best.”
A few days after their return, on April , Blomberg agreed
to their insistence that the air force be independent and not a
branch of either the army or the navy, as in other countries. On
May , Milch issued contracts for the manufacture of one
thousand planes. The purpose of businessman Milch, “nimble as
a weasel,” as Bruno Loerzer enviously called him, was plain: to
lay the foundations of an aircraft industry, regardless of the
quality of planes; Germany’s need was for trained aircraft work-
ers above all else. At that time the industry employed only
thirty-five hundred workers, and Junkers, the largest factory,
could manufacture only eighteen Junkers transport planes a
year.
To Göring’s ex-aviator friends this seemed to be the happi-
est year of his life. He appointed his old pal Loerzer, now forty-
two, commissioner for airships, and then put him in charge of
amateur flying clubs (sport flying): The clubs had a uniform
that became the basis of the Luftwaffe’s uniform. Loerzer apart,
Göring’s other personnel appointments could scarcely have
been bettered. As de facto chief of air staff he selected one of the
army’s finest colonels, Walther Wever; Blomberg sadly agreed to
the transfer, lamenting, “I’m letting you have a man who could
have been the next commander in chief of the army.” Göring
picked another army colonel, Albert Kesselring, an officer with a
permanent tombstone grin, to run the administration side of
the new secret air force. None of these men had ever flown, nor
had the officer Göring appointed on July , , as chief of air-
force personnel, Colonel Hans-Jürgen Stumpff.
Stumpff, never one of Göring’s critics, found him “packing
a colossal punch” in those days. “He was bursting with ideas,”
the colonel later recalled. On Hitler’s orders, the other services
had to release their best material to Göring’s new air force.