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Goering a biography
Kanukuntla Ranjith
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Dec 03, 2011
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Transcript of "Goering a biography"
Copyright © by David Irving Electronic 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.
To Thomas B. Congdon,who has helped me so much
is the son of a Royal Navycommander. Imperfectly educated at Lon-don's Imperial College of Science & Technol-ogy and at University College, he subsequentlyspent a year in Germany working in a steelmill and perfecting his fluency 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 Hitler's War; TheTrail of the Fox: The Life of Field Marshal Rommel; Accident, theDeath of General Sikorski; The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe; 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.
ContentsPrologue: Arrest The Reichsmarschall! Part : The Outsider A Triangular Affair Storm Troop Commander Putsch Failure of a Mission Asylum for the Criminally Insane Triumph and Tragedy The Speaker Part : The Accomplice Bonfire Night Göring's 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 Blomberg–Fritsch Affair The Winter Ball Part : The Mediator Blame It on Napoleon Sunshine Girl and Crystal Night Losing Weight Out of Favor Hoping for Another Munich
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 Sacrifice Witch Hunt Zero Hour for Hermann Part : The Surrogate Into the Cage Fat Stuff On Trial Release Acknowledgments Endnotes Select Bibliography Author's Microfilm Records Index
Illustrations Göring with his mother and sisters The World War fighting ace Göring proudly displays his "Blue Max" Carin von Fock Göring and Carin in Venice The interior of Carinhall Hitler and Göring at Carin's reburial Göring addresses the Prussian parliament Hitler and his commanders at Armed Forces Day Göring weds Emmy Sonnemann Göring frisks with a pet lion cub The animal kingdom salutes Göring Göring's motor yacht Carin Hitler's commanders-in-chief A rare candid shot of Hitler Emmy and Edda Göring at Fischhorn Castle Göring in his Nuremberg prison cell Göring and Hess in the dock Göring savors prison fare Göring and Lieutenant Jack G. Wheelis Nuremberg physician Dr. Ludwig Pflücker Brass bullet and glass cyanide vial Postmortem
. 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 off somebody's 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, flimsy 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 floor, 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 Göring's extraordinary career papersthat reveal all the hatred and envy that his contemporaries in
. the Nazi party had nursed toward him over twelve years andtheir determination to see his humiliation and downfall in theselast few thousand minutes of Hitler's "Thousand-Year Reich." The desk that Captain Bradin had found was Martin Bor-mann's. Bormann had been the Nazi party's chief executive Hitler's predatory Mephistopheles. The handwriting was Bor-mann's too desperate pages that mirrored the atmosphere ofhysteria in the bunker as the suspicions grew among its inhabi-tants that Göring had betrayed them. The first telegram that Bormann had scrawled onto thecream-colored paper was addressed to SS Obersturmbannführer[Lieutenant Colonel] Bernhard Frank, commander of the SSdetachment on the mountain called the Obersalzberg that wasGöring's last retreat: Surround Göring villa at once and arrest the former Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring at once. Smash all resistance. It was the late afternoon of April , . Russian troopshad already reached Berlin's seedy Alexander-Platz district. Thebunker was filling 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 Göring himself hadbegun reaching the bunker's signals room. As heavily bandaged officers 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:
. You will pay with your lives if Führer's order is not executed. 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 suffered 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 final settling of scores with Göring. Forfour years he had labored to depose Göring, conspiring, hopingthat the fat air-force commander would make one mistake toomany and now he had, and the telegrams were piling up onBormann's desk to prove it. Bormann dashed off a third vengeful directive, this time toPaul Giesler, the party's gauleiter in Munich: Führer has ordered immediate arrest of Reichsmar- schall Göring by SS unit Obersalzberg because of planned high treason. Smash all resistance. Occupy Salzburg, etc., airfields immediately to prevent his flight. Advise all neighboring gauleiters, SS, and police at once. Bormann's own days might be numbered, but at least he wouldhave cooked Göring's goose as well.Berlin was dying, Hitler and Bormann were trapped there, andGöring 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
. miles to the south. It was April , three days since he'd seen ei-ther the Führer or his once all-powerful secretary. Sucking acigar, he motioned to his valet, Robert, to pour out another co-gnac. Then he kicked off his boots, revealing ankles clad in ex-quisite red silk stockings, leaned back, and reflected. At first 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 staff,had just phoned from Kurfürst, air-force headquarters, to re-port that the Führer had "collapsed" and planned to stay put."Collapsed" might that not mean that Hitler was alreadydead? That possibility had brought Göring wide awake. "PhoneKoller," he ordered his adjutant. "Tell him to fly 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 chief's 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. I'm coming straight over totell you in person." When Christian arrived, he told Koller,"The Führer has collapsed and says it's pointless to fight on. . . .He's staying on in the bunker, will defend Berlin to the last andthen do the obvious." General Alfred Jodl, chief of the armedforces' operations staff, had confirmed all this to Koller at mid-night. Hitler had turned down Jodl's 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 wasn't one German who wouldfight for Göring. "There's not much fighting left to be done,"Hitler had said bitterly, "and if it's a matter of dealing, the
