time for Göring to make an honest woman of Emmy Sonne-
mann, whose divorce had now come through. One day in Feb-
ruary Göring suggested a quiet weekend in Weimar, and
sent her on ahead with a note, which he instructed her not to
open before getting there. He had written: “Will you marry me
at Easter? The Führer will be our witness.”
He announced her change of status from “private secre-
tary” at a “little” dinner party on March , held in the white
marble dining hall of his rebuilt villa. Sir Eric Phipps was among
the forty guests Göring had invited, as were the Joseph Goeb-
belses and the Heinrich Himmlers and most of the diplomatic
corps. “I am only marrying her,” he explained disarmingly to
Lady Phipps, “at the behest of the Führer. He feels there are too
many bachelors among us Nazi high-ups” and he glanced
across at the army’s bachelor commander in chief, Baron von
Fritsch, standing alone and frigid with his monocle palely
reflecting the illuminated tapestries. His voice booming above
the invisible string orchestra, Göring mentioned some of the
extravagances in the villa, like the -foot swimming pool that
he was building; and after dinner he showed off the Old Masters
that he had prevailed upon the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum to
lend him “The director did object,” he grinned, “but I threat-
ened to take twice as many if these were not brought over here
first thing in the morning.” After that he invited the guests to
watch two “stag movies” the films showed only stags, apart
from a General Göring briefly discovered by the cameras at
Carinhall, wearing a leather suit and brandishing a harpoon in
the Wotan-style living room.
What he felt for Emmy was probably not physical attrac-
tion. At the end of he would reveal to Staatssekretär Milch
his belief that the groin injury had left him impotent. Probably
he regarded his blond fiancée as merely another dazzling bauble