Goering Read Free

Castle
    Carin
    Goering as a young officer in 1918
    The principal room at Carinhall, shortly after Goering acquired the property
    Goering at the Reichstag Fire trial, 1933
    Hitler and Goering with Roehm (center) before the Roehm purge
    Goering as an archer

    Goering with his daughter Edda
    Frau Emmy Goering with Goering (in Luftwaffe uniform) at the theater
    Goering in full-dress uniform, holding his Reich Marshal’s baton
    Goering discusses the Four-Year Plan with Hitler
    Goering leaving the Italian Royal Palace during a visit to Italy, wearing the furlined motoring coat that Ciano remarked upon
    Goering shortly after his capture by the United States Army

I
Pour le Mérite
    H ERMANN WILHELM GOERING was born in the Marienbad sanatorium at Rosenheim in Bavaria on January 12, 1893, the second son of the German consul-general in Haiti by his second marriage. After only six weeks his mother left him in Germany and hurried back to her husband; she was not to see her child again for three years. By this time he was already proving to be a willful and difficult boy.
    In 1885 his father, Heinrich Ernst Goering, a former cavalry officer and now a member of the German consular service, had made a second marriage at the age of forty-five to Franziska Tiefenbrunn, a Bavarian girl of modest birth. He had already had five children by his former wife. His new marriage had taken place in London, where Goering had been sent by Bismarck to study British methods of colonial administration before being put in charge of the harsh and difficult territory of German Southwest Africa. His studies lasted for a few months only, and he left for Africa with his bride. His title was Minister-Resident for Southwest Africa, and he did his work well, treating the African chiefs with tact and diplomacy. Within five years he had made the area safe for German trade, and he was, in this sense, the founder of the colony. While there he had won the friendship of Cecil Rhodes, and he had also become the friend of a Dr. Hermann Epenstein. On his return to Germany, he volunteered for another post overseas and was appointed consul general in Haiti.
    By the time Hermann was conceived, Franziska, who needed all the toughness of her Austrian and Bavarian blood to lead this life of constant movement and rough, violent living, had already borne three children, Karl, Olga and Paula. Shortly before the birth of this fourth child she left Haiti and traveled home alone. When she returned to Haiti she left the six-week-old baby in Fürth, Bavaria, in the hands of a friend of the family, Frau Graf, whose daughters became his playmates and remember him today as a handsome, headstrong boy.
    When the child was three years old his father returned to Germany to face retirement. Hermann Goering’s earliest recollection was of expressing his resentment toward his mother by hitting her in the face with his fists when she tried to embrace him after her prolonged absence. She was deeply upset. 1
    The family were reunited in Berlin and lived for the next five years in the Fregestrasse in Friedenau, a quiet residential suburb of the capital. From this time Hermann’s childish ambition was to become an officer in the German Army, and at the age of five his father gave him a hussar’s uniform. Later he liked to recall how as a very small boy he would ask the family servant to bring him the swords and caps belonging to his father’s military guests so that he could admire them while he lay in bed at night.
    Epenstein, Heinrich Goering’s friend in Africa, and, as it proved, the particular friend of his wife Franziska, had also finally settled in Germany. In contrast to Heinrich Goering, who had comparatively little money apart from his State pension on which to bring up his young family of five children, Epenstein was a very rich bachelor. He could afford to indulge his whims, among which was to let Hermann, together with his brothers and sisters, become his