ducing delusions that in turn result in criminal actions, of in-
creasing glandular activities, and of generating side effects like
outpourings of immense vital energy and what the pharmaceu-
tical textbooks describe as “grotesque vanity.” The morphine
addict may find his imagination stimulated, his oratory more
fluid, but then a state of languor supervenes, followed on occa-
sions by deep sleep. As General Helmut Forster would be heard
telling fellow air-force generals four days after World War
ended, “I’ve seen the Reichsmarschall nod off in midconference
for instance, if the conferences went on too long and the
morphine wore off. That was the commander in chief of our air
force!”
In Stockholm the Görings had moved into a modest
apartment in the neighborhood where Carin had once lived
with Nils. If she was startled to find Thomas, now thirteen, al-
most as tall as herself, her family was shocked at the change in
her once lithe and handsome husband, now in steep physical
and mental decline, his body consumed by the vital opiate that
he craved. He was listless, overweight, and short-tempered to
the point of physical violence.
Carin sent him out alone to make friends with her own old
circle, an odd experience that Stockholm lawyer Carl Ossbahr
would still recall nearly sixty years later:
A rather stout gentleman turned up, wearing a white
suit that looked somewhat out of place on him. It
didn’t go with his physique at all, and I wondered
who he could be. He introduced himself as Hermann
Göring, and then I knew that he had got the Pour le
Mérite and you didn’t get that for nothing. I sup-
pose he did the same with Carin’s other friends.Ossbahr had them to dinner several times. The German visitor