ponents from the minister, Göring, in person. A year later,
when the Gestapo passed into the hands of Heinrich Himmler
and the SS, the word elimination would be taken more literally.
From the first moment of Hitler’s new regime, Hermann
Göring was privy to the long-term strategic intentions. In the
Cabinet on April , he had heard Hitler once again set them out
in pristine clarity. “Frontier revisions,” the chancellor had de-
clared, “can be undertaken only when Germany has restored
her military, political, and financial integrity.... Our principal
objective,” Hitler had continued, “is the redrawing of our east-
ern frontier.”
He was grooming Göring for supreme office. More than
once he assured him that when Hindenburg died and he, Hit-
ler, became head of state, then Göring should become chancel-
lor. Unable to persuade his foreign minister, Konstantin von
Neurath, to drop his frigid attitude toward Italy, Hitler resorted
to Göring as a special emissary. Early in April he asked Göring to
establish new friendly ties to Mussolini and the Vatican, and to
convince the Duce that Germany no longer had designs on
Austria. To lend weight to Göring’s mission, Hitler sent him a
telegram on April , the day he arrived in Rome, appointing
him prime minister of Prussia.
No German record exists of Göring’s ten days of talks in It-
aly. He met Mussolini three times, and the pope at least once,
greeting His Holiness with the Fascist salute. However, a Ger-
man decrypt of a confidential cable from the Italian ambassador
in Berlin to Mussolini a month later gives a powerful clue. On
May , it revealed, an angry Neurath “reproached Göring in
Cabinet for his overweening trust in the Italian government.”
Göring assured the Italian ambassador that in the face of this
attack he had strongly emphasized his faith in Italian friendship.