann noticed something else. In AfricaDr. Gring had befriended the corpulent, dark-haired doctorwho attended Fannys rst connement, Hermann von Epen-stein; he had probably named Hermann after this Austrian Jew.Epenstein had used his wealth to purchase his title, sexual fa-vors, and prestige. He became godfather to all the Gring chil-dren and may have imprinted on the young Hermanns char-acter traits that were not always wholesome the conclusion, forinstance, that money could buy everything, and a contempt formorality. 29. . But it was Epensteins castle in Franconia the countrysidearound Nuremberg that left its most powerful mark onGrings childhood. A towering jumble of castellated walls, builtand rebuilt over nine hundred years on the site of an old for-tress fteen miles from the city, Veldenstein Castle had begun todecay during the nineteenth century. In stones had crum-bled onto four houses beneath, and the then-owner, Nurembergbusinessman Johann Stahl, decided to unload it onto some un-suspecting purchaser. Army physician Dr. Hermann Epen-stein (no von then), property owner of Berlin, bought it fortwenty thousand marks on November , ; over the nextforty years, until it was formally deeded to Field MarshalHermann Gring on Christmas Eve, , this philanthropicgentleman would pour one and a half million marks into therenovation and reconstruction of its keep, its roof timbers, itsinner and outer fortications. Veldenstein Castle was the ro-mantic setting for Hermanns boyhood. Undoubtedly Epensteinhad provided it to the Gring family out of a sense of obligationto the elderly former colonial governor, Dr. Gring, whoseyoung wife he had taken quite openly as his mistress.This bizarre triangle would persist for fteen years.With the approach of manhood it dawned on the youngHermann that it was not without carnal purpose that his god-father, Epenstein, had retained for himself the nest of the cas-tles twenty-four rooms, close to Fanny Grings comfortablyappointed bedroom forbidden territory now to his cuckoldedPapa, who was consigned to meaner quarters on the groundoor.It was altogether a rare experience, growing up at Velden-stein. What boy of spirit would not have thrilled to live in thisancient pile, surrounded by dramatic mountain slopes and for-ests of dark conifers? Playing knights-in-armor at age eight, 30. . Hermann would look down from the battlements and have vi-sions of Roman chariots and of plumed warriors galloping in thevalley. You must come and see Veldenstein Castle, his sisterOlga would tell people in later years. Then you will understandhim better.When he was ve, his father had given him a Hussarsuniform. And when his fathers military friends came to stay atthe castle, Hermann would play with their caps and swords inhis bedroom at night. He saw himself in sword and buckler,jousting, crusading, triumphing always triumphing in theend.He was a robust child who suered only tonsillitis andscarlet fever. As a young man he developed arthritis, but thiswould vanish never to return after his groin injury. Theeducation begun in his parental home was continued at Furth in; his collected papers included reports from Furth PrivateBoys School dated March and July , . It was a Catholicschool (he was born and conrmed, in , as a Protestant),but it was the closest to the castle. He did not take easily to for-mal education, became something of a malingerer, and men-tioned later that he was taught by a private governess afterleaving Furth. Packed o to boarding school at Ansbach in ,he stood it for three distasteful years, then absconded back toVeldenstein. Schools only lasting legacy was an abiding dislike ofintellectual pursuits, which inspired his scathing witticism,When I hear the word culture I reach for my Browning!Years later a psychiatrist would note that he played noteam sports and preferred singles matches in tennis, and that hepreferred too the lonelier masculine pursuits like mountaineer-ing. In his youth he was known to lord it over the farmhandssons, and became their natural ringleader.A change came over him when his father entered him at 31. . one of Germanys best ocer-cadet schools, at Karlsruhe. Heourished like a failing plant newly placed in a window. He worea crisp uniform, and when he visited the Graf sisters and hisown sister Paula, who were attending nishing school nearby, heclicked his heels, presented their headmistress with owers, andinvited the girls to a local pastry shop, where he found he hadno funds to pay.Hermann Gring with his mother (far left) and sis- ters Paula and Olga at Bad Tlz. In Hermann Gring progressed to the military acad-emy at Gross Lichterfelde, outside Berlin. It was GermanysWest Point. He luxuriated in the social life of the Prussian o-cer, imagined his manly breast already ornamented with medals,and willingly submitted to the disciplinary straitjacket that wasthe price for what he coveted power over the destinies of oth-ers.He sailed easily through his nals in March . Althoughat loggerheads with the civilian teacher of academic subjects, hehad got on famously with the military instructors and scored points (or so he later claimed), one hundred more than needed 32. . and the highest in the history of the academy. The survivingrecord shows that he gained a quite good in Latin, French,and English, a good in map reading, a very good in Ger-man, history, math, and physics, and an excellent in geogra-phy. On May , , his forty-four-year-old company com-mander at the academy signed this report to Hermanns proudfather: I beg to inform Your Excellency that your son Hermann recently passed the ensign examination with the grade summa cum laude. After the examination Gring joined his pals on a sightseeingtrip to Italy. He kept a careful diary in a gray quarto-sized note-book, illustrating it with picture postcards of the art and archi-tecture. The little group hit Milan on April . Hermann chuck-led over the way the cathedral clergy cadged for tips, he soughtand found Leonardo da Vincis Last Supper (it has been wellrepaired, the eighteen-year-old Gring noted, but it has lostits original beauty), and he remarked upon the garrison char-acter of Milan. As he gazed, on the following day, upon thecitys other famous works by Rubens, Raphael, Titian, and Bel-lini, there stirred within him the rst signs of appreciation thatwould make him, thirty years later, one of the worlds most dis-cerning collectors. He noted in his diary: For two hours we went from painting to painting, but scarcely even began. There were magnicent pictures, and several sculptures on display as well. At midday we stood once more before the cathedral, taking in the magnicent metal portals