tals evidently by Hermann Göring himself. Perhaps he did
not want Carin to see it, with its shaming admission that he had
lied about seeing the great Italian dictator. Moreover, the letter’s
wooden phrasing hints at the inroads already made into his
mental stability by their humiliating plight and, of course, by
the pain-killing injections of morphine that he was now getting
several times a day.
This lowering darkness was now pierced by one ray of
light. A telegram came from Negrelli: Its text is lost but Göring
replied with alacrity to him at Mussolini’s Press Office:
+
(the last word was in English).
Negrelli marked the telegram: “Duce.”
At last the indolent mandarins in Rome seemed to be stir-
ring, probably aroused by the unexpected revival in Nazi for-
tunes in Germany: Hitler had firmly resumed control of the
party and had ousted all usurpers and pretenders to his throne
like General von Ludendorff. On February , , the Nazi
party was again legalized (though the SA was still banned). On
that day Carin paid Hitler a secret visit in Munich, and reported
to Venice the next morning what the Führer had said:
. He is of course ready to go to Mussolini and he’s al-
ready having his papers (passport, etc.) put in order... However he will come only if he can deal person-
ally with Mussolini himself. He does not want to speak
with any of the underlings... . With regard to the
South Tyrol question he takes exactly the same stand
as ever that for him there is no problem. . He
wants to confer with M. only after he has sufficient
backing... At present his authority does not extend
beyond the four walls of his little apartment at No. ,
Thiersch Strasse [in Munich]. In a few days he will
have himself acclaimed Führer again... [and] he will