ily to those in power, Göring was ruthless in campaigning
against corruption among others. He forbade Professor Messer-
schmitt to set aside scarce aluminum for postwar ventures; he
prohibited Daimler-Benz from manufacturing twelve-cylinder
limousines for other Nazi leaders. But Görnnert’s files bear wit-
ness to the substantial orders that Göring placed for personal
radio sets, refrigerators, and deep freezers all virtually unob-
tainable in wartime Germany for his family and benefactors.
SS Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf learned of the priceless
trinkets showered on Göring by Felix Schüler, head of the Reich
Association (Reichsgruppe) of Handicrafts; when the Ministry of
Economics opened an investigation, Göring’s office impounded
its dossier.
“Göring,” Hitler chided him that March, worried about
the top soldier’s image, “do you think it looks good to be photo-
graphed with a pipe? What would you say to a statue with a ci-
gar in your mouth?” More caustic comments were sometimes
heard from the public at large. The Gestapo reported that cin-
ema audiences also grumbled about Göring’s chunky cigars at a
time when, by contrast, they themselves were fobbed off with
noxious tobacco substitutes like lime-blossom leaves. The news-
reel audiences remarked too upon his uniforms always spot-
less white at a time when they could not buy soap powder and
criticized his obesity at a time when “the Russians were having to
eat grass.” On April , one SS Gruppenführer complained to
Himmler that Emmy Göring had invited eighty generals’ wives
to coffee, “and the table fairly groaned under the weight of deli-
cacies.”
He was able to entertain so lavishly in part because of a co-
lossal black-market operation allegedly designed to procure
consumer goods for blitz victims. Through the Four-Year Plan’s
senior economists Friedrich Gramsch and Kurt Kadgien he had