admitted. “Do you suppose I’d have believed it if somebody
came to me and said they were making freezing experiments on
human guinea pigs, or that people were forced to dig their own
graves and be mowed down by the thousands? I would have just
said, ‘Get the hell out of here with that fantastic nonsense.’ “
The Nazi newsreel film of people’s court judge Roland
Freisler screaming at once-respectable general staff plotters
turned Göring’s stomach. But when the psychiatrist mentioned
Röhm, Göring erupted about the “dirty homosexual swine” and
angrily paced his tiny cell in shirt sleeves and slippers. “It was a
damned good thing I wiped them out,” he roared. “Or they
would have wiped us out!”
Two days before Christmas Gilbert found him brooding on
the future. What was his own fate compared to such a tide of
history? “If I have to die,” he pondered out loud, “then I’d
rather die as a martyr than a traitor.” He brightened, and said,
“Don’t forget that the great conquerors of history are not seen
as murderers Ghenghis Khan, Peter the Great, Frederick the
Great!” Five years hence, he predicted, Hitler would be the idol
of Germany again, and with a rueful laugh he invited Gilbert to
mark his prophecy.
The new year, , began with fresh unpleasantness for
Göring. SS General Otto Ohlendorf testified on January with
apparent sincerity about mass liquidations that he had himself
directed; worse, that afternoon Speer’s defense attorney calmly
invited the SS officer to testify whether he was aware that Speer
had plotted to kill Hitler.
Göring choked. A major breach was appearing in the de-
fense front line. He flounced over to the ex-minister as the ses-
sion ended, but Speer pointedly ignored him.
“Gott im Himmel!” Göring exclaimed to Gilbert that eve-
ning. “I nearly died of shame. To think that a German could be