Are Hermann Görings 22 WWI kills based on lies?

[ABFM]

This evening the german TV http://www.zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/4/0,1872,3908324,00.html starts with a series of three documentation movies about Görings life. The link points to a german website. It is a official german website by the second german national tv. It is more or less under political control.

The text claims that Göring´s buddies disbelieved that he ever downed the 22.

Is this true?

[bob lembke]

I looked thru the ZDF site and it seems a bit political.

I do not study WW II and the era. It is only in the last 15-20 years that some aspects of WW I is emerging from the shadow of mis-information, spin, etc. Given all that happened 1933-1945, it will be two or three hundred years before the events of the era will be looked at objectively, IMHO. How many countries in Europe have criminalized stating certain viewpoints on the history of the era? (No, I do not want to get into a discussion of this.)

One cottage industry in the current writing of the history of WW II is the extension of the descriptions of the major German war criminals to include manufactured "events" to convert their few attractive personal qualities to additional dimensions of an evil nature.

I am not an expert on the air war in WW I, but I do not know how Göring could have tricked his superiors to confirm a number of bogus victories. Hypnosis?

Although I am not interested in WW II, generally, and do not study it, as opposed to WW I, which consumes me, I do know that Göring was a fascinating, talented, complex guy, certainly evil, but with many sides, some attractive. His lifelong addiction to morphine that started when the police shot him in the groin in about 1921 probably was not a good influence on his further course.

To get back to your question, I would be very careful about such assertions.

Bob Lembke

[Purple fang]

There is a book about WW1 aces, same author wrote a Red baron book. See if I can find it. Anyway, the research shwoed Goerings kills were the most difficult to verify. In fact they were unable often to do so.

[Duckman]

There is a book about WW1 aces, same author wrote a Red baron book. See if I can find it. Anyway, the research shwoed Goerings kills were the most difficult to verify. In fact they were unable often to do so.

Astonishing!

I don't claim expert knowledge, but those who do will state that German records are the MOST accurate.
Verifiable only (wreckage, witnesses etc)
Kills only (no "went down out of control until I lost sight of it in cloud...")
1 Man, 1 kill.

As far as I know most, if not all of Goerings kills are essentially as valid as Boelcke's 40 or the Baron's 80. It is harder to verify some of them 90 years later than for some other aces, but this is because more of his claims were against the French - generally they have proved harder to cross-reference than British victims, which has been fertile ground for recent research. The identity of at least 10 of his victims is certain, so even if the total wasn't as high as 22, he was beyond doubt a genuine kanone.

Cross-referencing kills is tricky, and better than 50% is pretty good for any but the most prominent aces, whose every action was pored over and documented to death. Take Eschwege - "The Eagle of the Aegean". I think 4 of his 20 kills have been identified without doubt. Or Udet - 6 confirmed ID's out of 62 credits. No one is questioning their merits...

There has long been a sniff of "generous" confirmations for Goering, but it is very hard to tell how much of that is informed by later events. He was intimate with many of the major figures in German aviation, and he may have pulled some strings to get confirmations that would have otherwise been turned down. He may also have claimed victims that his flight shot down, but not him personally. He would not be alone on that score. But while he was respected as a leader within the Luftstreitkrafte, he was one of a couple of dozen of similar leaders - Udet (of course), Sachsenberg, Berthold, and so on. The calibre of leadership at the head of the Jastas in the last year of the war was phenomenal. I don't see why HG would have stood out so much at the time that he warranted special treatment.

Seems to me that if there is a link here, it is not that we can see the future in his actions in WWI. It is that his WWI service led to his morphine addiction, which might be accounted as a "diminished responsibility" factor in viewing later judgements. Not excusing his later actions in the least, just thinking there might have been some impairment. (although I note Bob's reference to his addiction starting after the war. Don't know so much about HG myself, so this comes as news to me).

I suggest anyone with an interest here should consult the Aerodrome (http://www.theaerodrome.com) which covers the aces individual records and has some interesting articles on claims documentation and validity. If you can be bothered trolling through it all, many, MANY individual dicussion threads deal with this and related topics.

It's a shame we have to do a Snidely Whiplash and put all our villains in top hats, opera capes and big fake moustaches (for twirling), just so we can tell them from the good guys...



Next we'll hear that Adolf didn't really get the Eisernes Kreuz or get gassed at Wervicq...

cheers

Duckman[/img]

[Edward L. Hsiao]

Gentlemen,

Well one thing for sure in my opinion,he doesn't deserve to be awarded the Pour le Merite!

Edward

[Purple fang]

Here's the book I mentioned.

