Goering (5 page)

On July 17 Goering dispatched his first official report, in which he wrote:

The British single-seaters are giving as good an account of themselves as ever, but the French fighters rarely penetrate beyond the front line; they usually avoid serious encounters. On the other hand, the French two-seaters usually appear in close formation, pushing home their bombing attacks ruthlessly and from low level. For this they usually employ twin-engined Coudrons whose armor is proof against our ammunition. I myself, attacking a Coudron at close distance on 15.7.18, wasted almost my entire ammunition; the Coudron simply flew on, completely ignoring me. Those well-armed and well-armored machines should be attacked by antiaircraft guns. Flying in close formation they offer good targets for our flak . . . Many [of our] pilots have to take to the air up to five times a day. In the long run, neither the men nor the engines can stand up to such strain. . . . Lack of direct telephone communication between squadron and fighter groups adds to our difficulties. Imperative to have new telephone lines completed.

On the following day Goering himself secured his twenty-second Allied aircraft, a Spad which he shot down early in the morning. He reported briefly:

At 8:15 A.M. I attacked several Spads. One of them I forced down and, after some spiraling, shot down. It fell into the woods of Bandy.

This was Goering's final personal victory. In spite of the urgency of the times he went on leave (“well-deserved,” says Bodenschatz) on July 26, leaving Lieutenant Lothar von Richthofen, Manfred's brother, in charge of the squadron. He did not return until August 22.

The
Geschwader,
claims Bodenschatz, shot down some five hundred Allied planes during the nine months of its existence, but by the end of September the numbers of officers and men were much reduced: fifty-three officers, including medical and administrative staff, and 473 N.C.O.s and men. The weather was bad. “The features of Lieutenant Goering are getting harder,” noted Bodenschatz. But the end of the war was in sight. On the ground the German armies were in retreat, and as summer turned to autumn the British Air Force shot down many of Goering's pilots.

In November, during the last days of the war, the weather was bad and the news grew worse. Rumors circulated that the Kaiser was abdicating, that there was unrest in Berlin, that the Navy was in a state of mutiny; it was said even that soldiers were firing at their officers. On November 9 Goering called his officers together and urged them to be as loyal to each other during these difficult days as they had been in action, and to fight to the last.

The period November to 9 was one of growing disorder. Goering's reports as recorded by Bodenschatz show this clearly. On November there was heavy fighting east of the Meuse, and the Allied advance forced Goering to withdraw his men and equipment to an airdrome west of Tellancourt, where the ground conditions were bad for take-off and landing. The rainy weather prevented flying, and Goering's reports are brief and formal.

November
8. Settling down at Tellancourt airdrome. Drizzle; deep cloud.

November
9. Weather unfavorable. Nothing much happened. Preparing for retreat.

During the three days November 9, 10 and 11 Goering received many contradictory instructions from an irresolute high command. The whole atmosphere of capitulation was hateful to a man of his temperament who had so recently won the supreme award and whose squadron, in spite of bitter losses and half-trained replacements, had been responsible for great acts of courage and considerable successes in the air until they were grounded so unaccountably (as indeed it seemed to this young commander of twenty-five, whose photograph was by now on sale to the German public as a war hero). Varying instructions came in: he was to surrender his planes to the Americans, he was to take his machines and armament to Darmstadt.

On November 10 the weather still made flying impossible, and the agony of waiting dragged on.

November
10. By order of the commander, Fifth Army Air Force, aircraft flying to Darmstadt, the more valuable equipment to be sent on by road transport . . . two columns of eight trucks each. Tents and some useless machines and equipment left at Tellancourt. Men moved partly by truck and partly on foot to be entrained. Food supplies were adequate.

Then, on November 11, the official news of the armistice arrived, and the evacuation was halted. Bodenschatz writes of the strange silence that closed on the countryside. Goering called his men together and told them he would never surrender to the Allies; he would continue with the evacuation to Darmstadt. Bodenschatz was put in charge of the trucks, and the pilots took to the air in spite of the arrival of a staff officer with orders that the squadron should put their planes at the disposal of the French in Strasbourg. Goering at first refused bluntly; if this had to be done, he said, then someone else could do it. In the end, a few machines were flown to Strasbourg, but their pilots crash-landed them as a final act of defiance against the enemy.

