King Alexander I Karađorđević was assassinated on October 9 in Marseille. At his funeral on October 18, 1934 in Belgrade, the German government was represented by Marshal Hermann Goering, the second man in the German Reich after Adolf Hitler.
Goering's presence was no surprise. Some time before that, the German business delegation in Belgrade contracted XNUMX jobs, primarily in the field of mining, and bought ore for the military industry. Before his fateful departure for an official visit to France, the king declared that he was going to a friendly country, but that he would never "...participate in a coalition that will solve the problems of Central Europe if Germany is not part of it."
I don't believe that Hitler's Germany was behind the assassination, even though that thesis runs through some interpretations. The king's murder was ordered by Mussolini through Anto Pavelić, but at that time the German Führer and the Italian Duke were not on good terms.
Mother of pearl icon
There is a photograph of the funeral published by the German press, showing Goering standing next to French Marshal Philippe Pétain. Both are in marshal uniforms, and the German wears a black mourning ribbon on his right sleeve. Perhaps they are discussing their experiences from the First World War, in which they participated on opposite sides.
A ten-minute film about the funeral of Aleksandar I Karađorđević can be seen on YouTube. Goering pauses before the mother-of-pearl icon and mutters something about how fascinating it is. The icon shows the Last Supper modeled after the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, it was made at the beginning of the 1924th century, and was a wedding gift of the Patriarch of Jerusalem Damian to King Alexander and Queen Mary in XNUMX.
The fat German marshal did not forget her. Immediately after the capitulation of Yugoslavia in April 1941, he sent special commandos to find her and forward her to him in Berlin. It hung on the wall of one of his castles until 1947, when Udba found it and returned it. Tito and Ranković looked at it in Krcun Penezić's cabinet and decided to return it to Oplenac, the endowment of King Peter I. It is still there today. Goering did not like only the mother-of-pearl icon in our region. In June 1935, he was on vacation in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, visited Dubrovnik and Cetinje, where he was received by the ban of the Zeta Banovina, Mujo Sočica. They served it with prosciutto from Njeguš, cheese, wine from Crmnica and beer from Nikšić. He liked the beer a lot. During World War II, he demanded to be sent to Berlin regularly.
The devil's general
Twenty-one-year-old Goering could hardly wait for the start of the First World War in 1914. A patriot eager for glory, he participated in the front lines from the very beginning, but he quickly got bored of trench warfare, the young officer did not like lying in the mud and desperately poorly fed, without the possibility of he pointed out. He heard they were looking for people for the newly created air force. He left his unit without permission to apply to be a pilot. This could have cost him not only his military career but also his life, if interpreted as desertion. He didn't care about that, he wanted to make a name for himself.
First they took him as a scout. With the devices of the time, taking photos from a height was very complicated. Young Goering would lean like crazy, hanging on only by his legs to get the best pictures. He was soon transferred to pilot training, assigned to the unit of the most famous war pilot of the First World War, Manfred von Richthofen, known as the Red Baron. We know his red, three-winged plane from countless movies. Goering competed with him and his three-year-younger comrade Ernst Udet to shoot down more enemy planes. He was awarded the highest German order "Pur le merit", before whose bearer even the generals had to salute. Von Richtofen was killed in April 1918, and Goering was appointed to his position as commander.
When he became commander-in-chief of the Air Force under Hitler, Goering appointed Udet as his deputy, but at the beginning of the Second World War they fell out. Goering was a morphine addict, Udet an alcoholic and womanizer. In November 1941, he committed suicide and wrote "Fat, you betrayed me" on the wall with his blood. Udet's peer Karl Zuckmeier, who could not stand Hitler and fled the war to America, wrote the play Devil's General about this. That piece was also performed by the Yugoslav Drama Theatre.
Assault Squad
Hermann Göring had a hard time bearing the German defeat in the First World War. He did not want to come to terms with the fact that he had fought in vain, he believed that the background had betrayed the front. That is why he sought refuge in the newly founded "National Socialist German Workers' Party" (NSDAP), whose leader since 1921 was the Austrian painter, reserve corporal from the First World War, Adolf Hitler. Hitler was pleased with the distinguished officer, holder of the highest order, and entrusted him with organizing a paramilitary organization under the name Assault Squad (Sturmabteilung - SA in German).
Impatient, dissatisfied with the development of the political situation in Bavaria and the whole of Germany, Hitler together with General Erich Ludendorff, who was the rear commander during the First World War, carried out an armed coup on November 8 and 9, 1923, which he called a "national revolution" and announced that he had replaced the Bavarian government in Munich and the German government in Berlin. He announced a "march on Berlin" after Mussolini's "march on Rome". There was a shootout between the coup plotters and the law enforcement officers, who had machine guns and a cannon at their disposal. Four policemen, thirteen coup plotters and one bystander were killed. Hitler escaped, but was soon caught and sentenced to prison where he enjoyed many comforts and wrote his work Mein Kampf. Ludendorff was acquitted before the court "in view of his war merits".
