Open Door to a Treasure-
House
‘There was no point in thrashing the whole thing out in court,”
said Göring, blithely dismissing the eighty-four murders com-
mitted in the June purge. “Their treason was as clear as day.
... After all, there had been a plot against the Führer’s life. The
whole point was to act fast, as a deterrent.”
He resumed his posture of fearless Defender of the Good
and Persecutor of the Malign. When Austrian Nazis ran amok in
Vienna and brutally gunned down Chancellor Engelbert Doll-
fuss later that summer, it was Göring who persuaded Hitler to
dismiss their leader, Theo Habicht, and to send Franz von Pa-
pen to Vienna as his personal ambassador, thus killing two birds
with one stone.
Then he sent for Theo Croneiss, Röhm’s would-be air
minister. Croneiss slunk in, with a pistol concealed in his pocket