and his dossier on Milch’s father deposited in a safe place as “life
insurance.”
Göring rose to his feet. “I might as well give up my chair,”
he said, with a mocking bow. “You were to be my successor, I
believe?” (Croneiss was allowed to return to his job with Messer-
schmitt and died in his bed in November .)
Those who knew Göring believed they saw the signs of nar-
cotics addiction returning. Leading criminal lawyer Count von
der Goltz met him one evening in July at a hunting festival
in Pomerania and tackled Göring who was wearing a white
toga and a glazed, trancelike look about the notorious crimi-
nality of the local Nazi gauleiter, the former lawyer Wilhelm
Karpenstein.
“Karpenstein?” echoed Göring vaguely. “Out!” (That is, he
was about to be arrested.)
“And Koch?” pressed Goltz. (Erich Koch was the notorious
gauleiter of East Prussia.)
“Not yet decided,” responded Göring. “Actually, the
Führer wanted to have him bumped off too during the Röhm
business, but others spoke up for him... .”
The choice of words shocked Goltz. Bumped off? Too?
Göring drove him to Carinhall afterward, but the lawyer could
not extract one coherent word from him. At the forest mansion
Emmy Sonnemann was waiting for them.
“I’ll make tea,” she volunteered.
Göring grunted something and vanished, to reappear
swathed in silence and a floor-length robe. He plodded off with-
out a word toward his beloved lake and plunged in stark-naked.
Throughout the drive back from Pomerania, Goltz realized, this
prospect, of swimming in Carin’s lake, had been obsessing
Hermann Göring. He found himself somehow hurting for this
melancholy widower.