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regular police forces of the Reich had their quota of these, a striking example being Artur Nebe of the Prussian Criminal Police or Kripo, a sort of C.I.D., who will become a familiar apparition in these pages. It was the infiltration technique which has now become notorious in another context. The fifth column did not begin in Spain: it began in Germany under the Weimar Republic. The Nazis began their career of treachery not against foreign states but against their own.
    When on January 30th, 1933, the ancient and decrepit Hindenburg crowned his postwar career of ineptitude and deceit by inviting Hitler to become Chancellor of Germany, he committed to the care of the Nazis the whole State apparatus of a system they despised. For the moment Hitler had to accept what was called a coalition, which meant that important offices were filled by men he proposed to get rid of at the first opportunity. For instance, von Papen, not a Nazi, who by his own
coup d’état
of the year before had shaken the inadequate foundations of the Federal Republic, became Vice-Chancellor and Prime Minister of Prussia. But Hitler was able to make certain key appointments, and the most critical of these was the elevation of Goering to be Prussian Minister of the Interior, with control of the Prussian police. Goering, of course, did not report to von Papen, who was his technical superior: at that time, with Goebbels, he was closer to Hitler than any other man, and more than any other man he had the responsibility of carrying out the Nazi revolution, which could not begin until Hitler had achieved power by constitutional means.
    With the war between us and the early ‘thirties it may seem odd to think of the blusterer who was going to smash Britain with his Air Force as a revolutionary; but, indeed, Goering was precisely that. He was, in spite of soft living and expensive habits, a man of immense energy and drive. His vicious temper and his appetite for pleasure, his hatredof his enemies and his generosity to his friends, were all equally unbridled. This ex-fighter pilot of the First World War, gross, debauched, yet physically very brave, a buccaneer by nature, had developed a mystique of loyalty: he demanded it, he gave it. He became a revolutionary because he wanted power and riches, to play the despotic patron as well as to destroy—unlike Goebbels, who was a revolutionary because he hated others having power and riches. When he had achieved both, and allowed himself to believe that the war was won, he ceased to be a revolutionary and became a conservative. It was only then that he took to wearing snow-white togas and jeweled headdresses.
    In 1933 he was a savage driver. He enjoyed his own savagery so much, and could be such a good companion on occasion, that it seemed almost a shame when people with less zest for living objected to his activities as the chief policeman of Prussia. But there was a great deal to object to. And the savagery was deepseated. He showed it to the whole world for the first time during the Reichstag Fire Trial; when he could not contain himself, and roared apoplectic threats across the court at Dimitrov, then an admired and pitied figure, who was later to become a dictator himself and to end his days in Moscow. And Goering retained his savagery to the end. In the closing stages of the war he was talking to Ciano in Berlin: Greece was starving.
    â€œWe cannot worry unduly about the hunger of the Greeks. It is a misfortune which will strike many other peoples beside them. In the camps for Russian prisoners they have begun to eat each other. This year between twenty and thirty million people will die of hunger in Russia. Perhaps it is well that it should be so, for certain nations must be decimated. But even if it were not, nothing can be done about it. It is obvious that if humanity is condemned to die of hunger, the last to die will be our two peoples.”
    He retained his savagery. But he also retained