WWII: Was Göring at the castle?

Leggett: Göring was not at the castle. General Stack got a hold of Göring’s senior aide and said, ‘Can you find him?’ Brauchitsch said: ‘I’m making phone calls. I think I’ve found him on the road between here and Mauterndorf. He’s somewhere on the road trying to get here.’ Göring was cluttered up on the road someplace. There were people all over those roads — homeless people, German soldiers trying to get back home or to their unit. It was a mess. There were all nationalities of POWs in the area as well as concentration camp people.

WWII: Members of your platoon stood guard duty alongside some of the SS. How did this come about?

Leggett: There was an SS HauptsturmFührer (captain) that spoke perfect English. He went around with Sill and showed him the castle grounds. The SS officer suggested that because we couldn’t provide any protection for his unit, we should have one armed SS and one armed American on every post. So that’s what we did.

WWII: Once Göring’s approximate location was discovered, what happened next?

Leggett: General Stack — and this is one of the things that gripes me — wrote that he went forward from the castle at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon looking for Göring. I’m going to tell you, Snell and I were the only ones that knew who left and who came into that castle. We had a message book. We’d write down when a vehicle left and when a vehicle came in and who it was, if it was a senior American officer or a lieutenant or what. General Stack did not leave.

WWII: If General Stack didn’t go out to find Göring, who did?

Leggett: The general called 2nd Lt. Shapiro in and asked 1st Lt. Sill to leave the room. Evidently Stack told Shapiro to take his sedan and his driver and let Göring’s senior aide go forward in that vehicle to find Göring on the road. And that’s what they did. That Plymouth station sedan and one jeep with two of Shapiro’s men left with von Brauchitsch. Stack was still in the castle.

WWII: Were you on active guard duty that evening?

Leggett: I happened to be on the gate. The SS guy with me was just a kid. He had a carbine slung over his back. He couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak German. He did say ‘Ost.’ Everybody knew that meant ‘east.’ He’d been hurt over there. A submachine gun hung from my web sling over my shoulder. I was always ready.

WWII: Where were you when Göring finally arrived at the castle?

Leggett: At about 11:30 we saw all these vehicles with lights on approaching. There were about 13 followed by the Plymouth. The first vehicle was one of our jeeps. The second was Göring’s Mercedes 770 150-W, better known as the 7.7-liter Mercedes. He had his driver, his wife, his daughter, a nurse and an officer with him.

WWII: What did you do when that convoy reached your post, which was at the entrance driveway to the castle?

Leggett: I had one of those old Army flashlights. I shined my light in there. I was looking for attitude and weapons. I shined it in there and saw there were ranking people and their families. I didn’t know what Göring looked like, but I did know he was the chief of the Luftwaffe.

WWII: It sounds like Göring arrived in a caravan. Can you describe some of the rest of the group?

Leggett: There were some cars, trucks and buses and we just waved them in. The G 2 [intelligence] journal for that day listed the people — there are only about 26 of them in the report. Good Lord, there were 75 or 80 Germans that came in with Göring. They arrived in 13 vehicles and dribbled in all night long until there were about 25 vehicles in all. The trucks were parked in a clearing about 75 yards from the castle.

WWII: You maintain that General Stack did not go out in his staff car to find Göring as he later claimed. When did Stack see Göring for the first time and what proof do you have to back up this claim?

Leggett: Sill later wrote to me that he and the general walked out of the castle and into the clearing and that was the first time the general had laid eyes on Göring. That is not what Stack wrote later. That’s the way that Göring surrendered.

WWII: Given the fact that Göring had been arrested by the SS on orders from Hitler, how did he react once he found out he was in the midst of an SS unit?

Leggett: Göring told General Stack that the SS previously had him under arrest. He also said that Waldemar Fegelein was the brother of one of his deadly enemies in Hitler’s bunker. Stack allowed Göring and his men to keep their weapons. Göring had a side arm and two additional machine pistols that he wanted for the night. He wore a white armband and he had his Reichsmarshall’s baton in a little canvaslike sack. Stack and Göring went into the castle. Then we had another guard post to worry about because in that clearing we had Luftwaffe people who were at odds with the SS because of their chief. We had two factions of Germans staring down one another — both armed.

WWII: Did you sense any animosity between the two groups?

Leggett: Yes. You could see it in the way they talked to one another. I guess they kind of felt a little animosity toward the SS troops. There were usually hard feelings between the SS and almost anybody else. We had an uneasy night.

