tion effort, advised Lufthansa’s director, Erhard Milch, as the
subsidies came under increasing Communist attack, to “fix” a
few gentlemen in the Reichstag. “They’re all wide open to brib-
ery,” said Brandenburg. “Send for one man from every leading
party, give them some cash, and they’ll authorize the full sub-
sidy the next time.”
Milch evidently acted immediately, because Carin Göring
was already mentioning “a contract with the Reich Transport
Ministry” (i.e., Brandenburg) in a letter dated June , adding
in the same letter that Hermann had already received the first
payment under it and the thirty-four hundred marks that he
wanted as a down payment on an even grander apartment in a
new building at No. , Badensche Strasse, in Berlin’s select
Schöneberg district. Milch confirmed (to this author) that
Lufthansa was bribing Göring and a handful of other deputies
(Cremer, Quaatz, and Keil) with one thousand marks per
month; only the Communists refused to accept Lufthansa
money. It became common knowledge. “Milch,” suggested one
lieutenant colonel later, “had Göring in his pocket because he
could have blown the whistle on him at any time.” The record
shows that in the next two years Göring addressed the Reichstag
only once and then it was to demand higher subsidies for civil
aviation, and to ask why Germany had no aviation minister, a
post that he clearly coveted for himself.
After the election Hermann and Carin flew to Zurich,
Switzerland, to lecture and demonstrate parachutes. But he now
had far better sources of income. The funds were beginning to
flow to him from German industry. He was shortly retained as a
“consultant” by BMW and by Heinkel, and the records of
young Willi Messerschmitt’s Bavarian aircraft company would
show at least one payment by a director, Fritz Hiller, entered as
“one-time dispensation to G.” Steel magnate Fritz Thyssen do-