Free Goering by Roger Manvell Page A

Hitler had been arrested on November 11 in Uffing, where the Hanfstaengl family had been taking care of him. But she was preoccupied with her own troubles. In a letter written to her mother on November 30, she described her husband’s condition.

    Hermann is in a terrible state. His leg hurts so much he can hardly bear it. Four days ago almost all the wounds that had healed broke out again and there is a horrible amount of pus in the leg still. He was X-rayed and they discovered a mass of fragments of shot as well as the dirt from the street buried in his thigh muscles. They operated on him with an anesthetic, and for the past three days he’s been very feverish. His mind seems to wander; sometimes he even cries, and sometimes he dreams of street fighting. All the time he is suffering indescribable pain. His whole leg is fitted with little rubber tubes to draw out the pus. He is so kind, so patient, so good, but deep in his heart he is desperately unhappy.

    Carin realized that her husband’s presence was becoming known, and that she must attempt to get him away to the safety of Austria. She was unsuccessful. He was arrested and was placed under guard at the hospital in Garmisch, where he became the subject of friendly demonstrations during which the police were threatened with violence. Goering gave his word of honor to the police that he would not attempt a further escape, but Carin was determined he should do so, although his passport had been confiscated. With the help of friends and of sympathizers among the police, he was taken straight from his bed by car to the border and smuggled out of Germany, using a false passport. The men who took him posed as members of the police who were under orders to remove him. 5
    His injuries had not yet received proper care, and he was taken to a hospital in Innsbruck. There the wounds were reopened and X-rayed, and he was operated upon. Fever followed, and great pain, and the doctors prescribed morphine; according to Hanfstaengl, who had also escaped to Innsbruck, he had two injections a day.
    Carin, in a letter written to her mother on December 8, reveals what both she and Goering were suffering.

    I’m sitting here by my beloved Hermann’s sickbed. I’ve got to watch him suffer in body and soul—and there’s hardly anything I can do to help him. You know how awful that feels. His wound is just all pus, all over his thigh. He bites the pillow because it hurts him so much, and he moans all the time. You can imagine how this eats into my heart. It’s exactly a month since they shot at him, and in spite of being dosed with morphine every day, his pain stays just as bad as ever. I left the hotel and moved here into the hospital a fortnight ago. I feel so much better to be with him all the time. Spies watch over our villa in Munich; our letters are being confiscated; our bank accounts are blocked, and our car has been taken away. . . . They tell me a warrant has been issued for my arrest, too.

    Goering was kept in hospital until December 24, when he was released, though he still had to use crutches.
    Meanwhile, the Nazi underground in Austria was at work, and, with the help of the maid and the gardener at Obermenzing, they began to smuggle in clothes and other necessities that would help the Goerings in their exile. By now the streets of Munich were covered with posters bearing Goering’s photograph and announcing that he was a wanted man.
    In Austria there were many Nazi sympathizers who came to Goering’s help. They sent a Christmas tree to the Tiroler Hof, the hotel owned by another sympathizer where Goering spent Christmas with Carin. While Goering was still in hospital he had been visited by Kurt Ludecke, one of the senior party members, to whom he gave a vivid account of the Munich putsch. Goering asked Ludecke to represent him at a Nazi convention which was to be held in Salzburg. Hitler’s lawyer came to see him on New Year’s