In the confusion, some of Goering's pilots mistook their route to Darmstadt and landed at Mannheim, which was one of the places where soldiers' and workers' councils, in active revolt against what authority remained, had taken charge of the airport. On landing, the pilots were disarmed and sent on to Darmstadt by road. When they arrived with the report of what had happened, Goering was furious. He put the entire squadron into the air again and flew the short distance to Mannheim, where, while the officers deprived of their arms landed, Goering and the rest of his pilots circled over the airdrome. The officers on the ground presented the soldiers' and workers' council with an ultimatum that unless the stolen arms were returned to them at once and they were allowed to take off with them unmolested, their commandant, Lieutenant Goering, would machine-gun the airdrome. The pilots were hastily given back their arms, and they rejoined the squadron in the air. Goering then led the flight back to Darmstadt and ordered those who could to crash-land their planes.

Goering's final record on the day of armistice is a formal tribute to his squadron.

November 11
. Armistice. Squadron flight in bad weather to Darmstadt. Mist. Since its establishment the Geschwader has shot down 644 enemy planes. Death by enemy action reached 56 officers and noncommissioned pilots, 6 men. Wounded 52 officers and noncommissioned pilots, 7 men.

HERMANN GOERING,
Lieutenant O.C. Geschwader.

Goering was demobilized, with the honorary rank of captain, in the old Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg, some thirty miles from Frankfurt. There, it seems, he stayed, at the villa of the managing director of the Buntpapier A.G., a firm of paper manufacturers, and the actual disbanding of the G
eschwader
took place in the courtyard of the firm's premises where the officers' luggage was stowed before being sent on to their homes. Goering and his officers spent most of their time in the Stiftskeller, the best restaurant and drinking place in the town. They were determined to keep together as long as they could. On November 19 Goering finally said goodbye, and he discovered his gifts as a speaker in a speech he made at the Stiftskeller. He spoke of the history and the achievements of the famous Richthofen squadron, of the bitter times that Germany must now endure, and of the disgraceful behavior of the German people in their attitude to those who had, as officers, sacrificed themselves for their country. He was outraged by the revolt of soldiers against authority, and by the support the soldiers' councils were receiving in many parts of Germany. “The new fight for freedom, principles, morals and the Fatherland has begun,” he said. “We have a long and difficult way to go, but the truth will be our light. We must be proud of this truth and of what we have done.

We must think of this. Our time will come again.” He gave the toast to the Richthofen
Geschwader;
solemnly they drank, then smashed their glasses.

Outside, crowds of civilians and ex-soldiers gathered in the streets to insult the officers, who, they were now led to think, had betrayed Germany and sacrificed the lives of their men in order to win for themselves decorations of the kind the Emperor had bestowed on Goering. The story goes that Goering was set on in the street and that with difficulty he prevented the mob from stripping the medals from his breast. He stayed in Aschaffenburg until early December, and then, without gratuity or pension, he went to Munich, where his mother was living. It was plain to him that he must make his own way in the world.

In Munich he was at first very fortunate. During the war he had given generous treatment to a prisoner of war, Captain Frank Beaumont, a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, who had made a forced landing in a damaged plane after destroying two German fighters in the air. It was part of Goering's creed to admire a good enemy, and he did his best to keep Captain Beaumont from being taken over by the Army; he had talked to him at length about the profession of flying, about which they were both enthusiasts. Goering now discovered that Captain Beaumont, who spoke German fluently, was stationed in Munich with the responsibility of preparing the way for the breaking up of the German Air Force. Together with Ernst Udet, Goering presented himself and was made welcome. Indeed, for some weeks, until Munich became politically too warm for Goering to stay, Captain Beaumont acted as host to Goering and Udet and repaid past kindness with a generosity that enabled the two young men to live with ease whilst deciding what it was best for them to do.
⁵
Meanwhile, his unofficial engagement to Fräulein Mauser was forgotten. Herr Mauser wrote to Goering, “What have you got now to offer my daughter?” Goering telegraphed back, “Nothing.”

