posted on Dec, 10 2008 @ 11:36 AM
I hope this is in the right forum, if not, moderators, please feel free to move this thread where it is appropriate.
I have often wondered about Herman Goering. He committed suicide at Nuremburg. We are told that it was because he did not one to face his fate for the
attrocities he had done during the Nazi regime.
Let's look first at who Herman Goering really was:
-A decorated WWI hero. He put together the flying circus, the almost invincible German air force.
-A man who lived through the defeat of WWI, despite his contributions; if others had run their units the way he ran his air force, Germany would have
won.
-A man who saw his country being rebuilt and brought back to greatness, with a chance of erasing the humiliating defeat of WWI.
-A man who sent very few Jews to the camps. As a matter of fact, he saved a lot more Jews from the camps than he sent there. Although, to be fair, we
have to note that the Jews he helped to escape, paid him largely for it.
I have to wonder, this man was most likely not an anti-semite. If he had sent no Jews at all to the camps, he probably would have been killed by
others in the regime for not cooperating. They might even have thought that he was acting against them.
Goering might have sent a lot of people to die, but he did it to survive. Also, if he'd sent nobody to the camps and had been killed himself for it,
none of those he helped survive would have survived. It's an evil deed for a good deed.
I wasn't in his shoes and I hope I'm never placed in such a situation, but I have to wonder, ethically, if this guy was really evil or if he was
trying to do some good among all the bad that was happenning. Perhaps he committed suicide because he felt he was being wronged at Nuremburg? Perhaps
his character was far more complicated than most people think?
I would like to read your open-minded opinions about him. Please abstain from the "he was a nazi, so he was evil" type of reply; these bring no
insight.