“coming Reich”; while Göring murmured a response to the
“coming king,” he was careful not to tag a specific name, given
the several contenders.
A week later Carin seemed to have died. The doctors in
Berlin could find neither pulse nor heartbeat. Hermann knelt in
desperation as they injected stimulants. Lying at peace (she told
her sister Fanny afterward), she could hear them announcing to
her husband that it was all over. She sensed them prying open
her eyelids. She was aware only of standing before a tall gateway,
lustrous and beautiful. “My soul was free,” she wrote to Fanny,
“for this one short instant of time.” Then her heart flickered
and her eyes opened into Hermann’s sorrowing gaze again.
If Mama had died [commented Thomas in his diary]
Hermann would have broken down completely. He
himself says he doesn’t know how he would have
coped. Oh, I think it could have been dangerous
given his smoldering temperament. He says I was the
stronger... and that we must take this lesson to heart
and start leading a healthier, more regular life.Goebbels, Hitler’s gauleiter (local Nazi party governor) in Ber-
lin, frowned at Göring’s flamboyant methods. After talking
things over with him on February , , Goebbels made a pri-
vate note that the man was too much of an optimist “He
banks too much on doing deals. We’re only going to get results
by consistent hard work.” But Göring was already dealing on
many levels in Berlin. Behind the back of the government he was
talking with the Italian ambassador, Baron Luca Orsini, and
Brüning’s agencies intercepted one telegram from the baron to
Rome, sent on October , , revealing that Göring had ap-
parently leaked secret proceedings of the Reichstag’s foreign-
affairs committee (on disarmament and the Young Plan) to the