transmitted from the bunker: “In the place of Reichsmarschall
Göring, the Führer appoints you, Grand Admiral, as his succes-
sor.” “Is there anything,” shouted Göring, “more fantastic than
this fraud committed by Bormann?... Well, I must say those
damn crooks have pulled a fast one. It beats everything.... I
always knew that if anything happened to the Führer, my life
would be in the gravest danger for the next forty-eight hours.
After that I would have been sworn in and it would have taken
legal effect. Whatever happened, I would have arrested Bor-
mann in forty-eight hours and he knew it, too! and sacked
Ribbentrop. Those two were the thorns in my flesh.”
Talking with interrogators again, he willingly blamed Hit-
ler but denied that they had seriously planned to use chemical
warfare or nerve gas. “None of your gas masks would have
afforded any protection,” he added. “This gas was so dangerous
that I would not permit another demonstration. I knew that the
gas would have had to be transported to the rear when the
Americans came, and the result of an air attack on the train
might have been catastrophic.... We knew we were the more
advanced in chemical warfare and that we had the more deadly
gases.” Talking of the fire storms in Hamburg and Dresden, he
dabbed at his eyes. “It was terrible,” he said. “The people of
Dresden could not believe that you would bomb their city, be-
cause they thought that Dresden was too well known as a cul-
tural center.” Then he changed the subject. “The people,” he
boasted to chief interrogator Major Paul Kubala, “never called
me anything but Hermann! Just Hermann! Never anything but
Hermann! To be called by one’s first name that is the height
of popularity.”
His evacuated Carinhall art collection had now been found. The
special train had carried on from Veldenstein to Berchtesgaden