. Reichsmarschall is better at that than I am." Göring 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. Göring also sent for his closefriend Philipp Bouhler; Bouhler, former head of Hitler's Chan-cellery, had masterminded the Nazi euthanasia program, butnow, like Göring, he had fallen out of favor. Finally, Göring or-dered the flak and Waffen 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 Hindenburg's deathin , a secret law had conferred on Hitler the right to nomi-nate his own successor; in April a further law had definedwho should deputize for him. Since then, Lammers continued,Hitler had written certain codicils, and they had been seated inan official envelope. Göring impatiently asked to see it. Lammers was uneasyabout unsealing the Führer's will before he was known to bedead, but he opened the metal casket. The envelope inside borethe legend "Führer's Testament. To be opened only by theReichsmarschall." Göring broke the wax seals and plucked out the contentswith bejeweled fingers. He perused the documents silently, al-most furtively, then beamed and read out loud the first 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 offices the
. Reichsmarschall of the Greater German Reich, Hermann Göring. Führer's Headquarters June , A second decree directed that "immediately after my death"Göring 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 rival's favor? "Send him a radiogram," suggested General Koller. "Askhim what to do." Göring dictated one, and it went off at :.. on April : Mein Führer! 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 satisfied, and act for the good of nation and fatherland."May God protect you," he concluded, "and see you through. . . Your faithful Hermann Göring." The noblest prize of all now glittered ahead of him headof state at last! He cabled Hitler's air-force adjutant: "It is yourpersonal responsibility to ensure that the radiogram is delivered
. to the Führer in person. Acknowledge, so that in this grave hourI may act in harmony with the Führer's wishes." Meanwhile he radioed to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel,chief of the high command, to fly to the Obersalzberg if by :.. they were no longer getting direct orders from Hitler. "Agovernment must be in existence," reasoned Göring, "if theReich is not to fall apart." A further radiogram notified Rib-bentrop, the foreign minister, that he, Göring, was about to suc-ceed Hitler "in all his offices," and that if Ribbentrop had notreceived orders to the contrary by midnight, either from Hitleror from Göring himself, he was to fly down to Göring withoutdelay.These were the suspicious signals that Hitler's 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 Göring that his most serpentine enemies Bormann, Speer, and Ribbentrop all chanced to be in Hitler'sbunker on this afternoon of April as his string of radiogramswas intercepted. It was Bormann who carried them in to Hitler'sstudy and pressed the flimsy naval signal forms into Hitler'spalsied 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
. commander Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, based now at Flens-burg in Schleswig-Holstein, he wrote: Urgent! On Führer's orders: Reich government is not to fly to Bavaria. Prevent any flight from Holstein, move like lightning. Block all airfields.And to the SS barracks on the Obersalzberg itself: () Führer 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 flown 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 Bormann's darkened desk in the bunker ruins. Among themwas a copy of a letter dated April , which Bormann had sent to"my dear Heinrich" Himmler describing Göring's "treach-ery": In the Führer's opinion he must have been plotting to do this for some time. On the afternoon of April the day he drove down south G[öring] told Am- bassador [Walther] Hewel [Ribbentrop's liaison offi- cer to Hitler], "Something's got to be done and now. We've got to negotiate and I am the only one who can do it. I, Göring, am not blackened by the sins of the Nazi party, by its persecution of the churches, by its concentration camps . . ."
. He said that obviously our enemies can't deal with somebody unless he's totally blameless and has even, as Göring 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 Führer's view, what he has been working up to. He [Göring] issued an ultimatum giving him liberty to act in internal and foreign affairs; he even sent for a mobile broadcasting truck. Our detailed investigations are continuing. It's significant 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 Führer by rendering swift help. Not so Göring! It doesn't 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 Dönitz to repeatHitler's orders that no government elements were to be allowedto fly south to join Göring. "It's got to be prevented at all costs,"he said. Speer sent a similar message to General Adolf Galland,commander of Germany's élite Me jet-fighter squadron. "Iask you and your comrades to do everything as discussed toprevent Göring from flying anywhere." Not that Göring was leaving the Obersalzberg that night.As darkness fell across the mountainside, a breeze whipped athin veil of icy snow across the sloughs around Göring's villa,covering the tracks of the shadowy figures who were quietlydrawing an armed cordon around the buildings. He now had achilling response to his : .. telegram to Berlin. "Decree of
. June , , takes effect only when I specifically 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-fifty a force of SS men had surrounded the villa,and at ten o'clock SS Obersturmbannführer Bernhard Frankmarched in, saluted, and announced, "Herr Reichsmarschall,you are under arrest!" Göring's -pound frame quivered with anger and in-dignation. He guessed that it was the word negotiations in histelegram that had irked his Führer. "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 Göring of betrayal but promisedhe would be spared provided that he agreed to resign for rea-sons of ill health. Göring 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 offices 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 first, thenwith increasing amplitude. A deafening roar swept along thevalleys toward the mountainside. Plates fell off shelves, a closetdoor swung open, and the floor began to heave. "The English!"cried one of the guards.