Amazon.com: Under the Guns of the German Aces: Immelmann, Voss, Göring, Lothar von Richthofen : The Complete Record ...
... Guns of the German Aces: Immelmann, Voss, Göring ... written book describing all documented vitories of four German Aces. The book gives ... before buying this particular book. For WWI ...www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1898697728?v=glance

[bob lembke]

Gentlemen,

Well one thing for sure in my opinion,he doesn't deserve to be awarded the Pour le Merite!

Edward

Edward, I am not an expert on the air war in WW I, but as I understand it, it seems that every German pilot who got five victories got the PlM. Am I wrong? Was it eight?

What is your basis of saying he did not deserve the PlM? Political events 20 years after the war was over? "Duckman", who clearly knows a lot more about the air war than I do, has made many useful points. He states that the German victory certification process was the most rigorous in the war. How did Göring cook that process? If he did, would he have been promoted to his important leadership position, with a cloud over his head? It just does not add up, unless someone has some concrete material to prove the point.

I do not plan to beat these points to death. I got into such a discussion on this forum previously, and was so brutalized in the name of PC that I avoided this forum for a year.

Bob Lembke

[Kim Sung]

I don't think Hermann Göring was especially a braggart. Rene Fonck was famous for exaggerating his kills and Edward Rickenbacker's kills were also doubtable.

[Renner aus Schlesien]

Hello everyone... Bob- By 1918 20 kills was the usual number to receive the PlM. According to a book I have (but not in front of me at the moment) Above the Lines a great book by Grub Street Publishers that gives biographies of the German aces... I seem to recall that 9 of his kills are 100% verified. That leaves 13 "questionable". Since I do not have access to German, French, or British first hand data on the subject, I will rely on their research. Regarding Goering as a cheat or a liar... I can not condemn him because I do not have any evidence to "convict" him. Any man who fought in WW1 (or any war for that matter) has to get a bit of respect despite of who he became years later. I am not a Goering apologist, but it is too easy to call him a cheat with 60+ years of hindsight. I want to see evidence written before he became AH's second in command. Are there accounts written DURING the First World War that would shed light on what his comrades thought of him at the time ? Just my two cents...

Erik

[ABFM]

To get back to your question, I would be very careful about such assertions.

Bob Lembke

The maker of this tv series is a historian and in his comment he said that Görings kills could be disbelieved. It is not my opinion. He did not say who disbelieved it.

Anyway, the research shwoed Goerings kills were the most difficult to verify. In fact they were unable often to do so.

How were the kills verified? Must be very difficult.

The identity of at least 10 of his victims is certain, so even if the total wasn't as high as 22, he was beyond doubt a genuine kanone.

Who are the 10? Maybe a source?

Take Eschwege - "The Eagle of the Aegean". I think 4 of his 20 kills have been identified without doubt. Or Udet - 6 confirmed ID's out of 62 credits. No one is questioning their merits...

What is your source?

Gentlemen,

Well one thing for sure in my opinion,he doesn't deserve to be awarded the Pour le Merite!

Edward

Why Edward?

I am looking for a online source of some Göring WWI pictures. But they seem to be rare. I expected some footage of Göring from WWI in part one of the tv series, but there were only two or three very short sequences.

Part one of the series included never published footage filmed by Göring himself or his staff. The german tv got the film reels from a US Army Lieutenant who got those films as a present from two german mountain guides at the Obersalzberg on the occasion of a trekking tour in 1946. But nothing viewy. Only one thing, he had a big ass. Never saw a man with such a big ass like Göring.

[Renner aus Schlesien]

Anyway, the research shwoed Goerings kills were the most difficult to verify. In fact they were unable often to do so.

How were the kills verified? Must be very difficult.

From my understanding German pilot kills are verified by comparing the pilots' claims matched with Allied losses (and vice versa for Allied kills of German planes). For example if German flyer Schmidt records that he shot down a French Nieuport around near the town of X, French records are checked to see if they record a loss of a Nieuport in the area at the same time that the German says he shot it down. That is an over-simplified answer.

[Stormbird]

The way i see it is he may or may not have got 22 kills in WWI but his running of the Luftwaffe in WWII got plenty more than 22 kills, could probably say he was the greatest ace in history but the problem is he was killing his own countrymen.

[bob lembke]

As I said, one has to be very careful about material on WW I German soldiers who later became Nazi leaders.

An example: I am not especially interested in AH. I bought a general biograpy of the guy 30 years ago and it still sits unread in my library. About a month ago I was given a copy of a book about Hitler in the 1910s and 1920s, and I did read it through the part ending about 1921. I spend 6-10 hours a day on WW I and am also interested in some aspects of the Freikorps.

