pressure and low-temperature experiments on condemned
prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp. Neither Göring
nor his Staatssekretär inquired into what kind of experiments
were involved. “I did tell Göring,” Milch confided to his private
diary four years later. “Göring was against any collaboration but
insisted on a very polite tone toward Himmler.”
In fact, Göring went out of his way to cultivate the
Reichsführer’s friendship. The records show Himmler writing
to Chief Forester Scherping on September , , thanking
him for Göring’s invitation to shoot a “very fine Rominten
stag.” When Herbert Göring by now manager of the Berlin
office of United Steel incurred Hermann’s wrath in , the
Reichsmarschall would write asking Himmler to strip Herbert of
his rank as honorary SS Obersturmbannführer, and invite Hit-
ler to pass a law depriving “unworthy” people of their famous
names. And when Göring’s brother Albert (who picturesquely
insisted under American interrogation, “I am the real brother of
Hermann Göring!”) reported rumors from a Dr. Max Winkler
about the machine-gunning of Jews in Poland, the Reichsmar-
schall ingenuously forwarded the letter to the SS to attend to.
In the winter of – he did send a senior Forschung-
samt official, Ernst-Friedrich Scholer, to investigate a rumor of
atrocities in the Ukraine. Scholer returned with snapshots of
men pointing rifles downward into large pits. In such disturbing
instances, Göring regularly allowed himself to be fobbed off, as
he related three years later.
I heard, for example, that a large load of Jews left
for Poland during the winter and that some of them
froze to death in their vehicles. I heard of these things
mostly from the ranks of my employees and from the
people. When I made inquiries, I was told that such