. There had been no radar warning to the villa, because thephone lines were still cut. A hundred yards down the slopes aheavy flak battery bellowed into action as the four-engined Lan-caster bombers came into sight. Smoke generators belatedlypumped out artificial 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, Göring leaped to his feet. Clutchinghis silk pajamas around him, he shouted, "Into the tunnels!" Butan SS officer waved him back at gunpoint. As a second wave approached, the guards' nerves crackedtoo. They bundled Göring 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 Göring 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 Göring out of theparty!" he sneered in his diary on April . And when GeneralHans Krebs, the last chief of the general staff, notified Keitel,chief of the high command, by radiophone that Hitler hadstripped the Reichsmarschall of all his offices, Bormann grabbedthe phone and shouted, "And that includes Reich chief game-keeper too!" If Berlin now fell, Bormann wrote to Himmler, Germany
. would have to accept peace terms. "The Führer could never dothat, while a Göring no doubt would find it quite easy. At anyrate, we stay put and hold out here as long as possible. If yourescue us in time, it's going to be one of the war's major turningpoints: because the differences between our enemies are widen-ing every day. I, for one, am persuaded that once again theFührer has made the right decision. Others are less convinced orchoose to offer comfortable advice from a safe distance. There'snot much of a rush to come into Berlin to see the Führer now." A few hours later, however, the bunker's teleprinter rattledout the stunning news that Himmler had offered peace talks tothe British through Stockholm. "Obviously," fulminated Bormann in his notes on thetwenty-seventh, "H.H. is wholly out of touch. If the Führerdies, how does he plan to survive?!! Again and again, as thehours tick past, the Führer stresses how tired he is of living nowwith all the treachery he has had to endure!" Four days later Bormann's writings would be entombed inthe deserted bunker and he, like Hitler, would be dead.The British bombers had lifted Göring's luxurious villa off themountainside. Among the ruins lay the torn envelope withshattered seals that had contained the Führer's testament. In thetunnels one hundred feet beneath the cratered landscape lan-guished Göring with his staff and family still held at gunpointby the SS. "By the guttering light of a candle," recalled his per-sonal aide, Fritz Görnnert, 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.Göring tried to send a telegram to Berlin setting the recordstraight, but his captors refused even to touch it. He was now a
. 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 Görnnert. "Ialways knew Bormann would grow too big for his boots and tryto destroy me." As the days passed, however, he saw the guards fidgetinguneasily, arguing quietly among themselves. The residualauthority that Germany's top-ranking soldier still exuded wassomething not to be trifled with. On April , SS Standarten-führer (Colonel) Ernst Brausse, one of Himmler's legal staff, ar-rived. He promised to send off Göring's signal, but the atmos-phere was still unnerving. "Nobody could contact anybody else,"said Görnnert 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 removedGöring from his military staff. As they parted, Göring, tuggingoff some of his rings to give to the men as mementos, suggestedthat evil was afoot. It seems likelier that Himmler had decided totake the Görings out of Bormann's personal domain. TheReichsführer SS undoubtedly realized that, in the final End-kampf, a live Reichsmarschall was a more readily negotiabletrump than a dead one. Whatever the reason, the escort relaxed. Göring was evenasked where he would like to be confined. He affably 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
. waved grandly to the chauffeur to drive off. 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 Göring bonhomiereturned. Fine wines and a case of Dutch cigars were brought upfrom the cellars for Göring 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 sawGöring flicking through a diary he had written as a boy; andonce Göring fetched his family genealogy and showed Braussehow he could trace his bloodline back to most of the country'semperors 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 first seemed to have succeeded. Visiting General Koller a dayor two after the arrival, Brausse assured him, "You know,Göring's a splendid fellow. I won't do him any harm." All the time Göring 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 Führersuccession. On April , Brausse showed him a new signal fromthe bunker: "Shoot the traitors of April if we should die."Göring murmured dismissively, "Bormann's handiwork again!"and saw Brausse nodding in sage agreement. But on May , when the radio announced Hitler's 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 Göring. Kesselring advised him not to but no-body wanted to order the Reichsmarschall's release, either.
. Humiliated, Göring sent his doctor to plead with GeneralKoller. Koller passed the buck to Kesselring, and Kesselringpassed it on to Grand Admiral Dönitz, who vouchsafed no re-ply. Dönitz, no friend of the once-haughty Hermann Göring,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 Göring strolling along the fence with his SScaptors. Göring beckoned him over. "Tell Koller to act now!" hehissed angrily. "Tell him that I, as Germany's 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 finally ordered the Reichsmar-schall's release. Characteristically, Göring romanticized this mostundignified 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 Göring's account, "surrounded by SS men,members of Number Air Signals regiment passed by. Uponseeing him, they ran forward to greet and cheer their belovedcommander. Göring, swiftly sizing up the situation and findingthat the Luftwaffe men outnumbered the SS, ordered them tocharge. . . . 'It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life[Göring said to the interrogator] to see them present arms totheir commander in chief again.' " Once freed of the SS, Göring sent a radiogram up to Ad-miral Dönitz, offering to handle the negotiations with the en-emy.
. 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- sturmbannführer Frank on the Obersalzberg. . . . Reichsführer Himmler will confirm 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 Jodl's negotiations I approach Eisenhower unofficially as one marshal to another . . . I might create a suitably personal atmosphere for Jodl's talks. In recent years the British and Americans have displayed a more benevolent attitude to me than to our other political leaders.The fighting had all but ended. Göring sent his adjutant off 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 officer 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 Führer I had the law on my side. I have only today managed by force of circumstances and the approach of my own
. air-force troops to regain my liberty . . . Despite everything that has happened during my arrest, I request you, Excellency, to receive me with- out any obligation whatever on your part and let me talk to you as soldier to soldier. I request that you grant me safe passage for this meeting and accept my family and entourage into American safekeeping. For technical reasons I would propose Berchtesgaden for this purpose. . . . My request may perhaps appear unusual to Your Excellency, but I make so bold as to state it, since I am reminded that the venerable marshal of France, Pétain, once asked me for such a meeting at an hour of similar gravity for his own country. . . . Your Ex- cellency will understand what emotions inspire me at this most painful hour, and how very grieved I was to be prevented by arrest from doing all I could long before to prevent further bloodshed in a hopeless situation.The accompanying letter asked Devers to radio this message toEisenhower immediately. It is unlikely that Eisenhower ever re-ceived it. Göring then sent Eisenhower a message suggesting Fisch-horn Castle at Zell am See, fifty 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 Bormann's 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 finery anddriven through the lines to Fischhorn Castle. "You asked for
. that rendezvous," said Koller. "Now keep it." Grumbling andhesitant, Göring climbed into the twelve-cylinder Maybach andset off with his family and what remained of his staff. He wasuniformed in pearl gray, with a tentlike greatcoat that flappedopen 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 officers had setout to fetch him. Both convoys stopped, facing each other.Brigadier General Robert I. Stack, a burly, white-haired Texan,met Göring, saluted smartly. Göring 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 flabbyand lined, the famous John Barrymore profile 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 HermannGöring clambered in, he muttered something under his breath."Twelve years," he growled. "I've had a good run for mymoney."