that we overlooked yester- day. 33. . A train journey that was rst class only in name, across the low-lands of Lombardy (interesting, he commented, only for itsnumerous battleelds), brought the little group to Verona. , (). Passing through the Porta Nuova we had our baggage closely checked. They think anybody arriving with a camera is a spy. Went rst to the famous ancient Roman arena. It made a colossal impression. These gigantic monoliths, these immense walls that threaten to collapse at any mo- ment, the sheer scale of the amphitheater all vivid evidence of the great Roman age . . . In a German restaurant we called for some Mu- nich Lwenbru beer, then turned in at eleven ..; but it was some time before we could get any sleep as a loud altercation began between a lot of men and women right outside our hotel, and it was conducted with authentic Italian vigor.This youthful diary is in a U.S. Army archive in Pennsylvania. Asubsequent diary, written by Gring four months later duringthe mountaineering holiday he took in the Bavarian Alps, is nowin private possession in New York. The diary, inscribed Hermann Goering, German-Austrian Alpine Club, Salzburg, describes an eight-hour climbto the summit of Salzburgs famous Watzmann Rock andmountaineering exploits in the Dolomites, including his pio-neering ascent of the twin Wild Sander peaks south of Lienzwith his two friends Barth and Rigele, probably Friedrich Rigele,the Austrian lawyer who married Olga Gring. Several locationsthat gured later in Grings life are featured in this diaryspages among them, the Brgerbru beerhall, Berchtesgaden,and the Hotel Geiger. The adventure began, as did so many forhim, at Veldenstein: 34. . , . At exactly four .. the alarm clockrattled me out of my splendid dreams of soaringmountains, glaciers and chimneys in the Dolomites.. . . I sallied forth from the old castle as the rst rays ofthe rising sun shone upon it. Everybody was fastasleep instead of rejoicing in this lovely Sundaymorning. The train left Neuhaus [Veldensteins sta-tion] just before ve .. and pued o through theJura mountains toward Nuremberg. . . . At eleven wewere in Munich. I made my way to the Brgerbrurst to seek refreshment in a mug of Munich beer. . . .At the station hobnail climbing boots rang on thepaving, well-stacked rucksacks were on every back, inshort you could see this was the start for the Alpinetravelers. . A shopping spree through Salzburg Alpine Club membership card, climbing boots, irons,etc., had to be obtained, and my mountain bootsneeded renailing. . . . . Wakened at three-thirty .. Straight towindow to look at the weather, it was clear and theWatzmann and its children were standing there insuch splendor that they kindled great hopes in mybreast. It was by no means certain wed get to thesummit, as the weather could thwart us at any mo-ment. At four-thirty we set o from the Hotel Geiger.. . . The path climbed gradually to the rst Watzmannhut, mostly through forest. In one clearing weglimpsed a deer grazing peacefully without paying usthe slightest attention. After two and a half hours wereached the Mitterkaser pastures, where the steepermeadows began. The path snaked uphill in long,winding bends. A couple with a nine-year-old boyfollowed us from the Mitterkaser, dressed from headto foot in city suits. These simple-minded Saxonsclambered straight up, pouring with sweat, without ofcourse making any faster progress than we did. 35. . After eight hours Hermann Gring had reached the Watz-manns summit. As his little party descended, he rejoiced in theview of the Knig See, surrounded by mountains bathed in thesunsets glow and crisscrossed by the wakes of two white motorboats. Then he set o for the main climbing adventure in theTyrol, overlooking the Italian frontier: . We strolled through Lienz and purchasedwhat we needed. Lienz is very well placed as a startingpoint for the Dolomites, the Schober Group and Kals;a pretty little town in the Puster Valley. Like all townsin the southern Tyrol it is a garrison for the ImperialRies (Kaiserjger). . . .On the next day they climbed to the Karlsbad Hut at , me-ters (, feet) in the Dolomites. . We had a lively talk about mountains, Al-pine Club, guides, huts and the Bohemian question.. . . A wonderful sight: The little hut nestles betweentwo dark green lakes in the middle of the Laserzkar,framed by the sheer rockfaces of the Lienz dolomites.A desolate mountain wilderness extended beyond it,with the proud twin peaks of the Wild Sander. . . .Tomorrow we plan to climb it. As the two peaks arejoined by a narrow ridge, we want if possible to climbboth.The next day they struggled onward to the ninety-three-hundred-foot summit. . . . . After half an hours rest we put on theforty-meter rope and began the traverse of the southface of the Seekofel. This is endless, as it goes roundthe whole mountain. The ledge we were on was very 36. . good and relatively wide, but very long. Finally we found ourselves in a ssure. . . . Therst bit of chimney was all right but then overhangingrocks blocked the way and forced Barth to workround them. We crossed over into the left branch ofthe chimney, but this was considerably narrower,wetter and more dicult. I left my rucksack here,tucked some cramps and pitons into my pockets andclimbed up to Barth, who was inside a ssure andtrying vainly to get out; the crack was extremely nar-row, overhanging, and lacked any handhold. As wewormed up it we had the unpleasant feeling that itwas squeezing us out. Barth tried again and againwithout any luck. So we did it like this: We hammered in two pitonsto which Barth tied himself and then climbed on upas far as he could; I climbed up after him inside thessure and wedged myself in so that my hands werefree to give Barth a leg up. With this kind of humanladder Barth managed to get past the smooth bit. Hisleft hand found a hole he could use as a handhold af-ter clearing out the pebbles. Then he doubled around(very dicult) and thus got into the main chimney. Iwasnt too well placed, as the entire rubble Barth wasclearing out landed on my head and he was standingon my hands. I then climbed back down to the bot-tom of the ssure, releasing the rope from the fas-tening and climbed after him. After hard work and alot of exertion I too overcame the ssure, and wasgratied to nd myself in the broad chimney, as I feltsuocated in the narrow crack. This was probably thereason why this route had never been climbed before.... We had to step out onto a ledge barely a handsbreadth, with a sheer drop down into Laserzkar. Thehut and lakes seemed tiny down there boy, it waswindy up here! Straddling the knife-edge ridge like ahorse, I crossed between the two peaks. 