From the willingness of the foreign countries not only to conclude treaties with Hitler—such as the Naval Agreement of 1935 and the Munich Pact of September 1938—but also to participate to the end in the Party rallies, the German people could only conclude that Hitler had chosen the correct road for reaching international understanding. This impression and this judgment were absolutely correct until the fall of 1938. Had Hitler afterwards observed loyally the Munich Agreement, then he would probably have stayed the arguments for the “stop” policy which was initiated against him. Not only would peace have been maintained, but Hitler could also have harvested the fruits of his domestic and foreign policy pursued until then and recognized by all powers.
Basically, the argument today centers only on the question of whether the developments since then and their catastrophic consequences should be charged solely to him or to others. All Germans who followed Hitler at any time and in any way are accused. For the prosecutors maintain—above all those who put no trust in him from the outset and who denied the legitimacy of his government from the beginning—“It was to be foreseen that he would end as he did!” Therefore, everyone who supported him at any time and in any way also shares in the guilt.
To this accusation it must be objected that retrospectively it invests the sad results with an inevitability which would destroy all belief not only in freedom, but also in the wisdom of man. Of course Hitler himself did not desire the end as it came. He often enough announced at the beginning that he was not out for the laurels of war but that he would like to devote the rest of his life to peaceful constructive work. From a truly objective point of view, one can reproach him only for not having limited his aims when he could no longer believe in their achievement by peaceful and humane means.
If by such means only those are to be understood which renounce force of any kind, then there would have been no need for him to go his own way and seek a new solution. A certain play with force, as long as it did not get out of hand, will, therefore, have to be conceded to him. Where it got out of hand can only be determined, for lack of other proof, by the results which he actually caused with his policy. He certainly did not foresee and intend the bad results. However, it must be considered his fault that he did not accept the lesson of his failures but allowed himself to be goaded to still greater extremes. But how much of this guilt can and may be charged also to his followers?
Whoever did not reject Hitler’s methods, and thereby him personally, from the very beginning as illegitimate, found it difficult to recognize where the political aims set by Hitler ceased to provide justified reasons for his measures, and where beyond that the policy became a crime. The dividing line in this respect was from the standpoint of the purely German legal conception probably considerably different from that of other nations or even the world. For the latter, for example, were hardly interested in the maintenance of the Weimar constitution and the basic rights granted by it to the individual German. Its violation, therefore, up to the second World War has never caused other states to intervene with the German Government. On the other hand, once the war had broken out, the Germans were forced to put German interests above their sympathy for members of other, especially enemy, states. Each believed himself to be doing enough if he took care in his sphere to see that unnecessary harshness was avoided. To revolt against orders from the highest German authority would not only have been completely senseless and hopeless, but, until shortly before the bitter end, it would also have been a violation of German legality and thereby a punishable offense. Reproaches for failure to revolt can, therefore, be made only if the breach of formal legality, without consideration of the immediate practical effect and only for the sake of the principle—which is the attitude of a revolutionary—could be defined as a legal obligation.
The consequences of such a conception are so far from the point that they cannot be considered seriously at all, because hitherto existing international law was primarily based on the principle of unlimited sovereignty of the states. No country has been willing to submit vital and decisive questions to the judgment of others, no matter to how great a majority or to however independent a tribunal. And now every individual citizen of such a sovereign state was to have had not only the right but even the duty toward the other nations or humanity to rebel against the legal system of his own country because it violated the rights of man and humanity? Such an imposition, made retroactively, pronounces its own sentence. It would place the autonomy of the individual above state sovereignty. Thereby the power of the individual person would not only be immeasurably overestimated, but this would also necessarily lead to the breaking of the last ties of traditional order, to anarchy.
To this way of thinking Göring virtually represents the exact opposite pole. Just as others went to war in order to fight against war as such, he became a revolutionary in order to restore honor to the concept of loyalty. Thus, having once cast his lot with the Führer, he stood by him when he had already lost the latter’s confidence, in fact, even after he had been sentenced to death by Hitler. He remained loyal until today, in spite of everything, by excusing Hitler again and again. To many this may appear incomprehensible, and many may see in it a sign more of weakness than of strength. But this loyalty reveals his whole personality. Göring has occasionally been described as a late Renaissance type; and there is something in that. Although of high intelligence, he allowed himself to be guided in his actions less by reason than by the dictates of his warm heart.
Such a man expresses himself of necessity in a way that is primarily subjective. He does not look upon the people surrounding him and upon others impassionately as factors to be reckoned with; but he feels, above all, what effect they have on him and how they challenge his approval or disapproval so that he finally makes his personal reaction to them the basis for his over-all judgment.
But still, as can be seen from the statements of Generaloberstabsrichter Dr. Lehmann, he always endeavored to be just and to lend an ear to sensible arguments. He always kept himself free from doctrinal prejudices. As a soldier, he always endeavored to do the right thing in each case. His decisions on points of law as well as his social interest, which General Bodenschatz testified to among other things, show his earnest moral sense of responsibility. His attitude toward all criminal acts directed against the honor of women are proof of his chivalry. But in all this he is not guided by a dogma but by his spontaneous common sense, ergo not by intellect, but by life. From actual life he derives his ideas and the values which determine his actions.
Therefore the Führer and the oath of loyalty he had taken to him meant everything to him and were the substance of his life. Ambassador Henderson had judged Göring correctly, when he wrote about him: