exert some checks on Hitler and Göring. “As Prussian police
minister,” the German press was reassured in a confidential cir-
cular on February , “Herr Göring is also subordinated to Pa-
pen.”
But Göring saw things differently and crowed to Papen,
echoing Hitler’s boast, “You will only get me out of this room
flat on my back!”
Throughout February, while the election battle warmed
up, Göring plotted, planned, and purged. Foreign Minister von
Neurath called him “a dreadful man,” and told Britain’s bibu-
lous ambassador Sir Horace Rumbold that Papen was quite un-
able to control him. “Göring,” advised Neurath, “is regarded as
the real Fascist in the Hitler party.”
In broad outline Hitler’s eventual plan, if he won the
coming election, was to restore Germany’s economic health, re-
build her armed forces in defiance of Versailles, and then start
making history.
Göring would have a key part in this too. On February
Hindenburg had appointed him Reich commissar for aviation.
Göring appointed Lufthansa’s bustling chief executive, Erhard
Milch, as his deputy. On the sixth the two men explained to a
dubious Defense Minister von Blomberg that they intended to
build up a military air force under cover of expanding Ger-
many’s civil aviation. Hitler hinted at this to his Cabinet on the
eighth this project would provide work for the unemployed.
“Everything for the armed forces!” that was the paramount
principle that Hitler suggested to this Cabinet session, and on
the next day they voted an initial forty million Reichsmarks for
the aviation budget. A week later they voted to increase that
figure, and when the finance minister stoutly objected, Hitler
advised him that what they were doing was to help the German
people, “by camouflaged means,” to acquire the air force that