Göring. A Biography

(Michael S) #1


and phenobarbital, both then and at : .. Attributing this
crisis to the exertion as well as the ugly implications of the “dis-
charge” charade, the American doctor ordered the Reichsmar-
schall to bed for two days. He confidentially warned Andrus
that unless their prize captive was allowed thirty minutes of ex-
ercise outdoors each day, the next heart attack might be
Göring’s last.
The interrogations resumed, this time on a different tan-
gent. Several times a week armed sentries handcuffed him and
marched him down the stairs and along the covered catwalks to
the interrogation rooms on the second floor of the Palace of
Justice. Meetings with Allied questioners were conducted face to
face across an open table. But to consult with his own counsel
(the insipid, prim former patent and labor attorney Dr. Otto
Stahmer had been assigned to him), he was taken behind a par-
tition with windshield glass to bar any physical contact. Docu-
ments were passed through a slide after a sentinel had sniffed
them to make sure they were not steeped in poison.
On August , Colonel Amen grilled him about Hitler’s
aggressive plans against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Russia.
“Considering that it is eight years ago,” Göring said, playing for
time, “it is almost impossible for me to pin down what the
Führer said in .” He refused to co-sign the transcripts,
thereby rendering them useless. Questioned on October  about
allegations that the German Aviators’ Club had paid Major Al-
exander Löhr five million Reichsmarks for information about
the Austrian Air Force, he laughed incredulously. The Austrian
Air Force had only one squadron, he pointed out. “I would
probably have told him that for five schillings I would give him
all the intelligence he needed about his own air force!” Asked by
the humorless Amen on the eighth about alleged links between
his Reich Forestry Administration and plans for a postwar Nazi

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