there’s hardly anything I can do to help... His pain is as bad as
ever, despite his being dosed with morphine every day.”
A stream of visitors and well-wishers came to the hospital,
including Hitler’s sister Paula (“a charming, ethereal creature
with great soulful eyes set in a white face, quivering with love for
her brother”), Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Siegfried
Wagner, son of the composer. Wagner had tried to buy
Hermann’s photograph in Munich the famous one with a
helmet but the photographers had sold out the entire stock of
forty thousand they had printed the week before. Through the
Nazi underground, meanwhile, they received clothes and other
necessities, and then more friends like Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl
and Karl Bodenschatz came to bring him news of the coming
trial.
Göring sent a message to General Ludendorff, asking
whether he should surrender to Kahr’s police in the interests of
the party. Ludendorff advised him not to, since Göring was
more useful at large.
Here in Austria [Carin wrote, starry-eyed, to her
mother on December ] National Socialism is espe-
cially strong, and I am sure that when Hermann is
well again he will find something to do here. A party
of a million members and “storm troops” of ,
armed men cannot be put down at one stroke.
Hitler’s methods have thus far only been for de-
cency and chivalry. That is why he is so beloved and
admired and has the whole of the masses behind him.... Hitler is calm, he is full of life and faith now, after
the first few days when he was apathetic, refused to
eat...
It was Carin’s tenderness that kept Göring going through those
painful weeks before Christmas of . Each time he lifted his