. A Triangular AffairHermann Göring the Führer's 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; theFührer's special commissioner for the Four-Year Plan; chairmanof the Reich Defense Council; Reichsmarschall of the GreaterGerman Reich; chairman of the Scientific Research Council Hermann Wilhelm Göring, 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 official, 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-
. 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 Göring, then age fifty-six, it was the secondmarriage. For Franziska ("Fanny") Tiefenbrunn Catholic,open-faced, flirtatious, and over twenty years his junior it wasthe first. Dr. Göring, Protestant, grave, tedious, was a formerjudge like his father, Wilhelm. He already had five children byhis first marriage and he would have five 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 Pacific. Bismarck had sent Dr. Göring toLondon to study the problems of colonial empire, then to Ger-man Southwest Africa (today's Namibia) as minister resident, orgovernor. He rendered the mineral-rich, beautiful colony safefor traders there is a Göring 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 first 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. Göring brought Fanny back to Ger-
. 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 stranger's face with both tiny fists. 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 Hermann's father retired from government serviceand they moved to Berlin. Göring told Nuremberg psychiatristPaul L. Schroeder fifty 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. Göring had befriended the corpulent, dark-haired doctorwho attended Fanny's first confinement, 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 Göring chil-dren and may have imprinted on the young Hermann's char-acter traits that were not always wholesome the conclusion, forinstance, that money could buy everything, and a contempt formorality.
. But it was Epenstein's castle in Franconia the countrysidearound Nuremberg that left its most powerful mark onGöring's childhood. A towering jumble of castellated walls, builtand rebuilt over nine hundred years on the site of an old for-tress fifteen 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 Göring 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 fortifications. Veldenstein Castle was the ro-mantic setting for Hermann's boyhood. Undoubtedly Epensteinhad provided it to the Göring family out of a sense of obligationto the elderly former colonial governor, Dr. Göring, whoseyoung wife he had taken quite openly as his mistress. This bizarre triangle would persist for fifteen 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 finest of the cas-tle's twenty-four rooms, close to Fanny Göring's comfortablyappointed bedroom forbidden territory now to his cuckoldedPapa, who was consigned to meaner quarters on the groundfloor. 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,
. 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 five, his father had given him a Hussar'suniform. And when his father's 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 suffered 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 confirmed, 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 off to boarding school at Ansbach in ,he stood it for three distasteful years, then absconded back toVeldenstein. School's 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 farmhands'sons, and became their natural ringleader. A change came over him when his father entered him at
. one of Germany's best officer-cadet schools, at Karlsruhe. Heflourished 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 finishing school nearby, heclicked his heels, presented their headmistress with flowers, andinvited the girls to a local pastry shop, where he found he hadno funds to pay. Hermann Göring with his mother (far left) and sis- ters Paula and Olga at Bad Tölz. In Hermann Göring progressed to the military acad-emy at Gross Lichterfelde, outside Berlin. It was Germany'sWest Point. He luxuriated in the social life of the Prussian offi-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 finals 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
. 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 Hermann's 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 Göring 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 Vinci's "Last Supper" ("it has been wellrepaired," the eighteen-year-old Göring 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 thecity's other famous works by Rubens, Raphael, Titian, and Bel-lini, there stirred within him the first signs of appreciation thatwould make him, thirty years later, one of the world's most dis-cerning collectors. He noted in his diary: For two hours we went from painting to painting, but scarcely even began. There were magnificent pictures, and several sculptures on display as well. At midday we stood once more before the cathedral, taking in the magnificent metal portals that we overlooked yester- day.
. A train journey that was first class only in name, across the low-lands of Lombardy ("interesting," he commented, "only for itsnumerous battlefields"), 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 first 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 Löwenbräu 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 Göring 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 Salzburg's 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 Göring. Several locationsthat figured later in Göring's life are featured in this diary'spages among them, the Bürgerbräu beerhall, Berchtesgaden,and the Hotel Geiger. The adventure began, as did so many forhim, at Veldenstein:
. , . 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 first rays ofthe rising sun shone upon it. Everybody was fastasleep instead of rejoicing in this lovely Sundaymorning. The train left Neuhaus [Veldenstein's sta-tion] just before five .. and puffed off through theJura mountains toward Nuremberg. . . . At eleven wewere in Munich. I made my way to the Bürgerbräufirst 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 we'd get to thesummit, as the weather could thwart us at any mo-ment. At four-thirty we set off from the Hotel Geiger.. . . The path climbed gradually to the first 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.
