the Gold and Silver rooms, where the gifts made to General
Göring by the judicious, the wise, and the ambitious were on
permanent display.
Throughout those early years the rumors, abetted by
Communist propaganda, that Göring was back on narcotics
would not go away. Prussian lawyer Count Rüdiger von der
Goltz observed him as though in a trance during one speech at
Stettin. Morphine intake might explain the speed with which
Göring abandoned the norms of honesty and solicited both gifts
and bribes. Making amends for his property confiscated in ,
the state of Bavaria had allowed him to buy a prime site on the
Obersalzberg mountain, right next to Hitler’s famous chalet.
Among his papers in was the deed of another plot of land
at Hochkreuth, near Bayrischzell, given him by Consul Sachs on
Bavaria’s behalf on March , . The speed of his transforma-
tion from Goebbels’s “upright, childlike soldier” of January
to the murderous, grasping Göring of took even his
friends’ breath away. Whatever the occasion, paintings, sculp-
tures, vases, embroidery, and furniture poured in for him
bronze lions, trinkets of gold and ivory, silver, and amber.
His staff rapidly perfected and systematized the bribery.
Fräulein Grundtmann meticulously listed all gifts donors,
dates, and occasions. Some were innocuous, like the gifts from
his childhood friends Erna and Fanny Graf; others were heavy
with unspoken intent presents from future allies and enemies,
from ambassadors and agents (the British colonel Malcolm
Christie gave him Sporting Anecdotes), from aristocrats and
Reich ministers (for Christmas Rudolf Hess thoughtfully
gave him a volume of Hess’s own collected speeches). The
Grundtmann lists record the donations of generals, directors,
publishing moguls, industrialists; there were major corporations