Quote:
Originally Posted by RGTraynor
People often badly overestimate the regard in which Goring was held, contemporaneously, by the German public. Over a dozen German aces survived the war with double Goring's victory count, and nearly forty survivors bettered it.
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None of these fellows were politically prominent in 1936, much less the number two goon in Germany. Moreover, none of these guys were prominent in 1923, when Göring was part of a coup to take over Bavaria that the far right, to be dominant in 1936, lionized. (Of course, running after a shot to the leg in said coup, not staying, going to prison and getting fast medical attention, doomed Göring to ineffectiveness.)
I can give you many reasons why Hitler, again a hick Bavarian corporal of no citizenship until 1932, would never take over Germany—but he still did it. There are reasons why Göring, a morphine-addicted munchkin hedonist, might not run Germany after a premature death of Hitler, but he was the designated successor, and had a much better résumé for the job than Hitler did. Since we're talking about hypotheticals, it makes sense to go with the only guy who has even a double-digit chance of the job than claim that the military, which accepted a hick corporal and let him limit its political might, will be upset if his successor is an upper middle class officer, especially when
none of them were even had a remote chance of getting the job, and all of them knew it.