While Hitler toured the front, Göring remained in Berlin.
When Hitler returned, Göring transferred his own “headquar-
ters” to the state hunting lodge at Rominten in East Prussia. He
invited the crown prince to join him hunting stags there, but
received the frosty answer that the prince would accept only
when hostilities were over. Once, when Ribbentrop was away ne-
gotiating the future Nazi-Soviet demarcation line in Poland,
Göring telephoned Hitler’s command train to plead for the in-
clusion of the Bialystok forests in the German zone because of
their valuable timber. “He says timber,” scoffed Hitler, “and
means big game.” A photograph taken on September showed
the field marshal inspecting front-line units in a rain-soaked
leather coat, while Kesselring looked on. By that time Göring
had dictated to Beppo Schmid the ultimatum ordering Warsaw
to surrender, and when this was refused he ordered the satura-
tion bombardment that brought the Polish war to an end. Hitler
rewarded him with the unique Grand Cross decoration to the
Iron Cross.
During those first few weeks Göring’s Ministerial Defense
Council restored a semblance of Cabinet government to the
Reich. “The Defense Council,” wrote Schwerin von Krosigk, the
fifty-two-year-old Oxford-educated minister of finance, “sat
several times a week and he co-opted onto it any outside minis-
ters he needed. I regularly attended these first sessions. At its
meetings Göring not only allowed but actively insisted on a
completely frank discussion of the matters on the agenda. So at
long last we had what we had been urging for years.” But, wrote
this minister, their pleasure was short-lived. Hitler returned to
Berlin after the victory parade in Warsaw, and Hans Lammers,
the senior civil servant who had headed the now-defunct Reich
Cabinet, took charge again. Turning down Göring’s request for
a Defense Council session to discuss amendments to the penal