. After eight hours Hermann Göring had reached the Watz-mann's summit. As his little party descended, he rejoiced in theview of the König See, surrounded by mountains bathed in thesunset's glow and crisscrossed by the wakes of two white motorboats. Then he set off for the main climbing adventure in theTyrol, overlooking the Italian frontier: . We strolled through Lienz and purchased what we needed. Lienz is very well placed as a starting point for the Dolomites, the Schober Group and Kals; a pretty little town in the Puster Valley. Like all towns in the southern Tyrol it is a garrison for the Imperial Rifles (Kaiserjäger). . . .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 between two 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 are joined by a narrow ridge, we want if possible to climb both.The next day they struggled onward to the ninety-three-hundred-foot summit. . . . . After half an hour's rest we put on the forty-meter rope and began the traverse of the south face of the Seekofel. This is endless, as it goes round the whole mountain. The ledge we were on was very
. good and relatively wide, but very long. Finally we found ourselves in a fissure. . . . Thefirst 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 difficult. I left my rucksack here,tucked some cramps and pitons into my pockets andclimbed up to Barth, who was inside a fissure 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 thefissure 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 difficult) and thus got into the main chimney. Iwasn't 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 fissure, releasing the rope from the fas-tening and climbed after him. After hard work and alot of exertion I too overcame the fissure, and wasgratified to find myself in the broad chimney, as I feltsuffocated 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 hand'sbreadth, 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.
. 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 Barth's own well-tried drink red winemixed with hot water and sugar." Exhausted, he flopped 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 HermannGöring was inducted into the infantry as a subaltern in March. The war academies were overflowing. He remained at GrossLichterfelde and passed the officer examinations in December. He would write in his curriculum vitae that he spent hisspare time watching the airplane-acceptance flights at HabsheimAirfield. My interest in flying," he pointed out, "was always verypronounced." On January , , he joined his regiment. "If war breaksout," Lieutenant Hermann Göring assured his sisters, "you canbe sure I'll do credit to our name." War did break out that August. It is not easy to unravel thetruth about Göring's 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-
. 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 five flyinglogs recording all his flights 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 filled four green files with selected WorldWar documents; these green files, which figure in the inven-tory of the Berchtesgaden train, are now in U.S. Army hands inPennsylvania. They include Göring's complete personnel recordsince , forty-four selected air-reconnaissance reports, andextracts from war diaries and personal-mission reports. The unrelenting evidence of these documents is sometimesdifficult to reconcile with the flattering Göring biographies. Thepersonnel file shows him as a junior infantry officer of BadenRegiment (the "Prince Wilhelm"), garrisoning Mühlhausen,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 fighting at Nany-Epnaul and at Flirey.He was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class, but only five 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 flyingtraining. Listening to Loerzer's tales, Göring rediscovered hisinterest in flying. "I applied," he stated in his personnel record,
. "for posting as an airborne observer." Authorized biographerErich Gritzbach wrote that having been rejected for observertraining, Göring nevertheless moved with Loerzer to Darmstadtand started flying as his observer in defiance 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 Göring "stole aplane" to join Loerzer at Field Air Detachment. The person-nel file shows this (regular) posting beginning on October ,with Göring flying as Loerzer's observer at Verdun until the endof June , but again it makes no mention of any stolen plane.The detachment's war diary shows that by mid-February Lo-erzer and Göring were flying an Albatros, No. B; they hadpicked up photographic equipment at Trier, and Göring hadtaken a rapid radio and Morse signaling course. Their mission reports gave both men a first-class opportu-nity of mingling with the top brass. Hermann pasted into hisalbum snapshots of the Prince of Hohenzollern with him onVouziers Airfield, General von Knobelsdorff with Loerzer andhimself, and other visiting notables. On the last two days of Feb-ruary the war diary mentioned that Lieutenant Göring hadtaken the reconnaissance reports "in person" to brigade or corpsheadquarters. After particularly valuable reconnaissance flightsover the dangerous armored gun battery at Côte 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 Göhring and Lörzer [sic]," recalledthe prince in his memoirs, "were among those who dis-played conspicuous dash and zeal." Göring became a frequent visitor in the royal mess. Whenhe strolled in, all eyes went to this handsome, broad-shouldered
. 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 Göring,now flying a -horsepower Albatros, who although unarmedmanaged to force one of the raiders down. "The two officerswere rewarded," the war diary records, "with an invitation toHis Imperial Highness the crown prince." The legend has it that he took flying lessons at his own ex-pense, but once again the personnel file is more mundane. Itshows that he was posted to the flying training school atFreiburg (where he first met Loerzer) at the end of June ,and returned to the Fifth Army in mid-September. He flew hisfirst operational sortie as a fighter pilot on the third day of Oc-tober a -minute patrol after which he nonchalantly wrotein his report that he had "fought off 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 officer 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 , , Göring was credited with his firstofficial "kill," a Farman shot down at Tahure. For the FifthArmy's great assault on Verdun, which finally began threemonths later, he flew fighter No. G, one of the big three-hundred horsepower AEG planes. In this fast, heavily armedfighter, with its superior rate of climb, he shot down a Frenchbomber on March . His observer's action report reads:
. Air battle with three big French warplanes, Caudrons. After fifteen minutes managed to shoot down one . . . It went down toward the French lines in a steep glide with its port engine on fire and Lieutenant Göring 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 officer and a sergeant, were both unin- jured. On June , , he was given a new Halberstadt plane,No. D. He had been comfortable at Stenay Airfield hepasted into his album pictures of himself at his well-appointedwriting desk and even better-appointed dressing table butfrom July he flew sorties from Metz over the Third Army'sfront. A typical action report six days later records four missionsby him: In one dogfight over Côte Claire he fired five 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 Army's air element, "that Iam unable to credit to Lieutenant Göring 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 Göring file recorded only aseries of new postings back to Field Air Detachment, thenback again to Combat Squadron (Kampfstaffel) Metz, and threeweeks after that, on September , to Fighter Squadron(Jagdstaffel). Bored as the fighting stagnated, he asked to beposted to Fighter Squadron; the crown prince gave permis-sion, and on October , again with his buddy Loerzer, Göring