37. . The twin summit conquered by an as-yet-untried route, noth-ing remained but to return. I had a frantic thirst, he wrote inhis diary, and ordered Barths own well-tried drink red winemixed with hot water and sugar. Exhausted, he opped into bed that afternoon. How splendid everything was from up here, he musedon July , . Alone with nature and nice people, I thoughtof the hot, dusty cities, particularly of Berlin; I thought of thebare walls and drab parade ground of the corps, and thankedGod I could enjoy the heights of nature. He ended this illuminating (and hitherto unpublished) di-ary with the words, Every morning, incidentally, I discovered Ihad dreamed all night of the events of the day before.Dreamy, physically brave, and romantic, young HermannGring was inducted into the infantry as a subaltern in March. The war academies were overowing. He remained at GrossLichterfelde and passed the ocer examinations in December. He would write in his curriculum vitae that he spent hisspare time watching the airplane-acceptance ights at HabsheimAireld. My interest in ying, he pointed out, was always verypronounced.On January , , he joined his regiment. If war breaksout, Lieutenant Hermann Gring assured his sisters, you canbe sure Ill do credit to our name.War did break out that August. It is not easy to unravel thetruth about Grings personal contribution to it from the skeinsof legend that he afterward encouraged lively accounts of hisexploits in command of small infantry platoons skirmishing withthe French, riding bicycles into the enemy lines, commandeer-ing horses, plotting once to kidnap a French general, hiring air- 38. . planes, jousting with (almost) equally brave airborne enemies. Sadly, his personal papers were looted from his privatetrain at Berchtesgaden in May , among them the two wardiaries that he wrote in August , a private diary kept inter-mittently between September and May , and ve yinglogs recording all his ights from November , , to June ,; one of these private diaries is known to be in privateAmerican hands, but the owner has refused to let anyone see it.However, in court historians began working on his mili-tary biography and lled four green les with selected WorldWar documents; these green les, which gure in the inven-tory of the Berchtesgaden train, are now in U.S. Army hands inPennsylvania. They include Grings complete personnel recordsince , forty-four selected air-reconnaissance reports, andextracts from war diaries and personal-mission reports. The unrelenting evidence of these documents is sometimesdicult to reconcile with the attering Gring biographies. Thepersonnel le shows him as a junior infantry ocer of BadenRegiment (the Prince Wilhelm), garrisoning Mhlhausen,close to the French border, that August of . It was a quietsector, and he saw only leisurely action as a platoon commanderin the battles of Vosges, Seenheim, and Lorraine, and then asbattalion adjutant in the ghting at Nany-Epnaul and at Flirey.He was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class, but only ve weeksinto the war he was stricken down with arthritis and evacuatedfrom Thiacourt to Metz on September . From here he was sentto the rear for further treatment in southern Germany. This seemingly inglorious beginning changed his life. Con-valescing at Freiburg, he struck up a friendship with Bruno Lo-erzer, a dashing young army lieutenant undergoing yingtraining. Listening to Loerzers tales, Gring rediscovered hisinterest in ying. I applied, he stated in his personnel record, 39. . for posting as an airborne observer. Authorized biographerErich Gritzbach wrote that having been rejected for observertraining, Gring nevertheless moved with Loerzer to Darmstadtand started ying as his observer in deance of all rules andregulations. In fact, he was routinely posted to Air ReserveDetachment at Darmstadt for observer training on October . The Gritzbach legend maintained that Gring stole aplane to join Loerzer at Field Air Detachment. The person-nel le shows this (regular) posting beginning on October ,with Gring ying as Loerzers observer at Verdun until the endof June , but again it makes no mention of any stolen plane.The detachments war diary shows that by mid-February Lo-erzer and Gring were ying an Albatros, No. B; they hadpicked up photographic equipment at Trier, and Gring hadtaken a rapid radio and Morse signaling course. Their mission reports gave both men a rst-class opportu-nity of mingling with the top brass. Hermann pasted into hisalbum snapshots of the Prince of Hohenzollern with him onVouziers Aireld, General von Knobelsdor with Loerzer andhimself, and other visiting notables. On the last two days of Feb-ruary the war diary mentioned that Lieutenant Gring hadtaken the reconnaissance reports in person to brigade or corpsheadquarters. After particularly valuable reconnaissance ightsover the dangerous armored gun battery at Cte de Talon, thetwo intrepid aviators were summoned to the royal presence onMarch and personally decorated by the crown prince, whocommanded the Fifth Army, with the Iron Cross First Class.The air-force lieutenants Ghring and Lrzer [sic], recalledthe prince in his memoirs, were among those who dis-played conspicuous dash and zeal. Gring became a frequent visitor in the royal mess. Whenhe strolled in, all eyes went to this handsome, broad-shouldered 40. . young man with the penetrating blue eyes and square jaw. Hewas good at his job, as the excellent reconnaissance photographstestify clear, dramatic pictures of the enemy airship hangar atVerdun, the spreading maze of enemy trenches, the enormouscraters left by tunnel mines. On June , when enemy planesbombed the headquarters at Stenay, it was Loerzer and Gring,now ying a -horsepower Albatros, who although unarmedmanaged to force one of the raiders down. The two ocerswere rewarded, the war diary records, with an invitation toHis Imperial Highness the crown prince.The legend has it that he took ying lessons at his own ex-pense, but once again the personnel le is more mundane. Itshows that he was posted to the ying training school atFreiburg (where he rst met Loerzer) at the end of June ,and returned to the Fifth Army in mid-September. He ew hisrst operational sortie as a ghter pilot on the third day of Oc-tober a -minute patrol after which he nonchalantly wrotein his report that he had fought o seven French planes oneafter the other.The planes were primitive, the pilots daredevils andgladiators; their life expectancy was not long, but if they shotdown an enemy ocer the man might be dined for days after-ward in the German messes. There was a chivalry toward a de-feated foe then