adventure books, and leafed through the newspapers. They car-
ried photographs of him accepting yet another sword, hand-
made by Paul Müller of Solingen, four feet long with its cross
guard encrusted with twenty-five rubies and gold lettering em-
blazoned on the blade: -
, . “With
this sword,” he said, raising the heavy weapon in both hands, “I
shall smite all the enemies of Germany!”
He wondered who they would ultimately be. Would Hitler
really order Case Green? What would Italy do this time? On July
he entertained the Italian chief of staff, General Alberto Pari-
ani, at Carinhall. He boasted about his air force and claimed that
Britain and France had no intention of helping the Czechs. Pari-
ani disagreed, and warned the field marshal that Germany must
finish Czechoslovakia with one thrust.
“We must hang together,” Göring cautioned him, “for
better or for worse.”
That summer’s entries in Göring’s thick, leather-bound diary
lettered in gilt, “Besprechungen” (“Conferences”) reflected his
energy in mobilizing the aircraft industry for war. The diary
opened with a July , , conference on securing the requisite
manpower, including women, for the aircraft factories, training
new apprentices and converting unskilled workers into special-
ists. On the same day he conferred with a building contractor
about proposals to use Reich autobahns for aircraft runways and
hangars, and he discussed the construction of new air-raid
shelters and underground factories, while the same diary reveals
him on the fifteenth and sixteenth in secret talks with Four-Year
Plan agents, Neuhausen and Bernhardt, on ways of extending
Nazi influence in Yugoslavia and Spain, and on obtaining food-
stuffs and raw materials from Spain in return for arms deliveries