The Nuremberg Interviews (21 page)

Funk spoke of these former luxuries with a nostalgic pride. He continued, “My house in Wannsee was looted by the Russians. I had a library of fourteen thousand books. Part of this was first editions. I had a great collection of musical biographies and a great library on economics and philosophy. I can still tell you where each book is placed. My house in Bad Tölz also had a nice library but was smaller. American officers live there now. The house was decorated by my wife. She furnished it with pieces from the Middle Ages, including a Baroque shrine from Würzburg. She remodeled this shrine for my library with figures of angels, and the like, in green and gold. My wife says that the Americans had left things intact but that Germans and Poles stole personal things such as linen and clothing. The library is in order and the furnishings are intact. My niece lives in this house and is in charge of my old domestic personnel. The American officers live there and she administers the home. My niece is thirty-five, married to a surgeon who is at present in Dachau. He was formerly an SS doctor. He has even gotten permission to visit her occasionally. He was originally in the air force and against his will was ordered to the SS.”

At this point we turned to a discussion of music and his favorite composers. “As I said before, my favorite composer for the piano is Schumann. I also liked Schumann songs and I often listened to the great baritone Heinrich Schlusnus and often accompanied him on the piano
when he sang Schumann songs. They say I am anti-Semitic and the prosecution accused me of issuing laws in the field of the economy as part of the program that led to the extermination of the Jews. To show you how false that is, the famous teacher for voice named Bacher, who was an American Jew, and who left Germany because he was Jewish, often came to my home and we were good friends. He was the first husband of Mrs. Schlusnus.”

I asked Funk what he thought of the state of art, music, and the like under the Hitler regime. He replied, “Music was immensely furthered under Hitler. Concerts for the broad masses were given. For example, before 1933 the masses had no opportunity to watch a great conductor like Furtwängler. The art of sculpture was also promoted and some good work was done. When you go to Munich you should visit my good friend Josef Thorak, who continues to work there. The studio is sensational. Thorak is a small, longhaired man who makes figures as high as a house. If you go there be sure to visit my house in Bad Tölz.

“From my personal standpoint I did not like the type of painting or architecture that Hitler fostered, but the sculpture was good.”

At this point Funk became spontaneously reminiscent and again spoke of his role in the Nazi state. He said, “If you follow a certain road for some time, it takes an enormous willpower to leave, although you might recognize that the road was not good. But in my case I believed and was convinced that I was serving and helping the people until the last. However, it is a terrible fate that has befallen me. If I had remained with my writing and my music I would be working now and not a criminal in the Nuremburg prison.

“I was not at all fit for being state minister. My own secretary Landfried said so in an affidavit.” I asked him what he meant by this, or rather what his secretary meant. “My whole personality was against bureaucracy — it was strange to me. My talent is to give form to things which I, in my inner self, worked out. My strength is less productive and intuitional than responsive. I have a talent for taking things into myself, absorbing them mentally, and putting them out in a better and more artistic form for the consciousness of other people. I always had the urge to tell the other people what I think and feel.

“That is the valuable and precious thing of my personality — the ability to give to other people facts which I have gleaned from others in a higher and more intellectual form.

“One can learn a good deal by taking the works of such people as Kant and Goethe and rewriting them in his own personal way. I had the feeling before the court that the judges were extremely interested in what I said. No defendant was interrupted as little as I was. On only one occasion Judge Biddle said that I was making a speech about the relative merits of private enterprise and state subsidy. He was right — it had no place in the defense.

“Whenever, as Reich press chief, I gave a talk to the Führer, he would interrupt and say to me that I should go into his private chamber and play some Wagner or Puccini. The Führer did not like Brahms, and even Furtwängler couldn’t convince Hitler about Brahms. I once succeeded in getting Hitler to attend a concert in which Furtwängler conducted the Fourth Symphony of Brahms — but Hitler didn’t like it.

“I started out with great idealism, but the result is ruins, blood, and smoke. It is bad
Götterdämmerung
[
Twilight of the Gods
].
¹¹
I think the Wagner ideology of
Götterdämmerung had
an influence on Hitler during the last few months, and everything had to go down in ruins with Hitler himself, as a sort of false
Götterdämmerung
. Hitler had thought that his leaders and all the people had to be exterminated with him, and when he gave his policy of scorched earth, even early in the war, or at least when the war was turning against us and there were advances on the east and west fronts on the part of the Allies, I was against it. It was the Wagner ideas. Nietzsche also had ideas like that. You will find this in old Germanic legends and fiction. Heroes and selected people who worked for a downfall in order to make room for a new uprising are part of the legend of Germany, and I disagree with it because it is destructive and senseless.”

According to Funk, the German people now had to make sacrifices in order to obtain a government in which the leaders would not create war.

“Then all the historical happenings seen in this dreadful war might have some significance and might serve some useful purpose. This would be the only good thing to reconcile terrible happenings in the past or in the future. In world history we have other examples of frightful destruction. There was Alexander the Great and all of the destruction he caused. Napoleon, too, would have destroyed all of Europe. But unfortunately, the Nazi government, the government of which I unfortunately partook, had no Talleyrand, but we had a Ribbentrop. Through Talleyrand’s policy France was saved from a catastrophe that Ribbentrop would have brought about.

“If the world is covered with too many rotten things and dirt, some power must remove it and some new instrument must be created. That is my view of the historical meaning of these terrible times.

