idea that I am not in office to dispense justice but to destroy
and exterminate!” “Shoot first and ask questions afterward,” one
of his first directives to police officers read. “Any mistakes that
my officers make,” he told assembled policemen at Dortmund,
“are my mistakes. The bullets they fire are my bullets.”
“You can’t carry on in your ministry like a pasha!” Papen
gasped to him. But carry on he did, and Papen shortly learned
that Dr. Erich Gritzbach, his own principal private secretary,
was in Göring’s pay as well as his.
The Italian consul general Giuseppe Renzetti reported to
Rome from Berlin, “Göring is the driving force in the Cabinet
and is waging a merciless fight against the left.”
Had she still been alive now, Carin would not have recognized
her husband. Hair slicked back, he sat behind his ministerial
desk wearing a somber suit, and prepared to embark upon his
first criminal adventures, convinced of the sanctity and recti-
tude of his own cause. With Emmy hovering in the background
because once again he was living with another man’s legal wife
Göring hosted the party’s vital fund-raising functions in his
Kaiserdamm apartment or in the speaker’s official residence. On
February , he invited twenty-five wealthy Ruhr industrialists
to meet Hitler and make one last major cash infusion for the
coming election. Banker Hjalmar Schacht acted as master of
ceremonies. Sixty-three-year-old Gustav Krupp, head of the
steel-making dynasty, brought with him the big names like Kau-
ert, Winterfeld, Tengelmann, and Albert Vögler, while top I.G.
Farben executives Dr. Stein, Carl Bosch, and Georg von
Schnitzler were also definitely present. Hitler shook hands all
around, took up his stance at the head of the table, and deliv-
ered a speech that to judge from the record in Krupp’s files
lacked nothing in candor.