that did not recur in other arenas or in laterwars.On November , , Gring was credited with his rstocial kill, a Farman shot down at Tahure. For the FifthArmys great assault on Verdun, which nally began threemonths later, he ew ghter No. G, one of the big three-hundred horsepower AEG planes. In this fast, heavily armedghter, with its superior rate of climb, he shot down a Frenchbomber on March . His observers action report reads: 41. . Air battle with three big French warplanes, Caudrons. After fteen minutes managed to shoot down one . . . It went down toward the French lines in a steep glide with its port engine on re and Lieutenant Gring giving chase; we managed to force it to land behind our lines (southeast edge of Haumont Woods). We circled overhead at feet until we observed them taken prisoner . . . Their plane had about a dozen hits. The crew, an ocer and a sergeant, were both unin- jured.On June , , he was given a new Halberstadt plane,No. D. He had been comfortable at Stenay Aireld hepasted into his album pictures of himself at his well-appointedwriting desk and even better-appointed dressing table butfrom July he ew sorties from Metz over the Third Armysfront. A typical action report six days later records four missionsby him: In one dogght over Cte Claire he red ve roundsinto an enemy Voisin, killing the observer, then lost his quarryas it plunged into the clouds. Gradually his score increased, al-though some claims were disallowed. I regret, wrote the lieu-tenant colonel commanding the Fifth Armys air element, that Iam unable to credit to Lieutenant Gring the plane shot downon July . He was, however, credited with a twin-enginedCaudron destroyed at Mameg on the thirtieth (his third kill).For three months after that the Gring le recorded only aseries of new postings back to Field Air Detachment, thenback again to Combat Squadron (Kampfstael) Metz, and threeweeks after that, on September , to Fighter Squadron(Jagdstael). Bored as the ghting stagnated, he asked to beposted to Fighter Squadron; the crown prince gave permis-sion, and on October , again with his buddy Loerzer, Gring 42. . made the transfer. Here he ew mainly escort duty for bombersuntil his luck ran out, on November , ; he incautiouslytackled an English Handley-Page bomber without realizing thatit had powerful top cover from ghters. A machine-gun bulletembedded in his hip, Gring nursed his crippled plane back tohis own lines and made a crash landing in a cemetery.Plane in need of repairs, recorded the unit war diary.The same was true of its pilot, and he spent four months in hos-pitals at Valenciennes, Bochum, and Munich.The legend would have it that he was ordered to report toBblingen to convalesce but returned directly to the frontclaiming he could not nd the town on the map. Be that as itmay, the more prosaic personnel records show him being postedas a ghter pilot in mid-February to Bruno Loerzers Fighter Squadron in the Upper Alsace. Ten days later, on March, Gring signed this combat report: Took o [in Albatros , No. D] March , , with First Lieutenant Loerzer on pursuit mission. At about four-thirty I saw three Nieuports attacking two German biplanes. I immediately closed on the nearest hostile and loosed o a few short bursts at it. I then attacked the second Nieuport, which suddenly lost height and made o at low altitude.On April , the record shows, he shot a British biplane outof a ight of four and saw it go down in ames northeast of Ar-ras. Five days later he reported a dogght with six Sopwiths overSt.-Quentin. He expended rounds of ammunition and hadthe satisfaction of seeing one Englishman spinning out of con-trol into the German lines.On the twenty-ninth, Gring shot down a Nieuport,watched it crash, and learned later that the British pilot, a Flight 43. . Lieutenant Fletcher, survived with a bullet in his leg. As I ewon to Behain at three hundred feet, he reported that night, asecond enemy single-seater swooped down, pursued by an Al-batros. The Englishman briey attacked me and shot out myrudder . . . I could not see what happened then as I had myhands full ying my plane without a rudder.By the end of World War Hermann Gring was one ofGermanys top-scoring fighter aces. These dry reports give something of the avor of air com-bat in those days. On May he had been given command of FighterSquadron, operating from the same eld as Loerzer at Iseghemnear Ypres. As the grim and bloody battles of Arras and Flandersdragged on, the rivalry between pilots was intense: , : Attacked a Nieuport that engaged me from above. I gave chase. In a protracted duel he kept recovering and attacking me. Finally I forced him down at Moorstedt, where he ipped over and caught re. The dogght had been watched by the entire Fighter Squadron either from the ground or from the air, so . . . there can be no question of any other plane claiming this one . . . Five hundred rounds expended. 44. . This victory was credited to him, but not others. On July heengaged a Spad, lost sight of it as hot oil sprayed into his face,then believed he saw it crashing west of Ypres; but he was deniedthe credit. Nine days later he attacked a patrol of Sopwith sin-gle-seaters and shot one down on the second pass: Immediately after that I had to take on a second hos- tile, which I forced down to about six hundred feet, but my engine had caught some bullets and suddenly began to race; it just spun in its mounting, and my plane at once went into a spin. I put the plane down behind our third line of trenches and ipped over. The second hostile therefore got clean away . . . [signed] .He was allowed the next claim, a Martinsyde destroyed south ofPaschendaele on the twenty-fourth. That was number ten. OnAugust he downed his eleventh, another Sopwith: At : .. I attacked an enemy force of nine single- seaters with my squadron. They were fast biplanes. I dived on the leading hostile . . . closed right in to about feet and opened re. Suddenly ames and thick smoke belched out of the plane and the hostile spiraled down into dense cloud. I plunged in after him, but could not nd him beneath the clouds as there was a lot of haze at the lower levels. I had clearly seen the plane on re. Fired rounds. [signed] . It pained Gring that his slim-waisted aviators uniformstill lacked the highest Prussian decoration the blue-enamelcross of the Pour le Mrite, the Blue Max, but as a ghter acehe was still way down the league table. On November , , 45. . the top air ace was the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen,with sixty-one kills; Gring and Loerzer had scored fteen each,and their friend Ernst Udet one fewer. Thirty years later, Lo-erzer would snicker