Beet red, Göring screamed at him, “You will be afraid if I
ever come across you outside this courthouse, you scoundrel!”
All four hard-line Communists were acquitted. The
Dutchman alone was found guilty and submitted to the guillo-
tine on January , , without a flicker of remorse. Remorse,
if any, was displayed by Göring. “It was too stiff a sentence for
Van der Lubbe,” he reflected twelve years later. “He did not de-
serve so much notoriety, or such a punishment.”
Two days after the Reichstag fire a discreet ex-sailor, Robert
Kropp, answered Göring’s advertisement for a gentleman’s gen-
tleman. Göring ran his eye over the blue folder of testimonials.
Kropp had been an infantryman for four years and a sailor for
eight. Göring fired off a string of questions. “Can you drive?
Handle a launch?” (Göring had no boat but he was thinking
ahead.) “I’ll do most of the driving myself,” he added, without
waiting for an answer. “But you can take over the wheel from
time to time.”
Kropp asked for marks a month, but settled for less
with a promise of more. “Four weeks’ notice,” said Göring. “If
I’m not happy with you, then you’re out on your ear. Out
through the hole the bricklayers left. Get it?”
“Yes,” stammered Kropp. “The door.”
Göring softened. “You start at ten,” he said, and waved an
apologetic hand at his own cramped quarters here in Kaiser-
damm.
“We’ll be moving into the prime minister’s residence later
on,” he said.