Göring murmured, “Not Guilty,” adding quickly, “in the
sense of the indictment.” His declaration remained unread.
After the charges had been read out, Jackson opened the
prosecution case with a major speech describing the Nazi crimes
that had killed an estimated . million Jews. During the ad-
journment, somebody asked who had ordered these things, and
Göring said, “Himmler, I suppose.”
He was uncomfortable. “The German people will forever
be condemned for these brutalities.” He strove to achieve a
monolithic defensive front, but these atrocities rendered that
almost impossible.
On November , the court rang with laughter as his bois-
terous phone conversations with Ribbentrop and Prince Philipp
during the Austria crisis of March were read out. But his
pleasurable nostalgia was poisoned as awful film sequences were
shown that afternoon of scenes in the concentration camps. “It
just spoiled everything,” he complained to Dr. Gilbert. Worse
followed on the last day of the month. A prosecution witness,
General Erwin Lahousen, the Abwehr department chief respon-
sible for subversion and sabotage operations, described his own
acts of treachery against Hitler. “That traitor!” thundered
Göring during the lunch adjournment. “That’s one we over-
looked on the twentieth of July. Hitler was right the Abwehr
was a traitor’s organization. No wonder we lost the war!”
The possibility of bribing somebody to help him was never
far from Göring’s mind. He eyed the American guard officers in
particular. Probably it surprised even annoyed him that
they were not of the highest caliber. (Colonel Andrus repeatedly
complained of their low standard, in letters to his superiors.)
But in Germany the Nazis had had the same problem. In
the Reichsmarschall had urged Hitler to provide better guards
for the Allied prisoners of war than the “old Santa Clauses” then