remained almost idle apart from anti-shipping operations
against the British. Drugged by its easy triumphs in Poland, the
Luftwaffe was resting on its laurels. Operational analysis was un-
known. It was enough for a Luftwaffe pilot simply to claim to
have sunk the carrier Ark Royal. Winston Churchill, first lord of
the British Admiralty, denied it, and months later Göring would
still be asking Dahlerus to make discreet inquiries in London
about the carrier.
He had become inordinately fat again, and according to his
staff physician, Dr. Ramon von Ondarza, his circulation was
poor and his blood pressure irregular; his pulse rate sometimes
went up to . Ondarza diagnosed a heart-muscle weakness and
instructed Göring to take things easy. He did so at Carinhall,
where he felt safe from his rivals and at peace with the world.
Twice more during that December of he put out furtive
feelers to London once through Count Eric von Rosen and
then through Major Tryggve Gran, a Norwegian Air Force offi-
cer. Both men were, of course, neutrals.
Out of sight here at Carinhall, he did as he pleased. The
only man whom he allowed to share his Jacuzzi was Ernst Udet.
“Those two little fat frogs,” Milch was once heard saying, per-
haps a trifle enviously, to incredulous fellow prisoners after the
war, “used to sit there naked in a sort of swimming pool.”
Ensconced with family circle and friends in his basement
movie theater he would watch forbidden films like Gone With
the Wind. A director of the Ufa Movie Corporation revealed
wryly that the private theater had cost them over one hundred
thousand marks to equip; Göring had cheerfully returned their
invoice, unpaid, with his thanks to Ufa for their “magnificent
present.”
After consulting with Göring on January , , Hitler had