WWII: What did you do, knowing that you had two groups of armed men who weren’t too fond of each other?

Leggett: We wound up putting another guard post with a Luftwaffe soldier and an American soldier at the truck clearing. That was going to make it tough on us for the rest of the night. We had all of those vehicles full of weapons. We dismounted our machine guns from at least two of our jeeps and had those in an area to cover the clearing.

WWII: How did the night progress after Göring entered the castle?

Leggett: I had been at the gate when he came in. I was relieved at 12. They were in the castle when I got back up there. Snell took over. We were kind of keyed up. We got the guy that we went up there to get, but we still didn’t know any of the details. We were just standing guard keeping the Germans in their area, and we were guarding the castle. Everybody was tired. They were tired, we were tired and I was worried about all of those vehicles full of weapons that came in. It was dicey. We couldn’t cover it all and we knew that. We didn’t have enough people.

WWII: Where was Göring at this time?

Leggett: Göring was on the second floor of the castle.

WWII: Did you ever get inside the castle proper?

Leggett: We slept in the halls. They had big thick carpet runners on the floors and on the stairs. That’s where we slept at night. There was a bust of Hitler on one of the landings on the big staircase.

WWII: What happened to Göring’s entourage?

Leggett: Some of those people were considered high ranking and they went into the castle, along with the womenfolk.

WWII: Were there any problems with the Germans that night?

Leggett: So far there had been no fighting between anybody. But, as the Germans retired to a small warehouse and a longer building near an open clearing across from the castle, they got kind of loud. They were drinking and then they started shooting through the roof. That made us uneasy. They weren’t shooting in our direction. We were set to return fire but we were surrounded by Germans. We had Germans in the countryside, Germans on our right and Germans on our left. We didn’t have many guns. The Luftwaffe worked with us very well, and we got where we would rely on those guys that came in with Göring.

WWII: It sounds like you were busy outside the castle keeping the different factions apart. When did you realize that the person Stack had met in the castle was, in fact, Hermann Göring?

Leggett: I knew since landing in Italy that Göring was the head of the Luftwaffe. I didn’t know what he looked like until after I saw all 240 pounds of him in that Mercedes at my guard post on May 7.

WWII: It sounds like a pretty tense evening. What happened when the sun finally came up?

Leggett: We were out in the courtyard. General Stack said, ‘Take as many pictures as you can, because there’s not going to be any newspaper people here.’ That’s why years later a lot of controversy came up over the picture of Göring standing in front of the Texas flag. It was said it was taken at Fischhorn. I maintain it was not, because we would have known if any press photographers came up there on that first night. Göring only spent one night there. He went back with the general in the Plymouth staff car to division headquarters at Kitzbühel. That’s when the picture was taken, at division headquarters. Besides Göring, they also loaded up the senior German officers.

WWII: How did you feel at this point?

Leggett: I thought we picked a plum off the tree. But there’s something else I felt — we didn’t have him back yet. We were still up there in a position where something was mighty strange. The SS had always evoked fear and loathing when encountered. These guys were deadly. They were strangely quiet, and it gave you a feeling they were there for some other purpose.

WWII: You had a feeling the reason the SS unit didn’t do anything was because they had an ulterior motive for being at the castle. Can you explain this?

Leggett: In retrospect I feel that perhaps these guys were guarding something. It turns out that [controversial historian] David Irving wrote quite a book about Göring. Of course he’s been in trouble with some historians over some things he’s written in his life, but in a footnote to his biography, Irving said the Counter Intelligence Corps [CIC] found a trunk, secreted in the basement of Fischhorn, that had all kinds of records and letters between Hitler and Eva Braun. Braun’s brother-in-law was the Fegelein who had been shot in Hitler’s bunker. That trunk later disappeared after CIC found it.

WWII: So you think the Fegelein brothers, Hermann at the Chancellery Bunker and Waldemar at Fischhorn Castle, were entrusted to look after some of Eva Braun’s personal belongings?

Leggett: Yes. Eva’s sister Gretl married Hermann, who was in the Berlin bunker with Hitler. Eva moved into the bunker bringing her belongings with her. Hitler said he didn’t want any of his private belongings to fall into the hands of the enemy. Before Hitler committed suicide on April 30, he wanted to know where Fegelein was. I believe Braun had given Fegelein some of this stuff for safekeeping. They started looking for Fegelein. The story goes that he was found in his apartment, dressed in civilian clothes. They brought him back to the bunker. Hitler was going to court-martial him. They didn’t really have a trial; they just took him out into the courtyard and executed him.

