indiscriminate lynchings of crashed Allied airmen. More than
one German pilot had to fight off peasants wielding pitchforks
and shotguns in the resulting confusion. Shouts of “I am a
German aviator!” were greeted more often than not with: “So,
the Schweinhund even speaks German!” Göring had to issue
Deutsche Wehrmacht brassards to his pilots. The high command
deliberated on whether to sanction this lynch-mob justice.
Göring wanted the Allied malfeasants dead, but favored the old-
fashioned firing squad, preferably held “at once” and “in the
locality of the action,” as his staff were told on May . The
problem would be to identify the actual culprits, as he pointed
out to Hitler. After this discussion General Korten recorded that
Hitler had decided that in special cases enemy aviators might be
executed on the spot, e.g., for machine-gunning parachuting
German airmen or public transport or individual civilians.
Göring would later tell historian George Shuster that he had
always instructed his officers to adhere to the Geneva Conven-
tion.
At one Hitler conference his aide, Major Herbert Büchs,
saw the Reichsmarschall refuse the Führer’s angry demand to be
given the name of a Luftwaffe officer who had rescued an Allied
airman from a lynch mob in Munich. A few weeks later, dis-
cussing the problem with Ribbentrop and Himmler, Göring
again argued against lynch law, as is plain from his remarks on
June : “We have to do all we can to stop members of the public
acting against enemy airmen not involved in such acts. My view
is that such acts can always be dealt with by the courts, since
these are murders, which the enemy has forbidden his aviators to
commit.” There the matter would rest for the time being.
The respite on the Obersalzberg clearly did him good. But day
after day, as Göring waited in his mountain villa for news of the