The twin summit conquered by an as-yet-untried route, noth-
ing remained but to return. “I had a frantic thirst,” he wrote in
his diary, “and ordered Barth’s own well-tried drink red wine
mixed with hot water and sugar.”
Exhausted, he flopped into bed that afternoon.
“How splendid everything was from up here,” he mused
on July , . “Alone with nature and nice people, I thought
of the hot, dusty cities, particularly of Berlin; I thought of the
bare walls and drab parade ground of the corps, and thanked
God I could enjoy the heights of nature.”
He ended this illuminating (and hitherto unpublished) di-
ary with the words, “Every morning, incidentally, I discovered I
had dreamed all night of the events of the day before.”
Dreamy, physically brave, and romantic, young Hermann
Göring was inducted into the infantry as a subaltern in March
. The war academies were overflowing. He remained at Gross
Lichterfelde and passed the officer examinations in December
. He would write in his curriculum vitae that he spent his
spare time watching the airplane-acceptance flights at Habsheim
Airfield. My interest in flying,” he pointed out, “was always very
pronounced.”
On January , , he joined his regiment. “If war breaks
out,” Lieutenant Hermann Göring assured his sisters, “you can
be sure I’ll do credit to our name.”
War did break out that August. It is not easy to unravel the
truth about Göring’s personal contribution to it from the skeins
of legend that he afterward encouraged lively accounts of his
exploits in command of small infantry platoons skirmishing with
the French, riding bicycles into the enemy lines, commandeer-
ing horses, plotting once to kidnap a French general, hiring air-