being used. “You see,” he reminisced in a revealing moment to
Colonel Amen, “those prisoners received a large number of Red
Cross parcels... with chocolate and food, and they were very
successful in bribing the guards.”
Somehow, Göring struck up a friendship with Lieutenant
Jack G. Wheelis. A hard-drinking, six-foot-two Texan, Wheelis
impressed Göring for two reasons: He was an impassioned
huntsman, and he held one key to the baggage room. Göring
was photographed next to him, showing him a sheaf of papers;
he signed one photo, as “Reichsjägermeister,” dedicated it to
“The Great Huntsman from Texas,” and gave it to Wheelis.
Who can say what emotions seized the U.S. Army lieuten-
ant? Perhaps it was pity for the caged lion. He agreed to carry
letters to Emmy and little Edda who had joined her mother in
Straubing Jail on November . Göring rewarded these favors
with gifts of valuables, presenting to Wheelis the solid-gold
Montblanc fountain pen and Swiss wristwatch engraved with his
signature, the gold cigarette case that Goebbels had given him,
and the gray suede gloves he had worn at Augsburg. Somehow
Göring retrieved from the locked baggage room other valuables
like his gold epaulets and a swastika-embossed gold matchbook
cover, and used them to reward other American officers.
It was indeed the Last Battle, albeit on a minuscule scale,
and each side used its own dirty tricks. A Jew who had fled
Germany before the war, the psychiatrist Dr. Gilbert overrode
the dictates of medical ethics to submit to the prosecution team
regular notes on what he had overheard. Then prosecutor
Jackson would telegraph this intelligence to Washington, as his
papers show. “Göring’s defense against proposal to seize Atlantic
islands for war against United States,” read one Jackson wire,
“apparently is that Roosevelt speeches indicated attack from us.
... Also reported Göring will testify to statements by Bullitt and