Hermann Wilhelm Göring (12 January 1893 - 15 October 1946) Nazi founder of the Gestapo , Head of the Luftwaffe ; in English his name is also spelled as Hermann Goering.

Table of contents

1 Sourced 1.1 Nuremberg Diary 2 Attributed 3 External links

Sourced

• Shoot first and inquire afterwards, and if you make mistakes, I will protect you.
  • Instruction for the Prussian police (1933)

• I became commissioner of the Interior in Prussia and at the same time Minister of the Reich. I had taken on a heavy responsibility and a vast field of work lay before me. It was clear that I should be able to make a little use of the administrative system as it then was. I should have to make great changes. To begin with, it seemed to me of the first importance to get the weapon of the criminal and political police firmly into my own hands. Here it was that I made the first sweeping changes of personnel. Out of 32 police chiefs I removed 22. New men were brought in, and in every case these men came from the great reservoir of the Storm Troops.
  I gave strict orders and demanded that the police should devote all their energies to the ruthless extermination of subversive elements. In one of my first big meetings in Dortmund I declared that for the future there would be only one man who would bear the responsibility in Prussia, and that one man was myself. Every bullet fired from the barrel of a police pistol was my bullet. If you call that murder, then I am the murderer.
  Finally I alone created, on my own initiative, the State Secret Police Department. This is the instrument which is so much feared by the enemies of the State, and which is chiefly responsible for the fact that in Germany and Prussia today there is no question of a Marxist or Communist danger.
  • Germany Reborn (1934)

• Complementing the task that was assigned to you on January 24, 1939, which dealt with carrying out by emigration and evacuation a solution of the Jewish problem as advantageous as possible, I hereby charge you with making all necessary preparations with regard to organizational and financial matters for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe.
  Whatever other governmental agencies are involved they will cooperate with you. I request furthermore that you send me before long an overall plan concerning the organizational, factual and material measures necessary for the accomplishment of the desired final solution of the Jewish question.
  • Directive by Göring (said to have been drafted by Adolf Eichmann ) to RSHA Commander Reinhard Heydrich (31 July 1941); from Captured German Documents Compiled, Photographed and held on File at Alexandria, Virginia later reproduced in A Holocaust Reader (1976) by Lucy Dawidowitz, as Göring's Commission to Heydrich.

• The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!
  • Statement at a luncheon on 20 April 1942, as recounted by General Franz Halder, about the Reichstag Fire , which the Nazi's had blamed on "Communist instigators" in securing many of their dictatorial powers. Halder, had testified: At a luncheon on the birthday of Hitler in 1942 the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears when Goering interrupted the conversation and shouted: "The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!" With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand.
    Göring later testified: "I had nothing to do with it. I deny this absolutely. I can tell you in all honesty, that the Reichstag fire proved very inconvenient to us. After the fire I had to use the Kroll Opera House as the new Reichstag and the opera seemed to me much more important than the Reichstag. I must repeat that no pretext was needed for taking measures against the Communists. I already had a number of perfectly good reasons in the forms of murders, etc."

• "No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Goering. You may call me Meyer."
  • addressing the Luftwaffe , September 1939.
  • this statement would come back to haunt him as Allied bombers devastated Germany; many ordinary Germans, especially in Berlin, took to calling him "Meyer".

Nuremberg Diary

These statements were recorded in Gustave Gilbert's transcriptions of conversations with many of the Nazi leaders during the War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg , and later published in Gilbert's Nuremberg Diary(1947).

• After the United States gobbled up California and half of Mexico, and we were stripped down to nothing, territorial expansion suddenly becomes a crime. It's been going on for centuries, and it will still go on.
  • At lunch during the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal (11 December 1945); Nuremberg Diary p.66, 1947 edition [1]

• Do you think I give that much of a damn about my lousy life?— For myself, I don't give a damn if I get executed, or drown, or crash in a plane, or drink myself to death!—But there is still a matter of honor in this life!—Assassination attempt on Hitler!—Ugh!—Gott im Himmel!! I could have sunk through the floor! And do you think I would have handed Himmler over to the enemy, guilty as he was? Dammit, I would have liquidated the bastard myself!
  • Interview in Görings cell (3 January 1946)

• Göring: "Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
  Gilbert: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
  Göring: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
  • In an interview with Gilbert in Göring's jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946)

Attributed

• Hitler was our sovereign. It would be intolerable for me to have him standing before a foreign court. You men knew the Führer. He would be the first one to stand up and say, 'I have given the orders, and I take full responsibility.' But I would rather die ten deaths than have the German sovereign subjected to such humiliation.

• Himmler has a brain, and its name is Heydrich .

• I am glad that it is not a life sentence, because those who are sentenced to life imprisonment never become martyrs.

• Mass murder? I assure you we never for a moment had such things in mind. I only thought we would eliminate Jews from positions in big business and government, and that was all. But don't forget that the Jews carried on a terrific campaign against us too, all over the world.

• My wife can influence me in lots of things, but as far as my basic code is concerned nothing can sway me. She could have her way in the household, in getting me to do lots of things for her, but when it comes to these basic things in a man's life, it is not a woman's affair.

• Next to my own people, I feel closest sympathy with the English. Anyway, one thing is clear— Germany must rise either with the English or the Russians; and the Russians seem to have the upper hand. They are clever, too. Fritzsche tells me they keep asking about me. Maybe I would be better off in their hands.

• No wonder you can't find any people with read leadership to take the responsibility of administration in Germany. Do you know why? Because the best nationalist leaders are in jail and the rest figure that if they carry out the de-nazification laws now, who knows but that in ten years— after America leaves, or a fight between East and West changes the situation— they will be brought before a German national court and tried for treason. And what do the German people think? I've already told you: 'Whenever things are lousy, we have democracy!' Make no mistake about it, the people know that they were better off when Hitler was in power before the war. And don't forget that Hitler was more than just a person to us.

• The colonel gaoler ought to bear in mind that he is dealing with historical figures here. Right or wrong, we are historical personalities— and he is nobody.

• The death sentence— that doesn't mean a thing to me; but my reputation in history means a lot. That is why I am glad Doenitz got landed with signing the surrender. I wouldn't want my name attached to that thing in future history. A country never thinks well of its leaders who accept defeat. As for death— I haven't been afraid of death since I was 12 or 14 years old.

• The next generation is finding its own leaders and they will fight for the protection of their own national interests. So you can take your morality and your repentance and your democracy, and peddle it elsewhere!

• The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.

• Those who kow-towed to the prosecution and denounced the Nazi regime got it in the neck just the same. It serves them right.

• We have no butter... but I ask you, would you rather have butter or guns? Preparedness makes us powerful. Butter merely makes us fat.

• When I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning!
  • Variant: When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver. Often attributed to Göring, who might have used such lines, these statements are derived from those in the play Schlageter by Hanns Johst : "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning!" [Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!] (Act 1, Scene 1) The play was first performed in April 1933 for Hitler's birthday.
  • When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver. also is used in the 1981 Cannes Film Festival Award winner Mephisto spoken by a character known as The General in the English dubbed version.

External links