. made the transfer. Here he flew 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 fighters. A machine-gun bulletembedded in his hip, Göring 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 toBöblingen to convalesce but returned directly to the frontclaiming he could not find the town on the map. Be that as itmay, the more prosaic personnel records show him being postedas a fighter pilot in mid-February to Bruno Loerzer's Fighter Squadron in the Upper Alsace. Ten days later, on March, Göring signed this combat report: Took off [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 off a few short bursts at it. I then attacked the second Nieuport, which suddenly lost height and made off at low altitude. On April , the record shows, he shot a British biplane outof a flight of four and saw it go down in flames northeast of Ar-ras. Five days later he reported a dogfight 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, Göring shot down a Nieuport,watched it crash, and learned later that the British pilot, a Flight
. Lieutenant Fletcher, survived with a bullet in his leg. "As I flewon to Behain at three hundred feet," he reported that night, "asecond enemy single-seater swooped down, pursued by an Al-batros. The Englishman briefly attacked me and shot out myrudder . . . I could not see what happened then as I had myhands full flying my plane without a rudder." By the end of World War Hermann Göring was one of Germany's top-scoring fighter aces. These dry reports give something of the flavor of air com-bat in those days. On May he had been given command of FighterSquadron, operating from the same field 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 flipped over and caught fire. The dogfight 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.
. 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 flipped 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 fire. Suddenly flames and thick smoke belched out of the plane and the hostile spiraled down into dense cloud. I plunged in after him, but could not find him beneath the clouds as there was a lot of haze at the lower levels. I had clearly seen the plane on fire. Fired rounds. [signed] . It pained Göring that his slim-waisted aviator's uniformstill lacked the highest Prussian decoration the blue-enamelcross of the Pour le Mérite, the "Blue Max," but as a fighter acehe was still way down the "league table." On November , ,
. the top air ace was the "Red Baron," Manfred von Richthofen,with sixty-one kills; Göring and Loerzer had scored fifteen each,and their friend Ernst Udet one fewer. Thirty years later, Lo-erzer would snicker to fellow generals that his buddy LieutenantGöring had inflated his mission claims. "Do the same," Loerzerclaimed Göring had urged him, "otherwise we'll never getahead!" At war's end, Lieutenant Hermann Göring, lean and handsome, proudly displayed the "Blue Max," the Pour le Mérite 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 fighter units intolarger formations, using four squadrons in a wing (Geschwader).Von Richthofen was given No. Wing, and Loerzer No. .Göring was consumed by an envy that was only partly allayed bythe kaiser's award, at last, of the Pour le Mérite on June , . Richthofen had been shot down and killed on April , butGöring was passed over as his successor. He now had eighteenofficial kills. On June , he gunned down a biplane near Villers
. and four days later, flying 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 Richthofen's successor was killed, and thesquadron's adjutant, Lieutenant Karl Bodenschatz, formallyhanded to Hermann Göring the wooden cane that symbolizedcommand of the famous fighter unit at a parade on July .(Bodenschatz, a burly, talkative twenty-seven-year-old, hadbeen injured four times already in the Boelcke Fighter Staffel; hewould remain Göring's chief aide until .) The days of easykills were now over. On the day after taking over, Göring at-tacked a Caudron at point-blank range, and saw the bullets justbouncing off the armor. On the sixteenth, he claimed histwenty-second victory, sending another Spad spiraling downinto woods near Bandry. After that perhaps prefiguring hislater career, in which dazzling bursts of activity would give wayto a deadly lethargy Göring awarded himself ten days' leaveand departed, assigning temporary command to Lothar vonRichthofen, Manfred's brother.When the world war ended the morale of these German aviatorswas high. Lieutenant Göring 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 Aschaffenburg. At a farewell binge in thetown's beer hall he spoke about Germany's bitter lot with an elo-
. quence that surprised him. "Our time," he declared, "will comeagain!" He was uncertain about his future. For a while he stayedwith fellow fighter ace Ernst Udet in Berlin, then returned to hiswidowed mother, Fanny Göring, in Munich. A British air-forceofficer, Frank Beaumont, had been charged with the local en-forcement of the armistice terms. As luck would have it, Göringhad ensured that this officer 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 Göring 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 Squadron's 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-five hundredkroner and "all the champagne he could drink" for two days'aerobatics over Odense. Emboldened by the liquid portion ofthe honorarium, that night Göring 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 Käthe Dorsch, ayoung actress appearing on the local stage; blond and blue-eyed,this Garbo-like creature would become one of Germany's most
. illustrious performers, although she would remain in people'smemories for her wit and presence rather than for any conven-tional beauty. For three years Lieutenant Göring courted her,and when she announced her intention of marrying the actorHarry Liedtke, Göring swore revenge and threatened to strangleLiedtke with his bare hands. Käthe's photograph traveled in hisluggage long after, and in the subsequent sad years of Europe'snightmare this modern Joan of Arc would often turn to him,intervening to rescue acquaintances from persecution. In the summer of he flew on from Denmark to Swe-den. At Malmstät he sold off his Fokker plane and joined theembryonic Swedish airline Svenska Lufttrafik, whose joint ownerKarl Lignell preferred war veterans as pilots because of their vastflying experience. A Swedish license to fly passenger planes,dated August , , soon joined Göring's prized possessions. He had political ambitions even then. At the end of Sep-tember the German legation in Stockholm reported to Berlinthat Lieutenant Hermann Göring 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 againoffered to sacrifice his pension rights, explaining now that therank of captain would be "of particular advantage in my civiliancareer."
