US
Pilot Remembers Nazi Leader's Capture, Recalls A Common Person
By
Joel Leyden and Associated Press
Tel
Aviv, Israel ---- January 30, 2011 ...... US Major Bo Foster had
an extraordinary mission: Fly captured Nazi leader Hermann Goering
to the US 7th Army's headquarters for interrogation.
But when he
took one look at the one-time heir to Adolf Hitler and commander
of the fearsome Luftwaffe - all 300-plus pounds (136-plus kilos)
of him and knew he needed a bigger plane.
It was May
9, 1945, the day after World War II ended in Europe. Goering,
Foster and a group of officers from the Army's 36th Infantry Division
gathered on a tiny airstrip outside Kitzbuhel, Austria, to transport
the highly-prized war prisoner back to Germany in an unarmed,
two-man reconnaissance plane.
"They
wanted to get him back where he could be debriefed. There was
a strong rumor that in a mountainside in the Alps right down there
in Bavaria there was a concentration of (German) military,"
Foster said. "He just acted as though it was a nice, friendly
trip."
Mayhew "Bo"
Foster, now 99 and living in a Missoula nursing home, recently
recounted his rare one-on-one encounter with one of the most wanted
Nazi leaders. Foster went on to become brigadier general of the
Montana National Guard and was awarded the French Legion of Honor
for his World War II service.
Foster was
in the amphibious landing assault in southern France on Aug. 15,
1944 - "Riviera D-Day" nine weeks after the Normandy
invasion. He spent more than five hours above the battlefield
in an L4 Piper Cub, a 65-horsepower observation plane nicknamed
the Grasshopper, depending on a jeep fuel tank in the back seat
to bolster the plane's nine-gallon tank. Foster relayed vital
information to the corps command on the Mediterranean and located
an inland field for his fellow flyers to land on. He won the U.S.
Silver Star for valor that day.
But it was
the Goering mission that stood out as the highlight of an illustrious
military career.
Goering, 52,
had surrendered to the US Army's 36th Infantry Division the day
before. He had fallen out of favor with Hitler and hadn't played
an active role at the end of the war, though he remained Reichsmarschall
of Nazi Germany.
Before his
capture, Goering wrote a letter to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, offering to work with Eisenhower
on the conditions of the German army's surrender, according to
an account of Goering's capture by Brigadier Gen. Robert Stack
kept by the 36th Infantry Division Association.
After receiving
the letter, Stack and a group of soldiers drove from the division's
base near Kitzbuhel across the border into Germany and intercepted
a convoy that included Goering, his wife, daughter, sister-in-law,
household servants and military aides, according to the account.
Goering agreed
to surrender unconditionally but asked that his family be cared
for, and the Nazi leader was delivered to Foster for transport
the next day.
Foster, who
was 33 at the time, said he didn't fear getting shot down carrying
such precious cargo alone in an unescorted, unarmed plane. He
didn't worry about Goering taking advantage of the lack of a guard
to wrest control of the aircraft.
The main problem,
he said, was getting the two of them off the ground the
nimble, lightweight Piper L4 that Foster piloted in his artillery
spotting missions wouldn't support both him and Goering. But the
division only had the small airstrip that was fine for Foster's
aircraft, but was problematic for taking off and landing larger
planes.
They'd have to upgrade to the one L5 in the division's inventory,
a slightly larger aircraft Foster hadn't flown in years.
Goering stood
on the tiny airstrip in a plain, gray uniform that was unadorned
but for a pistol at his hip and a medal around his neck. Still
wearing the pistol, he stepped toward the plane. A Goering aide
emerged from the group that had gathered and relieved Goering
of the weapon.
The Nazi leader
settled into the back seat and tried to fasten his seat belt.
It wouldn't stretch across his belly. He held the strap in his
hand, looked at Foster and said, "Das goot!"
that's good.
The two men
spent the 55-minute flight from Kitzbuhel to Augsburg, Germany,
conversing in a mix of German and English. Foster said Goering
avoided any talk of Hitler or the war but appeared to relish pointing
out the sites below them.
"He acted
as though he was going on a sightseeing tour, or really as though
I was going on a sightseeing tour and he was showing me where
he grew up," Foster said. "I had a .45 in a shoulder
holster, but he couldn't reach that. But neither could I, because
I had two hands controlling the plane."
He described
Goering as sharp, friendly and witty, even cracking a joke when
Foster asked him when Germany began manufacturing jets.
"Too
late," Goering replied, according to Foster.
At the time,
Foster was somewhat less generous in describing the man. In a
letter to his wife, Virginia Lou Foster, written soon after the
mission, Foster told her that the Nazi leader was "effeminate"
and "gave me the creeps."
"Several
times I had the impulse to turn the plane over and see if I could
shake him out but he was wedged in like a champagne cork,"
Foster wrote.
After landing,
Foster asked his passenger to sign a blank flight report. The
prisoner scrawled "Hermann Goering Reichsmarschall"
across the paper, which Foster folded and put in his pocket.
It's a document
that he still has, one of Foster's most prized possessions alongside
a collection of photographs of Goering, Hitler and other snapshots
from the days of the Third Reich.
There was
just a single jeep at the airstrip to meet the arriving flight
carrying the world's most famous war prisoner. Foster rode with
Goering to the gates of the 7th Army Headquarters and formally
turned him over to the intelligence officer without ceremony.
It turned
out, Foster learned later, those rumors of German troops hiding
in the Bavarian Alps were untrue. Goering stood trial at Nuremberg,
and the next year he was found guilty of war crimes.
Goering was
sentenced to hang, but he committed suicide instead by swallowing
a cyanide capsule.
Sixty-five
years later, Foster is trim, sharp and carries himself as a former
military officer.
He still reflects
on his rare insight into the Nazi leadership, and he recognizes
that the experience had shifted his perceptions of the enemy.
It allowed him to see the human side of those he had only known
as caricatures.
"I could
see that he was like one of our officers if he'd been picked up,"
Foster said. "I wouldn't say it changed my view of the war
but it showed me that there are ..." He broke off.
"Well,
I questioned all that we knew about these vicious people,"
he said.
The Israel
News Agency discovered that Scientific American published
an article by Jack El Hai, based on a detailed examination of
Dr. Kelleys contact with Hermann Goering. Douglas M. Kelley
was given an unusual assignment for any psychiatrist, one in which
he had to balance his role as an employee of the US government
and a doctor to the top Nazi war criminal in custody.
Contrary to
popular conceptions prevalent at the time, he found Goering to
be clinically normal. El Hai described Kelleys opinion as
follows.
He believed
that Goering and his cohorts were commonplace people and that
their personalities could be duplicated in any country of
the world today. In the years before and during World War
II, the opportunity to obtain power led them to embrace a chilling
political philosophy. In other words, the Holocaust and the wars
other heinous crimes were the products of healthy minds.
The same minds
that today control Iran and have called for "wiping Israel
off the map."
We should
never look at Adolf Hitler, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other monsters
in awe. We should examine the culture and society that produced
them.
We must make certain that the new leaders of Egypt will consist
of peace loving supporters of democracy - not narcissistic ego
maniacs which could easily wipe off a race of people with the
stroke of a pen and the popular support of their people.
Democracies
have an obligation not only to the people that they represent
but to other global democracies to make certain that the values
of liberty, freedom, tolerance and the preservation of all life
remains paramount.
With
Joel Leyden of the Israel News Agency.
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