ambassadorial reception rooms, and hunting-trophy rooms took
up the ground floor, along with Göring’s cavernous, colon-
naded study.
The same extravagance was evident in his expanding col-
lection of medals. It was Göring who had proposed in the Cabi-
net (on April , ) the reintroduction of honors and distinc-
tions: “The Weimar Republic,” he argued, “went under pre-
cisely because of its dearth of honors and medals.” At the time,
Hitler agreed with him; but as Germany’s misfortunes grew, the
Führer’s patience would wear thin. Ten years later he would ask
Göring’s heavy, brilliantined adjutant Dr. Ramon von Ondarza
to remove himself from the bunker, loudly calling him “a per-
fumed sink of corruption” while fastening his glare on
Göring. It was like accusing the house dog of flatulence, while
glaring at a guest. But that was a decade hence, and in the
silent-hatred phase between the two men had yet to begin.
For the new air force Göring had designed a uniform that
was almost as baroque as his palaces. Deciding upon the trinkets
of rank, his imagination had run wild, and he ordained that the
ceremonial parade uniform of air-force officers would include
two-handed sabers and daggers neither, seemingly, of much
use in modem air-to-air combat. Göring presented to each new
general a fine sword, signed by himself. The generals became
rich and corrupt in his own image. Ribald fighter pilots would
tell each other the tale of two starving jungle lions: One left to
seek his fortune in the Reich capital and returned to the forest,
paunchy and licking his chops. “You just have to hang around
the Air Ministry,” he growled. “It isn’t long before you’ve got
yourself a fine fat-Arsch of a general to sink your teeth into.”
Most dazzling of all the swords was the one that his gener-
als commissioned to commemorate his marriage to Emmy Son-
nemann. The blade of finest Solingen steel was engraved with