been killed.
It was a tragic and senseless outcome. Cursing themselves
for their own folly, Hitler and Ludendorff realized in retrospect
how weak their allies had been. “The hopes that inspired us all
on the evening of November ,” said the general, “hopes that we
could save our fatherland and restore the nation’s will, were
dashed because Messrs. Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser lost sight of
the main objective: because the Big Moment found only little
men within them.”
What had become of Göring?
A police marksman’s bullet had pierced his groin, only
millimeters from an artery. Some of his own men found him
and carried him to the first door showing a doctor’s nameplate
in the nearby Residenz Strasse. Years later his adjutant Karl
Bodenschatz would reveal, “The people on the ground floor
threw him out, but there was an elderly Jewish couple upstairs,
and they took him in.” Ilse Ballin, wife of a Jewish furniture
dealer,* gave Göring first aid, then, helped by her sister, carried
him round to the clinic of a friend, Professor Alwin Ritter von
Ach. He found the entry and exit wounds still foul with mud
and gravel, and did what he could to ease the pain.
Friends took word of Hermann’s misfortune to Carin who
bravely came to hold his hand and plan his escape. She took him
by car down to Partenkirchen, seventy miles south of Munich,
where he was hidden in the villa of a wealthy Dutch sympa-
thizer, Major Schuler van Krieken. Clearly he could not stay
long, and plans were laid to smuggle the Görings out of the
country. Kriebel published two obituary lists, including the
name of “Göring,” to draw the heat off him, but the police
- “When they [the Ballins] were due to be arrested by the Gestapo,” recalled
Bodenschatz, “Göring told me: ‘No, Bodenschatz, we’ll get them out of the
country despite Himmler.’ I took care of that myself.”