Hermann Göring talking endlessly of these glorious exploits of
May . He prattled happily about one Dutch Army lieuten-
ant who called up his supreme commander, General Winkel-
mann, to ask permission to blow the vital bridge over the Albert
Canal. “There are paratroops coming down all around!” The
general had refused, stating that blowing the bridge would cut
off two of his divisions. “No paratroops,” he exclaimed, “would
dare to drop so far behind our lines.” Minutes later the lieuten-
ant had phoned him again: “General,” he said, “I am about to be
taken prisoner.”
Air supremacy was once again decisive, as it had proven in
Norway. Göring’s air force had displayed its now-familiar power
on May against Rotterdam: Thirty-six bombers were dis-
patched to silence a Dutch artillery position in the old port city.
Soon after they took off, the Dutch fortress commander capitu-
lated, and Göring’s paratroop general, Student, fired red signal
flares to halt the bombing attack. One wave, however, missed the
flares and completed its bombing run. The resulting fires got
out of hand and ravaged the old city, killing nine hundred peo-
ple.
Göring was unrepentant. “I’ll tell you what happened,” he
said heatedly under interrogation. “The fire brigades were so
scared to death that they refused to move out and do anything
about the fires. You can ask the burgomaster of Rotterdam
about that and he will tell you the same thing. All those stories of
‘thousands of dead’ ” Churchill had repeatedly talked of
“thirty thousand” killed at Rotterdam, to justify his own strate-
gic air offensive “are pure invention.”
Late on May , , Hermann Göring ordered Asia hauled
across Germany to the western front.
Hitched to the train now were the extra carriages for his