to fellow generals that his buddy LieutenantGring had inated his mission claims. Do the same, Loerzerclaimed Gring had urged him, otherwise well never getahead!At wars end, Lieutenant Hermann Gring, lean and handsome, proudly displayed the Blue Max, the Pour leMrite medal, at his throat. Despite his robust good looks, his general health causedmore problems than his war injuries. In February he washospitalized with a throat infection for several weeks. In his ab-sence, the Germans began stitching their ghter units intolarger formations, using four squadrons in a wing (Geschwader).Von Richthofen was given No. Wing, and Loerzer No. .Gring was consumed by an envy that was only partly allayed bythe kaisers award, at last, of the Pour le Mrite on June , . Richthofen had been shot down and killed on April , butGring was passed over as his successor. He now had eighteenocial kills. On June , he gunned down a biplane near Villers 46. . and four days later, ying a Fokker distinguished by white en-gine cowling and white tail, he poured two hundred roundsinto a Spad prowling at low level along the front lines Heplunged vertically like a rock from thirteen hundred feet andimpacted at the northwestern corner of the horseshoe woodsouth of Coroy behind our front lines. I circled several timesover the crash site.That was number twenty. On June , he destroyed an-other Spad near Ambleny.A few days later Richthofens successor was killed, and thesquadrons adjutant, Lieutenant Karl Bodenschatz, formallyhanded to Hermann Gring the wooden cane that symbolizedcommand of the famous ghter unit at a parade on July .(Bodenschatz, a burly, talkative twenty-seven-year-old, hadbeen injured four times already in the Boelcke Fighter Stael; hewould remain Grings chief aide until .) The days of easykills were now over. On the day after taking over, Gring at-tacked a Caudron at point-blank range, and saw the bullets justbouncing o the armor. On the sixteenth, he claimed histwenty-second victory, sending another Spad spiraling downinto woods near Bandry. After that perhaps preguring hislater career, in which dazzling bursts of activity would give wayto a deadly lethargy Gring awarded himself ten days leaveand departed, assigning temporary command to Lothar vonRichthofen, Manfreds brother.When the world war ended the morale of these German aviatorswas high. Lieutenant Gring refused to turn his equipment overto the victors. Ignoring the armistice terms, he evacuated hisplanes to Darmstadt and demobilized his men on the premisesof a paper factory at Aschaenburg. At a farewell binge in thetowns beer hall he spoke about Germanys bitter lot with an elo- 47. . quence that surprised him. Our time, he declared, will comeagain! He was uncertain about his future. For a while he stayedwith fellow ghter ace Ernst Udet in Berlin, then returned to hiswidowed mother, Fanny Gring, in Munich. A British air-forceocer, Frank Beaumont, had been charged with the local en-forcement of the armistice terms. As luck would have it, Gringhad ensured that this ocer was treated with more than cus-tomary chivalry when he had been shot down, and Beaumontnow returned that kindness in various ways; this softened thetransition from the unreal wartime world of heroism and ad-venture to the harsher reality of postwar Munich. Seeing no future for military aviation here, he sought hisfortune in Scandinavia. The Fokker company invited him todemonstrate their latest plane in Denmark, and Gring agreed provided he could keep the plane as payment. That spring of the Danish government asked him to recommend whichaircraft their forces should purchase. His reputation as theRichthofen Squadrons last commander was high, but his lifehad an undeniable aimlessness now. He staged aerobatic displayswith four former Richthofen Squadron pilots. On another oc-casion fawning Danish pilots paid him twenty-ve hundredkroner and all the champagne he could drink for two daysaerobatics over Odense. Emboldened by the liquid portion ofthe honorarium, that night Gring switched around all theguests shoes outside their rooms at the Grand Hotel and cartedseveral young ladies about in a wheelbarrow singing loudly; hissponsors had to retrieve him from the local police station. He had broken several maidens hearts; one now broke his.At Mainz in he had fallen in love with Kthe Dorsch, ayoung actress appearing on the local stage; blond and blue-eyed,this Garbo-like creature would become one of Germanys most 48. . illustrious performers, although she would remain in peoplesmemories for her wit and presence rather than for any conven-tional beauty. For three years Lieutenant Gring courted her,and when she announced her intention of marrying the actorHarry Liedtke, Gring swore revenge and threatened to strangleLiedtke with his bare hands. Kthes photograph traveled in hisluggage long after, and in the subsequent sad years of Europesnightmare this modern Joan of Arc would often turn to him,intervening to rescue acquaintances from persecution.In the summer of he ew on from Denmark to Swe-den. At Malmstt he sold o his Fokker plane and joined theembryonic Swedish airline Svenska Lufttrak, whose joint ownerKarl Lignell preferred war veterans as pilots because of their vastying experience. A Swedish license to y passenger planes,dated August , , soon joined Grings prized possessions.He had political ambitions even then. At the end of Sep-tember the German legation in Stockholm reported to Berlinthat Lieutenant Hermann Gring was now describing himself asa candidate for the post of Reich president.A mere lieutenant was not enough for him, and he soonlearned that even a captain (Hauptmann) was worth more insociety. Writing from Stockholm on February , , he ap-plied for demobilization from the army with the desired rank ofcaptain and permission to wear the air-corps uniform; ifgranted this request, he said, he would forfeit his rights to anypension and disability allowance. It is absolutely essential for myfurther station in life, he explained, writing to his regimenttwelve days later, that my request for discharge be processed asrapidly as possible. In a further letter on April , he againoered to sacrice his pension rights, explaining now that therank of captain would be of particular advantage in my civiliancareer. 