Sweetening these inhospitable remarks, Göring flattered
Revertera by saying that Austria had the better leader types and
would therefore provide the Reich with a reservoir of fine
commanders; and he also drew a benign picture of Austria as the
future cultural center of the Reich. The Austrian official re-
turned to the Hotel Eden aghast at the general’s crude bluster.
A far more significant exhibition visitor came to see Gen-
eral Göring three days later. Lord Halifax, traveling to Berlin as
“master of Middleton hounds” rather than as a British Cabinet
member, toured the halls round-eyed, conferred with Hitler,
and returned to Berlin on November to meet Göring. Göring
telephoned Hitler at Berchtesgaden to ask if he might speak
frankly with the Englishman, and toward midday sent his most
luxurious limousine down the new autobahn to bring Lord
Halifax out to the Schorf Heath.
Summarizing their meeting in his diary, Lord Halifax ad-
mitted he was “immensely entertained.” Göring, he recorded,
“met me on the way dressed in brown breeches and boots all in
one, with green leather jerkin and fur-collared short coat on
top.... Altogether a very picturesque and arresting figure,
completed by green hat and large chamois tuft!” After paying
the obligatory homage to Göring’s elk and bison, he found
himself being driven off to see the tree-planting operations in a
shooting phaeton drawn by a pair of high-stepping Hanoverian
chestnuts, then on to Carinhall itself “a large house,” wrote
Halifax, “built between two lakes in pine woods, stone with deep
thatched roof and latticed dormer windows out of it. It occupies
three sides of a courtyard, with a colonnade across the end.”
As Colonel General Göring, master of all these domains, led
his guests through the long entrance gallery and rooms already
filling with treasures, Carinhall began to work the familiar magic
on this High Church Yorkshire viscount. His nostrils flared,