Goering was in Austria at the time of the coup, he said he would return to be tried, but Hitler ordered him to stay where he was because the movement needed him free.
South Tyrol
Montenegrin son-in-law, Italian King Victor Emmanuel, appointed Benito Mussolini as prime minister in 1922 after the fascist march on Rome. In this respect, Duce was Hitler's role model. However, when Hitler came to power in 1933, the two dictators quarreled over Austria. Hitler wanted to "return" his native country to the Reich, and Mussolini guaranteed its sovereignty. Austrian dictator Engelbert Dollfus was close to Duce, so the illegal branch of Hitler's NSDAP killed him in Austria on June 25, 1934. In response, Mussolini sent four divisions to the German border in South Tyrol. Hitler did not feel strong enough then, he denied that he was the organizer of the assassination and withdrew. The Italian province of Alto Adige - South Tyrol - remained a problem in the following years.
Before the First World War, Italy was a member of the alliance behind Austria-Hungary and Germany, at the beginning of the world war it remained neutral for a while. She decided which side she would take only on June 23, 1915, and declared war on Austria-Hungary. As a reward in 1919, when the victorious powers were drawing many new, often strange borders, she received a part of the historic Austrian region of Tyrol, south of the Brenner Pass in the Alps. It was precisely that region that was traditionally insurgent. More than a century earlier, he rebelled simultaneously against Italy, France and Bavaria, which at that time was a separate kingdom within the German confederation. The leader of the uprising was Andreas Hofer (1767–1810), who was executed after the defeat, but became a legendary figure. Thus, the area with the majority who spoke German as their mother tongue and considered themselves Austrians, came under the rule of Mussolini, but Hitler also had an appetite for the same territory.
Hitler grew stronger, Italy weakened due to the wars in Africa, Mussolini accepted that Germany annex Austria and turn it into its Ostmark province, thus the terms Austria and Tyrol were erased. One of Andreas Hofer's great-grandsons participated in the resistance against Hitler during the war and died. In 1943, Mussolini gave Goering the altar of the church in the South Tyrolean town of Sterzing, which dates back to 1456 and is considered one of the finest works of Italian Gothic. After the war, the Americans confiscated it, and after many vicissitudes, because there was also the claim that the city of Sterzing voluntarily gave the masterpiece to Goering, it was not returned to the place of origin until 1959.
Erhard Milch
During the Second World War, Hermann Göring was the commander-in-chief of the German Air Force, but he was more interested in hunting and looting works of art throughout Europe. In addition, he was addicted to morphine, so he had to rely on associates. One of them was Erhard Milch, whose father Anton, a military pharmacist, was Jewish. In order to be able to make a career in Nazi Germany, the documents were redacted with Goering's help, it was falsely established that it originated from his mother Clara's infidelity with an Aryan. Goering once said: "I decide who is a Jew."
Like Goering and Udet and Milch, he participated in the First World War from the very beginning, from 1915, first as a scout, later as a pilot. After the war, he did very well, participated in the founding of the Lufthansa airline in 1926, and was one of its first directors. In addition to his pilot wartime experience, he also showed great organizational skills, Goering persuaded him to join the Nazi party, appointed him to the post of state secretary, provided him with higher and higher military ranks, entrusted him with the construction of Hitler's air force, and a little later for a little while, especially after Udet's suicide, practically that half-Jew under Goering's protection commanded the Air Force.
The order to bomb Belgrade on April 6, 1941 was formally issued by Goering, but prepared by Milch. In a few days, he withdrew 600 planes from France, Sicily and Africa and joined them to a group of 500 planes that were already at bases in the surrounding area. His goal was also to help the Italians who were stuck in Greece. He not only worked out the strategy, but also personally flew over Belgrade. The commander of the VIII Corps of the Air Force, General Wolfram von Richthofen (he was not related to the famous Red Baron), furiously wrote: "...I have to wait in my wagon for Milch, he finally arrives late for a late meal, I advised him to fly to Prilep and to spend the night with us in Bitola."
On June 30, 1935, Milh was awarded the Order of Saint Sava, first class. I have not found a reason, I remind you that this order was established by King Milan Obrenović in 1882 and until 1945 it was the state order of Serbia, then of Yugoslavia, and from 1945 it became a decoration awarded by the Serbian Orthodox Church. Milh was deleted from the list of holders of the order, but I did not find a decision that it was officially withdrawn. After the war, on April 17, 1947, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at a special trial before an American military tribunal, but he was pardoned and released from prison in 1954, even though he was considered co-responsible for the deadly experiments on Jewish prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp, which were for the goal was to find a way to rescue downed pilots who would fall into the cold sea and almost freeze to death. Milch's responsibility for this was not proven, but he was found guilty of abusing forced laborers in Hitler's military industry.
