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Göring's reply was characteristic: if that should happen, he would send a special airplane to drop a wreath at Sir Nevile's funeral.
In his German memoirs now running in LIFE, Sir Nevile Henderson devotes a puzzled chapter to Göring, who once told him that the trouble with the British was that they had become "debrutalized." Sir Nevile admired Göring's loyalty to Hitler, his administrative ability, his physical courage, his sportsmanship, above all his frankness, which does not stoop to devious deceits. He credits Göring with intervening decisively for peace in 1938, thinks he would have done so in 1939 if he had dared risk Hitler's displeasure. Summing him up, Sir Nevile found him "a typical and brutal buccaneer; but he had certain attractive qualities; and I must frankly say that I had a real personal liking for him."
Few foreigners who have met him have failed to fall under the spell of Göring's gusty charm. In that he has served Germany well. Joachim von Ribbentrop (whom Göring hates) keeps relations smooth with Russia. But in Italy, where Germans are not too well liked, it is Göring who keeps things running with the Mussolinis. (He named his daughter after Edda Ciano.) Neutral diplomats prefer to talk to Göring, rather than to listen to Hitlerian tirades. And the fact that the British Foreign Office always found him willing to listen accounts for the frequency with which his name is mentioned in talk of a new German regime, should Hitler fall (or quit) without pulling his whole house down around him.
Strong Man. At present Göring's hefty shoulders are for many reasons the strongest support of the Nazi regime. The Army respects him because he is a soldier and ein Herr. Having no outstanding leader of its own, the Army looks to Göring not only for moral leadership but as a bridge between it and inscrutable Adolf Hitler.
Hitler is head of the Nazis, but Rudolf Hess is the Party's chief organizer. Göring and Hess are friends, work together against Himmler, Ribbentrop, Goebbels and other extremists of the Party. And never forgotten by either of them is the fact that Hitler named Göring as his successor, Hess to succeed Göring.
Hitler owes his safety to Heinrich Himmler's Secret Police. But the Munich beer-hall bombing indicates that Himmler could use his police for an opposite purpose just as easily—if Göring, who organized the Gestapo, did not have his own private spies to spy on Himmler's spies.