Ruhr industrial region. Regular army officers in Berlin and
Munich men like the scar-faced army captain Ernst Röhm
itched to take action against the French and saw in the private
political armies a reservoir of semi-trained military personnel.
Fifteen days after the invasion of the Ruhr, Lieutenant General
Otto von Lossow, the new army commander in Bavaria, granted
Hitler his first interview, because Hitler’s SA “army” was by now
one of the largest.
Göring took Carin along to the SA’s first big rally two days
later, on January , .
He had moved with her into a villa in Reginwald Strasse at
Obermenzing, just outside the boundary of Munich, in Novem-
ber , soon after Hitler gave him command of the SA. Carin
had at once set about furnishing this, the first home they could
call their own.
Nils, whose munificence surpasses comprehension, had sent her
the money to furnish this villa. One room was lit by a tinted
pink window the rose-hued sunlight played across a bowl of
red roses to where her white harmonium stood amid the pink
and white fur rugs beneath her mother’s portrait. Her bedroom
had pink curtains and a bed canopied in blue brocade and veiled
in white lace. There was nothing of this femininity in
Hermann’s quarters his room was heavy with carved oak fur-
niture and lit by a window painted with knights in armor. A
concealed cellar had an open fireplace and oak cupboards
around the walls.
They married in February probably under pressure
from the prudish Adolf Hitler. Although Hermann Göring
would later encourage biographers to believe that they had mar-
ried one year earlier, the family papers show that her divorce
had only become absolute in December , and the registry at