. The army granted his request two months later. It seemed therefore that Captain Hermann Göring, distin-guished German aviator and knight of the Order of Pour le Mé-rite, might spend the rest of his life in Sweden. He bought Lan-genscheidt's 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 fill the gap left by Käthe Dorsch until February , the night that a young and wealthy Swedish explorer, CountEric von Rosen, chartered Göring's plane for a flight up to hiscastle, Rockelstad. After a bumpy, stomach-pitching flightthrough gathering blizzards, Göring landed expertly on the fro-zen lake next to the castle and accepted the count's 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 stuffed bear the ruggedbeast reached out stiffly 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 theflags 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 firedogs and on one wall of his shooting box in thegrounds. As Göring 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 wasEric's wife. Upright, round-faced, and tenderhearted, Carin wasthe thirty-one-year-old daughter of a Swedish officer and his
. Irish wife. She was bored with life in general and her officer 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 Göringpublished in the Svenska Dagbladet two weeks before he hadcommented on a recent airplane crash she and Eric had actu-ally plotted to arrange the aviator's enforced sojourn at theircastle. Whatever theorigins of their meet-ing, Göring fell deeplyin love with Carin vonFock. She was nearlyfive years older; shewas different from anyother woman he hadset eyes on. Sheshowed him the tinychapel of the family'sprivate Edelweiss Or-der nestling behindthe castle, and Soulful and mystically inclined, Carin vonHermann detected in Fock became Göring's first wife in 1923.her something of the maternal feeling that hehad always missed in his own mother. Before flying back toStockholm the next morning, he wrote in the guest book:"Hermann Göring Kommandeur, Jagdgeschwader Freiherr vonRichthofen, February , ." Afterward, he penned these emotional lines, betraying adepth of feeling found scarcely anywhere else in his writings:
. 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 officer (he had died onthe battlefield), and now Carin decided to divorce Nils and tomarry a German officer too. Between stolen weekends with Carin von Fock in Stock-holm or at the castle, Göring maintained his humdrum exis-tence piloting air taxis for Svenska Lufttrafik. In their files is onereport he wrote in March : "When the warmer weather setin," this read, "there were more requests for round-trip flights,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 Göring, "who has for monthsbeen one of Stockholm's most popular air chauffeurs," hadshown off his white-cowled wartime Fokker fighter plane with its-horsepower BMW engine at an aerobatics display. Meanwhile his love affair with the married Swedish count-ess grew into a public scandal in the straitlaced city. If anythingat all sanctified 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
. 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 .) Carin's lettersto Captain Göring hint at the mounting opposition that heradulterous affair 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 France's Saint-CyrMilitary Academy.) Hermann's older brother, Karl-Ernst, metthem at the Munich railroad station. Carin looked at the twobrothers and decided they were both "German to their finger-tips." Hermann had gallantly filled her hotel room with roses,and he took her to meet his mother, Fanny Göring (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 Carindefiantly 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 briefly 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-
. band. To her uncomprehending sorrow, Nils declined to let hersalvage Thomas from the family collapse along with the otherjointly owned property at No. , Karlavägen. She wrote to Göring 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 don't 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 Karlavägen, 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: "Isn't 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 Karlavägen. It is after all better to be open about it. I told Nils the whole truth the first 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 hadn't been all by myself.
. 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 hasn't given me a cent. What a nerve! He knows I don't have anything. Today I told him, "You'll 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: I'll 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 first time I real- ize how accustomed I have become to you. It is diffi- 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 floor 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.
. The remainder of this letter makes plain that her disapprovingsister Fanny had chaperoned them in Bavaria. Fanny wasscornful. "Look how he's compromised Carin!" she explodedover one meal. "In Germany it's 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 offi-cer he must have known it." "Carin is the one you should be angry with," their motherretorted. "Not Göring." 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 Göring to live with herin Stockholm quite openly. He obeyed her call. Heedless of herparents' protests, they took a small apartment in Östermalm.Uneasy at this irregular union, which may have reminded himof his mother's liaison with von Epenstein in his own childhood,Göring pleaded with her to divorce Nils but she refused, fearfulof losing her son. Thomas lived with his father, torn between thetwo ménages. He slipped off after school to visit his mama and"Uncle Göring." Nils pleaded with her to return. Once he in-vited her to bring Hermann to lunch; young Thomas listenedround-eyed as Göring dominated the table with tales of the"Red Baron" and aerial combat. The little boy noticed that hismother never took his eyes off 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


text: Search results Listings are for East Coast. For local listings, Enter zip code or Sign in Go Display: All Results TV Shows Movies Actors Directors Only show HD Only show new episodes We found the following shows with actor/director: "Rae Sanchini" in the next 14 days. True Lies (1994) Tue 8/4 5:00 PM 21 AMC (Cbl) 3 hours R A Washington wife discovers her computer-salesman husband is a spy out to stop nuclear terrorists. View in TV Listings 1-Click Record Record with options

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Hollywood's Classic Bible Movies
The Robe
The Robe
This movie follows a perspective we usually don't think of – the Roman soldiers that helped to crucify Jesus. It looks at the life of the Roman soldier who won Jesus' garment during the crucifixion. An interesting story of redemption, it is also the first movie to use widescreen CinemaScope technology.
