hold the vital clues to the strains of his young manhood and his
growing megalomania.
I have donated all the records of this biographical research
to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, Germany, where
they are freely available subject to the institute’s conditions. May
I express my thanks to the institute’s director, Martin Broszat,
and to Hermann Weiss for allowing me to become one of the
first researchers to use the Hermann Göring diaries, which came
to them as a “windfall” result when the state of Bavaria inter-
vened to stop their sale at Sotheby’s (on behalf of an unnamed
French ex-officer) in London in . I am also indebted to Edda
Göring for permission to quote these diaries, and trust that I
have used them fairly in accordance with the terms of that per-
mission. Special gratitude also is owed to Colonel James W.
Bradin, U.S. Army, for allowing me the first privileged use of his
late father’s “scoop,” the Bormann bunker file with which my
narrative opens.
I express my thanks to the staff at the Public Record Office
in London, which benefits at last from one of the world’s most
advanced archival systems; and to the Borthwick Institute, York,
for access to the papers of Lord Halifax, and the RAF Museum
at Hendon; and to Churchill College, Cambridge, England, for
access to the Malcolm Christie files.
In Washington, I owe thanks to John Taylor, Robert
Wolfe, and George Wagner at the Modem Military Records
Section of the National Archives, as well as to the late John Men-
delssohn, who devoted his last years to producing a fine catalog
of war-crimes records (and helped me toward several little-
known deposits of Göring archivalia); to J. Dane Hartgrove and
John Butler of the Civil Archives Division; and to Amy Schmidt
and Richard Olsen of the Modern Military Field Branch, at the
Washington Federal Records Center, Suitland, Maryland. Tho-