49. . The army granted his request two months later.It seemed therefore that Captain Hermann Gring, distin-guished German aviator and knight of the Order of Pour le M-rite, might spend the rest of his life in Sweden. He bought Lan-genscheidts dictionary of Swedish, and started to learn the lan-guage.With his dazzling good looks and his courtly manner hewas a killer in Swedish society, but he found no woman whocould ll the gap left by Kthe Dorsch until February , the night that a young and wealthy Swedish explorer, CountEric von Rosen, chartered Grings plane for a ight up to hiscastle, Rockelstad. After a bumpy, stomach-pitching ightthrough gathering blizzards, Gring landed expertly on the fro-zen lake next to the castle and accepted the counts invitation tospend the night. He had always liked castles. Balloons of cognacin their hands, Hermann and Eric strolled through the greatstructure, pausing once before a giant stued bear the ruggedbeast reached out stiy at the Norseman who had slain it withhis spear. By coincidence there were several swastika emblemsembellishing the castle. The swastika had yet to appear on theags and armbands in drum-beating parades across NaziEurope, and Hermann had never seen one before; Count Erichad discovered the swastika emblem on rune stones in Gotland,and had incorporated this harmless Nordic symbol of the risingsun everywhere at Rockelstad embossed on the hearth andiron redogs and on one wall of his shooting box in thegrounds.As Gring puzzled at the emblem, he was distracted by arustling sound, as a statuesque, auburn-haired lady glided downthe stairs. This was Carin, Countess von Fock; her sister wasErics wife. Upright, round-faced, and tenderhearted, Carin wasthe thirty-one-year-old daughter of a Swedish ocer and his 50. . Irish wife. She was bored with life in general and her ocer hus-band, Nils von Kantzow, in particular: She was eager for ad-venture and hungered for romance. It is not impossible thathaving noticed a prominently featured interview of Gringpublished in the Svenska Dagbladet two weeks before he hadcommented on a recent airplane crash she and Eric had actu-ally plotted to arrange the aviators enforced sojourn at theircastle.Whatever theorigins of their meet-ing, Gring fell deeplyin love with Carin vonFock. She was nearlyve years older; shewas dierent from anyother woman he hadset eyes on. Sheshowed him the tinychapel of the familysprivate Edelweiss Or-der nestling behindthecastle,and Soulful and mystically inclined, Carin vonHermann detected in Fock became Grings first wife in 1923.her something of the maternal feeling that hehad always missed in his own mother. Before ying back toStockholm the next morning, he wrote in the guest book:Hermann Gring Kommandeur, Jagdgeschwader Freiherr vonRichthofen, February , .Afterward, he penned these emotional lines, betraying adepth of feeling found scarcely anywhere else in his writings: 51. . I would like to thank you from my heart for the beautiful moment that I was allowed to spend in the Edelweiss chapel. You have no idea how I felt in this wonderful atmosphere. It was so quiet, so lovely, that I forgot all the earthly noise, all my worries, and felt as though in another world. . . . I was like a swimmer resting on a lonely island to gather new strength be- fore he throws himself anew into the raging torrent of life. . . .Her sister Lily had married a German ocer (he had died onthe battleeld), and now Carin decided to divorce Nils and tomarry a German ocer too.Between stolen weekends with Carin von Fock in Stock-holm or at the castle, Gring maintained his humdrum exis-tence piloting air taxis for Svenska Lufttrak. In their les is onereport he wrote in March : When the warmer weather setin, this read, there were more requests for round-trip ights,so it would be worth advertising these on Sundays. He addedhis criticisms of their current organization: There is muchconfusion about who gives orders, distributes jobs, and takesresponsibility.A few days later, on April , , Svenska Dagbladet re-ported that Captain Hermann Gring, who has for monthsbeen one of Stockholms most popular air chaueurs, hadshown o his white-cowled wartime Fokker ghter plane with its-horsepower BMW engine at an aerobatics display.Meanwhile his love aair with the married Swedish count-ess grew into a public scandal in the straitlaced city. If anythingat all sanctied it then, it was the depth of the emotion that eachfelt for the other. This becomes clear only now that the lettersthey exchanged have surfaced in the United States. (From asurviving inventory of his most precious documents, stored in 52. . an empty wine crate in the air-raid shelter at Carinhall in Feb-ruary , it is clear that they included her intimate letters tohim, as well as his diaries; they were among the cache plunderedfrom his private train in Berchtesgaden in .) Carins lettersto Captain Gring hint at the mounting opposition that heradulterous aair with an itinerant German aviator had arousedin her parents; the estrangement from her father would last un-til her death.That summer of Hermann and Carin traveled toGermany. (Nils was away, taking a course at Frances Saint-CyrMilitary Academy.) Hermanns older brother, Karl-Ernst, metthem at the Munich railroad station. Carin looked at the twobrothers and decided they were both German to their nger-tips. Hermann had gallantly lled her hotel room with roses,and he took her to meet his mother, Fanny Gring (whom theSwedish countess also described as Germanic). Fanny scoldedHermann like a small boy he had stolen Carin from her hus-band and from her seven-year-old son, Thomas von Kantzow.Hermann stuck out his jaw, turned on his heel, and took Carindeantly into the mountains with him. They spent a few idyllicweeks at Bayrischzell, in the depth of the Bavarian mountains.The photographs show her in a peasant costume, towering overher young lover, with the pastures and mountains of Bavaria inthe background.As his marriage crumbled, Nils von Kantzow showed a he-roic stoicism, and even a generosity that Carin surely ill de-served. He wrote to her parents saying that he still loved her;when he met her briey in Berlin on August , she assured himthat all she wanted from life was her mother, husband, and littleThomas, but when she returned to Sweden she added Hermannto that list and made it plain she wanted her German lover tocome and live with her, even though it meant losing her hus- 53. . band. To her uncomprehending sorrow, Nils declined to let hersalvage Thomas from the family collapse along with the otherjointly owned property at No. , Karlavgen.She wrote to Gring from that address on December ,, thanking him for two letters and telegrams from Berlinand Munich: Darling! You really need not have any concern for me. Nils is so nice to me, and no one else is angry with me. It is so terrible for me without you, my only eter- nally beloved. I feel more and more how deeply and warmly and sincerely I love you. I dont forget you for a minute. Thomas is my consolation. He is so sweet and dear and loves me so faithfully and deeply. He has gotten so big, and he laughs and kisses me every time he sees me. Today was his last day at school and he got the highest marks in every subject. He was so happy, he had two sweet tears in his blue eyes!Her mother-in-law, she continued, that old witch, hadphoned Nils two days ago to ask for her address; Nils had saidshe was back in his home in Karlavgen, and his mother hadcongratulated him and written Carin a cloying letter reproach-ing her, which evoked from her only a scornful comment, writ-ten to her distant lover: Isnt she a conceited, idiotic old mon-key??? You asked me [wrote Carin to Hermann] about writ- ing from Bayrischzell. Yes, darling, always write me at Karlavgen. It is after all better to be open about it. I told Nils the whole truth the rst day I was back. I told him you were with me at Bayrischzell and that you had rented our house for me. He took it all very calmly and even said he was glad to know I was happy and hadnt been all by myself. 54. . On the following day she wrote more, lamenting that Nils andher own family never left her alone Nils always wants to talkto me and in spite of the fact that he is nice and friendly, I ambored to death! She went on: Darling, oh, how I long for you! . . . Moreover Nils still hasnt given me a cent. What a nerve! He knows I dont have anything. Today I told him, Youll have to give me a little money, I want to give Mama and my sisters something for Christmas! No, Carin dear, says he, no need for you to do that: Ill give presents to your relatives and friends! Have you ever heard anything so dumb? . . . This ignorance makes him seem like a scoundrel, but at the same time like an angel or a child. I get so nervous I can hardly stay in the same room or house with him. More and more I realize how much you mean to me. I love you so much. You are everything to me. There is no other like you. To me you are really my ideal in everything. You do everything so sweetly . . . You remember me with so many little things and that makes my life so happy. Now, for the rst time I real- ize how accustomed I have become to you. It is di- cult for me to say it . . . I want you to feel it in your dear beloved heart! If I could only say that with kisses and embraces, darling! I would like to kiss you from one end to the other without stopping for an hour. Do you really love me as much as you say? Is that pos- sible?? My thoughts are with you. You must feel my love everywhere, in every little corner, table and chair; in my thoughts I kiss everything that is near you that dear ugly old oor in the kitchen, your bed, your chair. I am crying, I love you so much. I think only of you, and I am true to you in everything. 55. . The remainder of this letter makes plain that her disapprovingsister Fanny had chaperoned them in Bavaria. Fanny wasscornful. Look how hes compromised Carin! she explodedover one meal. In Germany its a scandal for a woman to livethe way she did and to do the things she did. He was placing herin an impossible position in German eyes, and as a German o-cer he must have known it.Carin is the one you should be angry with, their motherretorted. Not Gring.Her cuckolded husband, Nils, continued to support her,but their curly-haired boy, Thomas, was often crying, sleepless,and worried. Nils could not live without Thomas now, Fannyreproached her sister Carin. Oh, Nils . . . He is one of the no-blest men I know.Deaf to this reproach, Carin invited Gring to live with herin Stockholm quite openly. He obeyed her call. Heedless of herparents protests, they took a small apartment in stermalm.Uneasy at this irregular union, which may have reminded himof his mothers liaison with von Epenstein in his own childhood,Gring pleaded with her to divorce Nils but she refused, fearfulof losing her son. Thomas lived with his father, torn between thetwo mnages. He slipped o after school to visit his mama andUncle Gring. Nils pleaded with her to return. Once he in-vited her to bring Hermann to lunch; young Thomas listenedround-eyed as Gring dominated the table with tales of theRed Baron and aerial combat. The little boy noticed that hismother never took his eyes o the handsome aviator.Unable to take the wagging tongues in Stockholm anylonger, Hermann and his mistress left for Germany. They begana romantic existence in a little hunting lodge at Hochkreuth,near Bayrischzell, some miles from Munich. He registered at theuniversity to study economic history, she earned money with 56. . painting and handicrafts. (There exists in the village to this daya painted cupboard door signed with her initials.) He found itwas not easy for a retired army captain in his thirtieth year toembark on higher education; they were penniless, and when shefell ill he had to pawn her fur coat to pay the doctors bill. (Nilsheroically cabled her the money to redeem the coat and buy aticket back to Stockholm.) Her mother tried to lure her homeby oering the familys summer house near Drottningholm; inher reply, inviting her mama to Munich instead, Carin addedthe eloquent assurance: Mama would not have to see Gring even at a distance. Bavaria, she wrote in this letter, of May , , is alovely countryside, so rich, so warm and so intellectual andstrong so unlike the rest of Germany. I am very happy hereand feel very much at home. When I feel homesick for Sweden,it is really only a longing for Mama, Nils, the little boy, and thoseI love. But just that painful, insane longing means that I amnearly always melancholy. Oh, my own dear Mama, if only onedidnt have such powerful love within one. 57. . Storm Troop CommanderTwo planets pass, so close that each is fractionally deected bythe others course. So it is, sometimes, with humans too. For Hermann Gring this celestial episode came late in. The orbit of this out-of-work war hero intersected brieywith that of Adolf Hitler, unknown demagogue, one Saturdayin October or November of that year, in Munichs Knigsplatz.A demonstration had been called to protest the latest Allied de-mands on defeated Germany. Gring, who was himself trying toraise a small political party of ex-ocers, heard shouts for aHerr Hitler to speak; people standing around told him that thisHitler headed a small National Socialist German Workers party.Hitler, standing a few yards away from him, declined to speak,but something about this callow, slightly built man in his earlythirties must have fascinated Gring, because he visited Hitlersregular Monday evening political at the Caf Neumann two dayslater. 