have grasped the importance of the fewsentences Göring uttered at the start of his cross-examination, in which he described his family background and the world before 1914 that had formed him and his generation.
Göring, for his own reasons, was determined to use his last stand in the dock at Nuremberg as an opportunity to place the Third Reich within the mainstream of world history. One strand of his defence strategy was to claim that Nazism and the principles on which it had been founded were not unique but merely Germanic incarnations of the same forces with which the prosecuting powers had built up their own empires and expanded their own power.
On the second day of direct examination by his defence counsel Dr Otto Stahmer, Göring was asked for his definition of the term Lebensraum – the theory of living space on which the Nazis’ invasion of the USSR and their plans for its later colonisation had been founded. He replied: ‘That concept is a very controversial one. I can fully understand that the Powers – I refer only to the four signatory Powers – who call more than three-quarters of the world their own explain this concept differently’. 3
Speaking a few days later in Cell 5 to G. M. Gilbert, the psychiatrist given access to the Nuremberg defendants, Göring directly compared the crimes he was defending in court with those perpetrated in the empires of the victor nations. The British Empire, he claimed, had ‘not been built up with due regard for principles of humanity’, while America had ‘hacked its way to a rich Lebensraum by revolution, massacre and war’. 4
Göring’s attempts to compare the crimes of the Third Reich to the genocides and massacres of the age of empire could easily be dismissed as a desperate defence tactic. But behind the bluster, arrogance and amorality of a man who was patently unable to confront his own crimes, there is an uncomfortable truth.
When Göring was asked to speak briefly about his life before 1914, he outlined what he called ‘a few points which are significant with relation to my later development’. He told the court of his father, who had been the ‘first Governor of South-WestAfrica’, pointing out that in that capacity the elder Göring had had ‘connections at that time with two British statesmen, Cecil Rhodes and the elder Chamberlain’. 5
Hermann Göring’s father, Dr Heinrich Göring, had indeed been a key factor in his son’s ‘later development’. In 1885 he had been appointed by Chancellor Bismarck to help establish the German colony of South-West Africa, today the southern African nation of Namibia. Dr Göring’s role was one of slow negotiations with the indigenous African peoples, with no garrison and little funding. Fifty years later, an official Nazi biography of Hermann Göring shamelessly attempted to glamorise the elder Göring’s record as an empire-builder. It describes how ‘Young [Hermann] Göring listened, his eyes sparkling with excitement, to his father’s stories about his adventures in bygone days. The inquisitive and imaginative lad was … thrilled by his accounts of his pioneer work as a Reichs Commissar for South-West Africa, of his journeys through the Kalahari Desert and his fights with Maharero, the black king of Okahandja.’ 6
In truth, Heinrich Göring had no fights with any of the ‘black kings’ of South-West Africa. For three years he travelled across the southern deserts with a wagon full of so-called ‘protection treaties’, desperately attempting to dupe or cajole the leaders of the local African peoples into signing away rights to their land. When his promises of protection were exposed as empty, he was recognised as a fraud and summarily expelled.
What inspired the elder Göring to volunteer for service in Africa was that, like many Germans in the late nineteenth century, he could foresee a time in which the land of that continent might become living space into which the German race could
Göring, for his own reasons, was determined to use his last stand in the dock at Nuremberg as an opportunity to place the Third Reich within the mainstream of world history. One strand of his defence strategy was to claim that Nazism and the principles on which it had been founded were not unique but merely Germanic incarnations of the same forces with which the prosecuting powers had built up their own empires and expanded their own power.
On the second day of direct examination by his defence counsel Dr Otto Stahmer, Göring was asked for his definition of the term Lebensraum – the theory of living space on which the Nazis’ invasion of the USSR and their plans for its later colonisation had been founded. He replied: ‘That concept is a very controversial one. I can fully understand that the Powers – I refer only to the four signatory Powers – who call more than three-quarters of the world their own explain this concept differently’. 3
Speaking a few days later in Cell 5 to G. M. Gilbert, the psychiatrist given access to the Nuremberg defendants, Göring directly compared the crimes he was defending in court with those perpetrated in the empires of the victor nations. The British Empire, he claimed, had ‘not been built up with due regard for principles of humanity’, while America had ‘hacked its way to a rich Lebensraum by revolution, massacre and war’. 4
Göring’s attempts to compare the crimes of the Third Reich to the genocides and massacres of the age of empire could easily be dismissed as a desperate defence tactic. But behind the bluster, arrogance and amorality of a man who was patently unable to confront his own crimes, there is an uncomfortable truth.
When Göring was asked to speak briefly about his life before 1914, he outlined what he called ‘a few points which are significant with relation to my later development’. He told the court of his father, who had been the ‘first Governor of South-WestAfrica’, pointing out that in that capacity the elder Göring had had ‘connections at that time with two British statesmen, Cecil Rhodes and the elder Chamberlain’. 5
Hermann Göring’s father, Dr Heinrich Göring, had indeed been a key factor in his son’s ‘later development’. In 1885 he had been appointed by Chancellor Bismarck to help establish the German colony of South-West Africa, today the southern African nation of Namibia. Dr Göring’s role was one of slow negotiations with the indigenous African peoples, with no garrison and little funding. Fifty years later, an official Nazi biography of Hermann Göring shamelessly attempted to glamorise the elder Göring’s record as an empire-builder. It describes how ‘Young [Hermann] Göring listened, his eyes sparkling with excitement, to his father’s stories about his adventures in bygone days. The inquisitive and imaginative lad was … thrilled by his accounts of his pioneer work as a Reichs Commissar for South-West Africa, of his journeys through the Kalahari Desert and his fights with Maharero, the black king of Okahandja.’ 6
In truth, Heinrich Göring had no fights with any of the ‘black kings’ of South-West Africa. For three years he travelled across the southern deserts with a wagon full of so-called ‘protection treaties’, desperately attempting to dupe or cajole the leaders of the local African peoples into signing away rights to their land. When his promises of protection were exposed as empty, he was recognised as a fraud and summarily expelled.
What inspired the elder Göring to volunteer for service in Africa was that, like many Germans in the late nineteenth century, he could foresee a time in which the land of that continent might become living space into which the German race could
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