The end of the war
As it became clear in 1945 at the latest that Germany had lost the war again, many Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler, committed suicide. The morphinist Goering considered himself innocent or at least that the victors would behave "chivalrously" towards the defeated "military leaders".
Goering took refuge from Berlin, which was constantly being bombed, in his house in Obersalzberg, Bavaria, near Hitler's Bavarian residence. They informed him that Hitler had decided to stay in his bunker in Berlin. On April 23, 1945, Goering sent him a telegram: "My Führer, do you agree that after your decision to stay in Berlin based on the law of June 29, 6, I take over the entire leadership of the Reich?" Hitler was furious at first, then said: "I know Goering is lazy." He allowed the Air Force to collapse. He is corrupt. He has been a morphine addict for many years. I've known that for a long time..."
In the meantime, a light plane was equipped on Goering's order, with which he imagined he could fly to a meeting with American General Dwight Eisenhower or even with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Harry Truman. He prepared letters in which he offers them a meeting, but Hitler sends him a telegram forbidding him to take any steps in that direction, and the Fuehrer's chief of staff, Martin Bormann, who took over all the lines of command towards the end, considered Göring's act as high treason and ordered that the SS units under the command of Colonel Bernhard Frank surrounded his villa. English planes bombed the entire district, Goering managed to escape with his wife and daughter to a large bunker embedded in the mountain, the SS allowed it, but they separated him from everyone else, he was not allowed to talk to anyone. Some time later, Frank came to the conclusion that Hitler and Bormann no longer had any power and agreed that the Goering family, accompanied by the SS, should be transferred to the town of Mauterndorf in Austria.
Despite the capitulation, Göring still hoped that he would be able to negotiate with Eisenhower "like a marshal with a marshal" and informed Admiral Karl Denitz, whom Hitler appointed as his successor, about this. The admiral did not deign to answer him. Goering had no idea that the US, USSR, Great Britain and France were colluding to try major Nazi war criminals because US Air Force General Carl A. Spatz invited him to his headquarters for a champagne breakfast. When Eisenhower heard this, he ordered Goering to be treated as a prisoner of war. His epaulettes were taken off, his uniform, marshal's baton, a ring with a large diamond, and two suitcases with medicines were taken from him. Hearings have begun. For four months, he was kept in a hotel in the Mondorf spa, where other high-ranking officials of Hitler's Germany were staying. They were given American military food. When Goering was sent to prison in Nuremberg in September 1945, he had lost forty kilograms.
Death in Nuremberg
The trials against Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg began on November 20, 1945. 21 leading Nazis were accused. Goering was the first defendant. He stated that he does not recognize the jurisdiction of the court. By the verdict published on September 30, 1946, he was sentenced to death by hanging. The next day, he turned to the court with a request to shoot him because "he was a soldier all his life and he is ready to die from another soldier's bullet". The request was rejected.
The hanging is scheduled for October 16 at two o'clock in the morning. Although the convicts were not told about it, somehow they found out about it on the eve of the execution. After a thorough search of the cell, Goering was visited at 20.30:XNUMX by the military doctor Dr. Pflicker and Second Lieutenant Mack Linden. He put on his pajamas and went to bed. An American soldier watched him the whole time through a peephole in the door. Around eleven o'clock he noticed that Goering was twitching as if he was choking and informed the commander of the guard, who rushed over, opened the cell and pronounced him dead, which the doctor confirmed a little later.
Three letters were found under the blanket. A lengthy proclamation addressed to the German people, the American authorities never published it; the second short love to his wife Emma who was an eraser; the third to the commanding officer of the prison, Colonel Andrews. He informed him that he had three capsules of cyankali: he had left the first among his clothes with the intention of being found, the second he always had with him, even in the courtroom, and the third was hidden in a box of skin cream. She was indeed found there.
Nine Nazis sentenced to death were hanged one after the other. Goering's remains were sent to the crematorium together with other corpses. An American, Soviet, English and French officer each checked their identities. They were burned, the ashes were put in the same container, and a military person, whose name has never been disclosed, took it away in a jeep and poured it into a ditch next to a road. It was raining. Goering said in prison that in fifty years the German people will remember him as a great man and erect monuments to him. Of course, that didn't happen. Today's Germany renounces the crimes of the Nazi regime. Any possible praise of them is prosecuted as a criminal offense ex officio.
(TIME - Belgrade)
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