May , “about his private possessions.”
Göring kept a huntsman’s weather eye open for officers
whom he could use. He blatantly flattered the Americans.
“Without the American Air Force,” he assured Lieutenant Colo-
nel Eric M. Warburg, a former Hamburg banker who had
served in the Prussian artillery in World War , “the war would
still be going on but assuredly not on German soil!” He pitted
his brains particularly against “Major Evans” in real life the
Wall Street financier Ernst Englander. Englander was motivated
by a thirst for revenge. “I should like to see those boys hang and
sweat,” he wrote in one private letter at this time, “rather than to
make themselves out as heroes and martyrs.” For several days
they sparred. “I found it easier,” Englander wrote, “to deal with
them by getting reasonably chummy, and as a result Göring
asked me to do a favor and see his wife for him.”
A tattered snapshot of Emmy and Edda was Göring’s most
cherished possession. On the back he now penned these words
to Emmy: “Major Evans has my confidence. Hermann Göring.”
To remunerate the officer he also gave him a portrait, signed to
“Major Evans, in grateful memory, Hermann Göring.” Eng-
lander thanked him effusively. It did not escape the prisoner
that some American officers would do almost anything in return
for a personal souvenir.
On May , , they flew him in a small six-seater plane he
had to enter through the cargo hatch to Luxembourg. With
him went a written report from Major Kubala, warning against
regarding the captive as a comical figure. Göring was cool and
calculating, and “able to grasp the fundamental issues under dis-
cussion quickly. He is certainly not a man to be underrated.”
They held him in Luxembourg for three months. It was
plain that there was to be a major trial. Among the fifty fellow