Tuscaloosa News/March 14, 1946
Court Told Of Effort To Curb Communism
Hermann Goering testified before the International Military Tribunal today that he asked Adolf Hitler to send help to Generalissimo Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War “to prevent the spread of communism and to try out young air force experimentally.”
“At that time,” said Goering of Nazi intervention in Spain, “I had an opportunity to see if we had the proper equipment, and I saw to it that the personnel got some experience.”
He said Franco asked for aid, “particularly air aid.”
Goering, resuming direct testimony in his own behalf, boasted that his Luftwaffe was responsible for the swift conquest of Poland, “just as the American Air Force assured the Allied victory.”
He confirmed that he ordered the Nazi aircraft industry to develop a bomber capable of flying to the United States and back, insisting that they do this work “expeditiously in case America entered the war.”
Goering also accepted “full and complete responsibility” for all anti-Jewish economic decrees which bore his signature. He told the court that although he received many written and verbal orders from Hitler to carry out anti-Jewish laws, he did “not propose in any way to hide behind the Fuehrer.”
Turning to the German departure from the League of Nations and her institution or rearmament, Goering told the tribunal:
“When it was clear that other powers were unwilling to disarm and that a power in the east—Russia—was carrying out unheard of rearmament, it became necessary for us to rearm in the interests of the security of the Reich.”
Discussing abandonment of the Versailles Treaty, he argued that “all complaints about German minorities were met with indifference or only well meant advice.”
(Source: Google News, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19460314&id=c9s-AAAAIBAJ&sjid=zUwMAAAAIBAJ&pg=4285,3380444)
The Archive 