role is thrown into question by recently discovered documents,
and verbatim conference transcripts show Göring to have been
aware of the Führer’s less rigid attitude. Two days after visiting
Hitler on July , , he presided over the first session of the
new Reich Research Council. Here Göring expressed anger that,
although the Führer had expressly forbidden it, Jewish scientists
were being taken off vital research:
I’ve just briefed the Führer about this. We have
exploited one Jew in Vienna for two years, and an-
other in the field of photography, because they’ve got
things we need of the utmost value to us at this time.
It would be madness to say, “He’ll have to go! Of
course he’s a great researcher, a fantastic brain, but
he’s got a Jewish wife and can’t be at the university,
and so on.”
The Führer has made similar exceptions all the
way down to operetta level.A month later Göring could have heard Rosenberg telling the
assembled gauleiters this, according to the stenographic record:
“The solution of the Jewish problem continues apace... It can
only be solved by rigorous and ruthless force. [Storms of ap-
plause.] We ought not to rest content with Jews being shipped
from one state to another, leaving Jewish ghettos here and there.
Our aim must be the old one: the Jewish problem in Europe and
in Germany will not be solved until there is not one Jew left on
the European continent. [Lively applause.]”
Such harsh words were not, of course, uttered in a vac-
uum. The whole trend was toward illegal and brutal modes of
war toward innocenticide on a grand scale. Violent air raids
had resumed. The partisan warfare developing in Russia was
barbarous beyond belief. Millions were starving too. At the same
conference, Göring evidently asked what food the Jews in Riga