were getting, because the local Nazi official there, Reich Com-
missar Hinrich Lohse, corrected him: “Only a small fraction of
the Jews [of Riga] still live.” He continued, no less ambiguously,
“Tens of thousands are gone.”
“All cruelty,” protested Hermann Göring, first confronted with
evidence of the Nazis’ atrocities, “was abhorrent to me. I can
name many people whom I have helped, even Communists and
Jews. My wife was so kind I really have to be grateful for that.
I often thought, if only the Führer had a sensible wife who
would have said to him, ‘Here’s a case where you can do some
good, and here’s another, and this one’ that would have been
better for everyone. It was very depressing for me.”
Göring’s policy on the Jewish relocation program after
Hitler’s invasion of Poland is only rarely glimpsed in the ar-
chives. His brother Albert had asked him over dinner once
during those months, and Hermann had replied that he fa-
vored awarding a large area of Poland (with Warsaw as its capi-
tal) to the Jews, who would be collected there from all over
Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia a huge, autonomous
ghetto. No other Final Solution ultimately evolving in the east is
even hinted at in the thousands of pages of Görnnert’s files as
Göring’s office chief, let alone in the Air Ministry or Four-Year
Plan files. Görnnert’s files reflect the Reichsmarschall investi-
gating, albeit often cautiously, every instance of Nazi heavy-
handedness reported to him. He forwarded the grosser cases of
excess to Philipp Bouhler for review. Bouhler’s staff, however,
usually rejected the complaints. In one case, when the Ministry
of the Interior classified Baroness Elisabeth von Stengl as a Jew,
Göring’s staff redirected her indignant protest to the bureau. In
vain she was “relocated” (umgesiedelt). Göring again pro-
tested on her behalf, which drew a reply from Adolf Eichmann