On the day after Hindenburg died in August , one hun-
dred of Göring’s officers were summoned to the Air Ministry.
Göring marched into a little clearing in their midst, drew his
sword, and announced that the armed forces were to swear their
allegiance to Hitler, as Hindenburg’s designated successor. (The
old oath had been sworn to the Constitution, but nobody was
given time for reflection.) Milch stepped forward and slapped
his hand onto the blade of Göring’s sword. Bodenschatz read
out the words of the new oath, and the officers chanted it after
him.
Later that month Göring and Milch went over the defense
budget with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Hitler approved a total of
. billion marks for the next four years, the lion’s share of it
going to the air force. He gave the job of raising these unheard-
of sums to Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. “We’re going to need thirty
billion marks to complete our armament,” he disclosed to
Göring afterward, “but I didn’t dare tell Schacht that. He would
have fainted.”
That October , without asking Hitler, Göring decided
to attend the state funeral of the murdered king of Yugoslavia,
as representative of the German Wehrmacht (armed forces). He
played his hand well. Knowing that there was worldwide specu-
lation that Italian Fascists had been behind the assassination in
Marseilles, Göring made a public declaration that no German
hand was to blame: This attracted favorable comment in Bel-
grade and dismay in Rome. Göring arrived at Belgrade’s air-
port in Lufthansa’s imposing new airliner the Hindenburg, and
allowed all Yugoslavia to learn that the wreath he brought from
the German armed forces was inscribed to the king as “their he-
roic former enemy.” The local German minister conceded envi-
ously that Göring had stolen the whole show, while his British