A couple of years ago there was a new production on TV of a documentary or docu-drama sort on or largely on AH. I don't remember much about it, but I found that the history in the era that I am familiar with was fairly accurate. But they inserted this curious item that caught my eye, about Hitler, as a soldier in WW I, chained up a dog, either his or someone else's (I believe he did have a dog for a while in the war), and beat the dog savagely while it was chained up.

Anyone who knows anything about that guy knows that, aside from all the millions that he managed to get killed in assorted ways, etc., AH was a dog nut, and, beyond that, a sap for all sorts of animals. He became a vegetarian, and could not imagine how people could kill and eat animals.

My wife slightly knew Friedelind Wagner, Richard Wagner's grand-daughter. Friedelind's English mother, (Winnefried?) was nuts about AH, while her father Siegfried supposedly despised him but found him amusing. (Siegfried died in 1930, I believe) AH, of course, was nuts about Wagner's music. When Friedelind was a young teenager (and her father was probably dead) Hitler was over the house frequently. Friedelind said how she had a dog, a German Sheppard, I think, who was a one-gal dog; it loved her, and had no use for anyone else. But when Hitler sat in the parlor, her dog went over to him, placed his/her (?) chin on Hitler's knee, looked adoringly at his face, and drooled on the Hitlerian garbadine. Dogs are usually very perceptive about humans' emotions toward dogs, less perceptive about politics.

During this period AH was the only person that paid attention to Friedelind's needs as a young person, she was largely neglected by her family, he was almost a father figure, but as she grew up she started to read Hitler's speeches, and was horrified at her "uncle"'s politics. Finally, when she was about 20, she managed to get from Germany to Switzerland, and eventually, with the help of Toscanini, a great conductor of Wagner and another family friend, to the "West". This was, I believe, 1938.

So slipping this bit about AH chaining and savagely beating a dog into this supposedly serious piece of history is, 99% sure, a complete fabrication, of the sort I am warning about.

Back to the topic of Göring; my wife brought home from her library a fascinating book, Hitler's War on Cancer, and it contains a cartoon, I think of pre-1939 German origin, of Göring, who was an active anti-vivesectionist, striding through a medical labratory, and dozens of lab animals; rabbits, lab mice, a few dogs, etc., all standing/sitting on their haunches and greeting Göring with the Nazi salute, in thanks for him saving them. Even in WW I he had lion cubs at the front (I have seen a photo of him in the cockpit with a lion cub in his arms; he wasn't flying), and in the 1940's he literally had a full-grown lion walking about freely at his office at the air ministry. His wife, having young children, put her foot down and insisted that the full-grown lion be banished from their home,so he took it to the office. Can you litter-train a lion? All sorts of possibilities there.

Bob Lembke

[Regulus 1]

Göring his victories are indeed partially very doubtfull. only 11 out of 22 are possibly identified. In most cases of German aces this percentage is a lot higher and reaches sometimes 100 %.

In some cases it impossible to identify who shot who, because some men still got victories in the last days of the war, of which is not known by whom, only
the unit... For Göring this is not the case.

Let's not forget he was a close friend of the Kronprinz, so it was interersting and usefull to have friends in such high places. Also very curious and easily to verify is that ones he became CO of von Richthofen's unit, he flew very little and ruled the unit most of the time with his stick from the ground. He got one victory after he got in command of JG1.

Let's look at the fact that he got the PlM on the moment everybody needed to have 20 and he only had 18. Yes good friends could ask the question to daddy.
Men of the old "garde" of Jasta 11 such as Groos said about him : Richthofen flew an fought for his emperor and fatherland. Göring fought untill his ambition was reached.

However also said by his men was that Göring was a capable leader, a bit with iron hand and for example did forbid pilots to fly alone, because this was to dangeruous.
These men also said however that he did loose the contact with the pilots at the end of the war as he didn't participate anymore in aircombat as already mentioned.
I think one sees the same problem in WW II during the Battle of Britain where he was said over and over again that he was losing his best pilots, and he completely ignored this, blaming his pilots to be incompetent etc. And again he ruled with his stick from the ground... History repeats itself...

Best from Johan

[bob lembke]

I certainly defer to Johan; he knows a lot about the air war, I know little. His close relationship to the KP (I did not know) is telling, it might even affect things in a subtle fashion, not simply as open, crude influence.

I heard of aces geting their PlM with less victories, perhaps early in the war.

However, I think my warning about being cautious about "facts" about WW I soldiers who became Nazi leaders is still valid. I am delighted that my interest in European history largely dies out at the mid-1920s. One could also wonder about Petain's WW I history and if it suffered, but his place in history was well established before WW II.

Bob Lembke