“Mr. Dodd, the American prosecutor, should talk of these things with me and not the crap he put before me — for example, what the plenipotentiary for economics did and what he let befall him.”

Hermann Goering
1893–1946

Hermann Goering was commander in chief of the air force, president of the Reichstag, and prime minister of Prussia. Found guilty at Nuremberg of conspiracy to commit crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, he was sentenced to death by hanging. Two hours before his scheduled execution, on October 15, 1946, he committed suicide in his cell.

Hermann Goering is up and down — cheerful usually, on other occasions definitely glum, chin in hand — childlike in his attitudes, always playing to the public.

The uniform in his cell is quite dirty, and he is not too clean in his personal surroundings.

He can turn on a smile and turn it off like a faucet, almost at will or mechanically. But touch him on a tender spot — even a potentially tender one, such as his relations with his family members, wives, and so on — and he closes up and relates platitudes.
Sex Life:
“Oh, quite excellent.” He is clearly not in favor of any such prying and it must be done, if at all, subtly and by his own methods.

Asked about his marriages — both women were “great” in different ways. “Each had her own type of beauty.” He is apparently displeased by such personal questions.

A general question about the trial evokes a tempest of pettifoggery. “The damned court — the stupidity. Why don’t they let me take the blame and dismiss these little fellows — Funk, Fritzsche, Kaltenbrunner? I never heard of most of them until I came to this prison! What do I care
about danger? I’ve sent soldiers and airmen to death against the enemy — why should I be afraid? As I told the court, I am solely responsible — whenever it is a question of the government’s official acts, not extermination programs. I was Hitler’s successor and I stand as such to the German people. I did not dodge responsibility. We had many differences of judgment, Hitler and I. In the early days I could say what I pleased and freely, and he had a sense of humor. Later, less so, and finally, our conflicts were serious to the point of his final decree for my arrest and murder.”

How did things turn out? I heard your defense, but what is the human angle?

“Do you think a man rises to the top of a great state without being a man? I was ‘Hermann.’ He was the ‘Führer,’ on a pedestal.”

Yes, but on the question of your denying aggressive war intent — I really didn’t quite understand it. Maybe it was the poor translation over the microphones. Or perhaps—

“Let me tell it to you briefly, without any court to-do. I tried to keep on best terms with England. I did things unbeknownst to Hitler — behind his back — to compromise with Halifax.
¹
I thought we had enough after the Munich agreement in 1938 and the annexation of Austria because we had 10 million more — just what we lost in the last war. But it was the Czech question. And with some reason, Hitler felt it was a Russian base for planes. I warned against the march into the Sudetenland because England then would declare war should Germany demand Danzig.”

Goering finally received a telegram that Hitler was going to march into Czechoslovakia. Goering was on vacation. “I told him to delay this action because England would be insulted. It was as much the fault of France and Russia as Germany.” What do you mean? “They didn’t keep their pacts with Czechoslovakia.” The story I heard is that the Czechs refused Russian aid. “Ah, well.”

What happened before Poland? “I told Hitler England would declare war and sooner or later the U.S.A. I advised the peace treaty with Russia. Hitler thought it was bad advice because he was afraid Stalin would refuse. But Stalin saw Ribbentrop and all was as I predicted.”

Attack on Austria? “The agreement is well known. I arranged that.”

Attack on Russia? “Hitler decided that. I thought it was stupid because I believed that first we had to defeat England. Also we had to
take Gibraltar. Franco was afraid to let us have it but if we could have brought England to nothingness by bombing, Franco would have been agreeable. After that I had no objection — that is, after the defeat of England — to attacking Russia. I felt strongly the air force was not prepared. But Hitler felt the Russian campaign would be short and then we could finish the English campaign.”

What were Hitler’s reactions to your opposing him on Czech and Russian questions? “I don’t say I opposed him. I tried to reason with him. But I lost ground with Hitler, and in 1943 already I was out of favor. In 1944 Hitler was not on speaking terms with me. Gradually it was worse. On April 22, I received a message to head the Reich. I was about to do so when Hitler changed his mind. Hitler then thought I was trying to succeed him so he ordered my arrest and execution. I was actually arrested by the SS at Berchtesgaden on an order signed by Bormann. Then one of my parachute groups rescued me very promptly.”

Do you feel any resentment toward Hitler? “No. It was in the last hours and he was under pressure. If I could have seen him personally it would have been different.”

This morning Goering asked to be excused from court because of “sciatica” in the right lower limb. He had some pain yesterday during the court session, he said, and it was worse this morning. He limped slightly, and straight leg bending was apparently somewhat painful. Erich Raeder’s case, which obviously bored him, was closing yesterday, and Baldur von Schirach would begin his defense today or tomorrow. I had an idea that he had little interest in hearing Schirach, as it was well known among the defendants that Schirach was going to denounce many of the Nazi policies and probably Hitler himself.

We had been discussing his childhood for some weeks without getting anywhere particularly on that subject. He seemed in a mood for company as Mr. Triest and I walked into his cell. After my examination of his lower extremity, he invited us to sit down and “spend some time,” as he expressed it. Had Goering thought of anything in connection with his childhood he might care to tell me? “I can’t think much about it. I know you want to study me psychologically. That’s reasonable and I appreciate it. At least you don’t lecture to me and pry into my affairs. You have a good technique as a psychiatrist. Let the other fellow talk and stick his
neck into the noose. I don’t mean that the way it sounds. But you hardly say anything. Someday I’m going to ask you questions.” Goering smiled broadly.