While Göring had some expectation of picking up foreign cur-
rency if the German insurers had reinsured abroad, his hope
that they might even refuse to pay out on claims submitted by
Jews was frustrated.
: “If we refuse to honor clear and binding
obligations, it would be a blot on the honor of the
German insurance market.”
: “But not if I intervene with a statutory or-
der!”
: “I was about to come to that.”
: “You could cough up on the insurance all
right, and then we could confiscate it at the point of
payout. That way you save face.”Hilgard was still uneasy and thought that would “not be a good
thing” in the long run.
“I beg your pardon!” exclaimed Göring. “If you’re legally
obliged to pay out six million and all at once an angel descends
from on high, in the form of my somewhat corpulent self, and
tells you that you’re let off paying a million of that the hell
you can’t say it’s a good thing!”
The verbatim record of this discussion provides an unsa-
vory picture of Hermann Göring. Told that even the looted
merchandise was often German-owned and sold by the Jews
only on a commission basis, Göring wailed, “I wish you’d done
in two hundred Jews and not destroyed such assets.”
“Thirty-five,” corrected Reinhard Heydrich, the ice-cool
head of the Gestapo. “It’s thirty-five dead.”
The upshot was two laws, co-signed by Göring, purporting
to eliminate Jews from the economy and to levy a collective fine
on the Jewish community of one billion Reichsmarks for the
diplomat’s murder. There is little doubt that Hitler and Göring