Reichsmarschall’s misfit “half-brother,” Herbert Göring had
actually attended plotting sessions with Carl Goerdeler, the
conspiracy’s civilian head; and of course, as history now knows,
Göring’s former Prussian finance minister Johannes Popitz was
in it up to his neck.
It certainly seems incredible that Göring’s Forschungsamt,
which had moved by now to Breslau, had remained unaware of
the conspiratorial ferment, given the plot’s vast ramifications.
(“Who would have thought,” commented Heydrich’s father-in-
law in a letter, “that an entire clique of generals right next to the
Führer could have practiced treachery unobserved!”) Was
Göring’s absence from the hut more than fortuitous? “When I
saw the room yesterday in which the contemptible assassination
was attempted,” he said, “I marveled that any man came out
alive. The lethal device exploded violently barely a yard from
the Führer... yet by a miracle the Führer was unscathed. By
chance I was not present myself, but arrived half an hour later.”
However, Göring certainly had been present at the Hitler con-
ference five days earlier when the same plotters had first hoped
to set off their bomb. Nor had they at any time seriously consid-
ered recruiting him. Even his friend Count von Helldorf, the
turncoat police president of Berlin, had dismissed the idea as
ludicrous. “It was hoped at one time to include Göring,” recalled
Helldorf’s son two weeks later, in British captivity, “but my fa-
ther, after several visits to Carinhall, was opposed to this on the
grounds that there was no evidence that he [Göring] would be
sympathetic to the plotters and that in any event his physical
condition the consequence of addiction to drugs would
make him a doubtful asset.”
The Reichsmarschall was fortunate enough to figure only
on their hit lists. In their draft press communiqué, which the
Gestapo seized from a hotel safe, Goerdeler had written, “The