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Description: This park provides short driving loop along a mangrove coastline that features mangrove-fringed lagoons and tidal flats. Two county parks provide access to the Anclote River and Gulf of Mexico. Watchable wildlife: Low tide is the best time to see the many egrets, herons, and shorebirds, which include short-billed dowitchers and several plovers during the winter. Bald eagles nest along Bailey's Bluff road December through May. Ospreys, gulls, terns, and double-crested cormorants are often seen fishing in nearshore waters. Scan the marshes carefully with binoculars to see rails, white ibis, and night herons. Magnificent frigate birds are sometimes seen high over the water from May through October. Ownership: Florida Power Corporation; managed by Pasco County
Contact: (727) 938-2598 Directions: Florida Highway 595A in Pinellas County. Related Sites: Other West Central Florida Wildlife Sites Florida State Parks
FWC Facts:The spatulate bill of the roseate spoonbill has sensitive nerve endings that help it detect prey, and the shape helps the bird move sediment and catch the prey.
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The 2013 IMO Award for Exceptional Bravery at Sea will be awarded to two rescue swimmers from the United States of America, for saving the lives of 14 crew members from the tall ship HMS Bounty, and, posthumously, to a seafarer from China who died trying to save the life of a ferry passenger.
The IMO Council, meeting for its 110th session in London, decided that the 2013 award will go to Aviation Survival Technician Second Class Randy J. Haba and Aviation Survival Technician Third Class Daniel J. Todd of the United States Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, nominated by the Government of the United States, for saving the lives of 14 crew members from the tall ship HMS Bounty, during Hurricane Sandy.
The Council also agreed to bestow the 2013 Award posthumously on Mr. Jinguo Yang, a crewmember on the ferry Tong Chang Qi Du 11, nominated by the Government of China, who gave his own life whilst trying to rescue a person in distress on the ferry, after it had collided with the cargo ship Shun Qiang 28.
Aviation Survival Technicians Randy J. Haba and Daniel J. Todd
Aviation Survival Technicians Haba and Todd were despatched on board two Coast Guard Rescue Helicopters, CG-6012 and CG-6031, from United States Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, responding to a distress alert from HMS Bounty, during the pre-dawn hours of 29 October 2012.
After flying through the outer bands of Hurricane Sandy, in strong winds and torrential rain, they encountered the ship, partially submerged with a large debris field, surrounded by life rafts.
Rescue Helicopter CG-6012 was the first to arrive at the scene, and AST Haba was lowered into the stormy waters. He spent an hour battling strong currents and 10 metre waves, in the wind and rain, taking survivors from the life rafts to the waiting rescue basket, overcoming exhaustion and fatigue. At one point, he was engulfed by a huge wave that knocked his mask off, severely restricting his vision and further hampering his tremendous efforts. AST Haba demonstrated the utmost determination and perseverance, performing two more rescues without the use of a mask. He exhibited exceptional strength and endurance throughout the entire rescue.
Rescue Helicopter CG-6031 arrived 30 minutes after CG-6012, and AST Todd was immediately deployed into the turbulent sea to begin the task of reaching another life raft. He began retrieving each of the survivors from the raft and delivering them to the rescue basket. Whilst he was assisting the second survivor into the rescue basket, a large wave toppled the life raft containing the four remaining survivors. Todd immediately secured a handhold on the sea anchor to stabilize his position. His strength and ingenuity expedited the rescue of the six survivors and his action saved valuable time. This enabled him to reposition himself to a second life raft, containing three additional survivors, whom he also successfully rescued.
Both men overcame the effects of cold, fatigue and ingesting sea water to deliver 14 crew members of HMS Bounty to safety.
Mr. Jinguo Yang (posthumous award)
On 15 March 2012, the ferry Tong Chang Qi Du 11 collided with the cargo ship Shun Qiang 28 on the Yangtze river. The ferry's hull was damaged and it started sinking with 33 persons on board, 31 of whom were subsequently saved during the search and rescue operation and transferred to a rescue ship. One passenger was trapped in his truck, which had been severely damaged in the collision.
One of the rescued crew members, Mr. Jinguo Yang, 55, jumped back onto the sinking ferry and attempted, unsuccessfully, to prize open the jammed door of the truck in order to rescue the trapped passenger. Unfortunately, the ferry lost its stability and capsized. Mr. Jinguo Yang was unable to save the passenger's life; indeed, in trying to do so, he lost his own. Although he had the opportunity to escape at the last moment, he chose instead, at the cost of his own life, to stay and attempt to rescue the trapped passenger.
The Council unanimously endorsed the decision of a Panel of Judges that these were the worthy recipients of the Bravery Award for 2013, from a total of 34 nominations, received from 10 Member States and two non-governmental organizations in consultative status with IMO.
The Council also decided that, of the other nominees or groups of nominees, six should receive Certificates of Commendation and 12 should receive Letters of Commendation.
The Awards ceremony will take place at IMO Headquarters, on Monday, 25 November 2013, at the end of the first day of the 28th Assembly of IMO.
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Prince George, who is third in line to the British throne, celebrates his first birthday on Tuesday. Take a look at the family tree of the British monarchy and learn a bit about George's great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth.
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