WWII: Why do you think Fegelein was executed at the Reich Chancellery?

Leggett: I think one of the reasons was because they questioned him to find out where the diaries and the letters that belonged to Eva Braun were, and he told them he had sent them to his brother at Fischhorn. What lends credence to my analysis is SS Sturmbannführer [Colonel] Johannes Göhler, who was assigned as an SS liaison to Hitler’s bunker, was at Fischhorn when Göring surrendered. He was with Waldemar Fegelein. Maybe one of the reasons Fegelein was executed at the bunker was because Hitler found out he had sent these items to his brother at Fischhorn. That would explain why the SS at the castle weren’t antagonized at our appearance — they were doing something else other than worrying about us picking up Göring. They were worried about whatever was in that trunk falling into the hands of the Americans.

WWII: You think that perhaps Göhler was the one who transported the documents from Berlin to Fischhorn Castle?

Leggett: Yes.

WWII: Back to the morning of the 8th, who were some of the other people in Göring’s entourage that caught your eye?

Leggett: I noticed a woman who had an Oceanic-type radio. It was obviously a military radio. She would come out into the courtyard to smoke. We had a couple of lieutenants who came up on the 8th. They were trying to talk to this woman. They found out she was American. I heard her say she had lived in New York at one time, but that she had thrown in her lot with the Germans. These guys lost interest. After reading about [propaganda broadcaster] Axis Sally (see World War II, November 1995), I said that’s who it was. That had to be her. I think we had Axis Sally, but since there were no counterintelligence people with our platoon, we didn’t realize who she was.

WWII: Did you stay behind at the castle after the crowds departed?

Leggett: Yes. All of us who were up there stayed behind to guard those who were left at the castle.

WWII: But several important Germans in the group were initially overlooked, including Hitler’s Chancellery chief, Philip Bouhler, the architect of Operation T4, the Nazi euthanasia program.Why was that?

Leggett: They didn’t take Philip Bouhler or his wife. They found out they were in the entourage after May 10, when we turned the castle over to the 42nd. They came to get him, and he killed himself. His wife also committed suicide.

WWII: There has been some confusion as to the exact date Göring was captured. Why is this?

Leggett: The Germans were out of our division’s zone of responsibility. When our division commander decided to go after Göring, he decided to go without telling XXI Corps Headquarters or Seventh Army. They wanted to get him first. Staff journals record the story as starting on May 8, not May 7, when it actually happened. We had Göring the night of the 7th. The night of the 8th he was at Kitzbühel, the night of the 9th he was back at Seventh Army headquarters. We crossed boundary lines and were probably in the 101st Airborne Division’s area. The 101st was at Berchtesgaden. There was no way they could get down to Zell am See because the roads and the bridges were out. Stack and Maj. Gen. John E. Dahlquist, the 36th’s division commander, decided we would go get him, and we did. We had him on the night of the 7th but they reported that all of that had happened on the 8th. By the 10th, the 42nd Infantry Division moved in and took over that area. We left Fischhorn and turned it over to them. We went back to Hopfgarten.

WWII: What did your unit do once war was officially declared as being over?

Leggett: They’d send us out to [see] the various mayors in the little villages to get them to turn in all of the weapons they had. Then we were sent farther back to Kirchheim, Germany. I left the unit on points to go home on May 27. I was back in Fort Worth after having been discharged at Fort Sam Houston and was at home on July 12, 1945.

WWII: How did you feel knowing you had helped to capture the second-ranking Nazi?

Leggett: I’m not sure at that stage it had the same importance as the fact that the war was over. We had put up with so much. We always needed a bath. We didn’t have the food we yearned for. It didn’t really set in with us at first that this was a historical event.

WWII: Looking back on it now, how do you feel?

Leggett: I think it was wonderful that I was involved with the taking of the most important prisoner arrested in World War II. As far as I am concerned, it was sort of the cherry on top of the cake.

Lester Leggett later received a commission in the Texas National Guard and subsequently served with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, became an Army aviation ground school instructor, served in Taiwan as a member of the Military Army Advisory Group, flew helicopters in Vietnam, graduated from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and commanded the 503rd Army Aviation Battalion, 3rd Armored Division. He retired after 26 years of service. Leggett is currently writing a book titled To Zell and Back, which documents the U.S. Seventh Army’s exploits between Operation Dragoon and the capture of Göring.

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This article was written by David Lesjak and originally appeared in the January/February 2006 issue of World War II magazine. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today!

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