During these immediate postwar weeks, Goering found himself in a new and alien world. He was a Prussian officer whose only background was his military training and the sense of caste inspired by his father, and the traditions represented by his early life in the castles of the south. Now he was an unemployed man of twenty-five in search of work. Politically Germany had collapsed into a form of mob rule, owing to the weakness of the hastily established government set up to formulate some kind of peace treaty. In Munich the throne of Bavaria had collapsed and a republic had been proclaimed on November 8, a few days before the armistice. Wilhelm II, the Emperor of Germany, had fled to Holland, and General Ludendorff, Chief of the General Staff, had also disappeared. The German working class had turned on the men they felt to be responsible for the war, and the soldiers who remained in uniform regarded their officers as traitors. A Socialist revolution had been proclaimed officially in Berlin and in a number of other German cities.

The officers, meanwhile, banded themselves together to defend their caste. They organized the so-called
Freikorps
—“free corps” of volunteers—in an effort to keep the German Army in being. In December Goering attended an officers' rally in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall at which the new Prussian Minister of War, General Walter Reinhardt, spoke, urging the packed audience to support the new government and obey its order that officers should discard the traditional insignia of their rank and replace their epaulets with stripes on their jacket sleeves. The General himself wore his three stripes; his epaulets and his medals were gone.

As Reinhardt was about to dismiss the meeting, Goering stood up in the body of the hall. He was wearing his full uniform, with his silver epaulets and the stars of his new rank of captain, and with the Pour le Mérite prominent among his medals and decorations. He stepped onto the platform, saying, “I beg your pardon, sir.” The large gathering of officers fell silent. Goering had discovered his ability as a speaker in Aschaffenburg; now, as one of the more famous of Germany's young officers, he was forced to say what he felt. He began:

I had guessed, sir, that you, as Minister of War, would put in an appearance here today. But I had hoped to see a black band on your sleeve that would symbolize your deep regret for the outrage you are proposing to inflict on us. Instead of that black band you are wearing blue stripes on your arm. I think, sir, it would have been more appropriate for you to wear red stripes!

The officers broke into applause, but Goering held up his hand for silence and went on speaking.

We officers did our duty for four long years . . . and we risked our bodies for the Fatherland. Now we come home—and how do they treat us? They spit on us and deprive us of what we gloried in wearing. And this I can tell you, that the people are not to blame for such conduct. The people were our comrades—the comrades of each of us, irrespective of social conditions, for four weary years of war . . . Those alone are to blame who have goaded on the people-those men who stabbed our glorious Army in the back and who thought of nothing but of attaining power and of enriching themselves at the expense of the people. And therefore I implore you to cherish hatred—a profound, abiding hatred of those animals who have outraged the German people. . . . But the day will come when we will drive them away out of our Germany. Prepare for that day. Arm yourselves for that day. Work for that day.
⁶

Then Goering left the hall, refusing to serve any longer in an Army that was ready to obey the degrading orders of a republican government.

He wanted only one thing now, to turn his back on the disgrace of Germany. His chance came through the German aircraft industry, which was unaccountably still in business. Goering knew the aircraft manufacturers, since he had often, as an air ace, visited their works and tested their machines. He undertook now to demonstrate the Fokker F
₇
at an aeronautical display in Copenhagen, and in return for doing this he was presented with the aircraft to keep as his personal property. He flew the machine to Kastrop airport and there gave flying demonstrations to the crowds. He performed aerobatics and gave people brief flights for fifty crowns a trip. In this way he made sufficient money and lived well in a hotel. His brilliant war record, which was a liability at home, was a social advantage in Denmark. He remained in that country for the greater part of the year 1919, living as gay a life as his earnings allowed, and the women enjoyed his company. He flew by day and flirted by night.