58. . The topic was The Versailles Peace Treaty and the Extra-dition of the German Army Commanders. Gring was muchimpressed by what Hitler said. Hitler explained that noFrenchman was likely to lose much sleep over the kind of lan-guage talked by the other speakers at the Knigsplatz demon-stration Youve got to have bayonets to back up any threats!he exclaimed. Down with Versailles! he shouted.Goddammit, thought Gring, thats the stu. He enlistedin Hitlers new party the next day.Hitler told him he needed people just like him famous,highly decorated in the party. For Gring, Hitler also lled aneed. Meeting Hitler, he had at last found a replacement for hisdead father, his godfather, and the kaiser.The attraction between them was mutual. Impressed by theery speech that Captain Gring delivered at the Caf Neu-mann about how ocers put honor rst in any conict ofinterests Hitler recalled twenty years afterward, Hed been tothose evenings of mine several times, and I found I liked him. Imade him commander of my SA.At that time the Sturmabteilung, or storm detachment,was, as Hitler was the rst to admit, just a motley rabble. Thesetwo thousand unemployed roughnecks had the job of steward-ing Hitlers meetings and disrupting his rivals but he hadmilitary ambitions for the SA that went far beyond this.The SA was only one of several semi-legal private armiesthat had sprung up in the aftermath of Versailles. The Bavarianauthorities not only tolerated this but colluded with them to adegree that becomes clear only from the three thousand closelytyped pages of the Hitler trial that followed the unsuccessfulNazi coup of November . This bloody asco had its originsin January . Since Germany was unable to pay reparations,France and Belgium sent in their armies to occupy the rich 59. . Ruhr industrial region. Regular army ocers in Berlin andMunich men like the scar-faced army captain Ernst Rhm itched to take action against the French and saw in the privatepolitical armies a reservoir of semi-trained military personnel.Fifteen days after the invasion of the Ruhr, Lieutenant GeneralOtto von Lossow, the new army commander in Bavaria, grantedHitler his rst interview, because Hitlers SA army was by nowone of the largest.Gring took Carin along to the SAs rst big rally two dayslater, on January , .He had moved with her into a villa in Reginwald Strasse atObermenzing, just outside the boundary of Munich, in Novem-ber , soon after Hitler gave him command of the SA. Carinhad at once set about furnishing this, the rst home they couldcall their own.Nils, whose municence surpasses comprehension, had sent herthe money to furnish this villa. One room was lit by a tintedpink window the rose-hued sunlight played across a bowl ofred roses to where her white harmonium stood amid the pinkand white fur rugs beneath her mothers portrait. Her bedroomhad pink curtains and a bed canopied in blue brocade and veiledin white lace. There was nothing of this femininity inHermanns quarters his room was heavy with carved oak fur-niture and lit by a window painted with knights in armor. Aconcealed cellar had an open replace and oak cupboardsaround the walls.They married in February probably under pressurefrom the prudish Adolf Hitler. Although Hermann Gringwould later encourage biographers to believe that they had mar-ried one year earlier, the family papers show that her divorcehad only become absolute in December , and the registry at 60. . Munichs city hall conrms that the marriage was solemnized atObermenzing on February , . His private papers containedproof of a civil ceremony in Stockholm on January ; the mar-riage certicate, which was looted along with his other papers in, has now been donated anonymously to the Institute ofContemporary History in Munich, and shows the date February, . His comrades of the old Richthofen Squadron formedthe guard of honor. This second marriage changed Carins life. God! she en-thused to a friend. How wonderful it is to have a husband whodoesnt take two days to see the point of a joke. Nils now hadlittle to laugh about; years later he would still refer to Carin ashis lost treasure. Carin did not care. Aunt Mary [she wrote to her little boy Thomas that spring of ] will have told you that I am now married to Captain Gring . . . You know, the raw climate in Sweden was none too good for my health . . . We have known Captain Gring since that time in Stockholm, you will remember, and he was so kind . . . to your mama when she was lonely in a foreign coun- try. And then I found that I was beginning to like him so much that I wanted to marry him. You see, sweet- heart, he has made your mama very happy. And you mustnt be upset about it, and it wont interfere with our love for each other, dearest Thomas. You see, I love you best of all . . .Deepening his ties with the private armies in Bavaria, Generalvon Lossow agreed to Hitlers request that the SA troops shouldbe given clandestine army training. Hitlers well-known powersof charm, persuasion, and eloquence, the general would wanlyadmit, were not without eect on me. 61. . Gring had armed and enlarged the SA far beyond theboundaries of Munich. Four years younger than Hitler, he wasstill more of a drifter and adventurer than political agitator. Hewould later recall the rst pitched battle with the Communistsin Munich (on March , ) only for the beerhall bruises givenand received. Boy, how those beer mugs ew! he reminiscedtwenty years later to American historian George Shuster, with-out a trace of apology. One nearly laid me out!A few days previously Berlin had advised General vonLossow that in May the army would begin operations against theFrench occupying the Ruhr. Lossow made preparations underthe code name Spring Training and informed Gring that theSA and other patriotic bodies would be recruited for the cam-paign.Hitler was uneasy. He argued that this sequence waswrong. Theres no point, he told the general, in staging anattack on the external enemy before the domestic political issuehas been dealt with by which he meant disposing of the fee-ble, Jew-ridden central government in Berlin.Von Lossow paid no heed. To the aristocrats who ruled Ba-varia, Hitler cut an unimpressive gure at this time. He was sopoor that during one Easter outing Gring was seen giving himpocket money in fact, Gring and his new wife sank much oftheir own money into the party. The two men were inseparable,however; on April , when Hitler took the salute at the big re-view of his troops, he stood in Grings new car, a twenty-ve-horsepower Mercedes-Benz , with his arm outstretched for anhour as the thousands of SA men trooped past in uniform(eld-gray ski caps and windbreakers with swastika armbands).Today, wrote Carin proudly to little Thomas von Kant-zow in Stockholm after watching this thrilling, ominous specta-cl