own “little general staff,” a unit that would prove a source of ir-
ritation to Jeschonnek’s air staff housed in its own command
train, Robinson. Göring had surrounded himself with a number
of smarmy young adjutants, overpromoted and handsome but
unencumbered with either the training or the experience of the
staff officers serving under Jeschonnek. Supervising this young
private staff of cartographers and teleprinter and radio opera-
tors was the chief adjutant, Major Bernd von Brauchitsch (son
of the German Army’s Commander in Chief). He briefed
Göring on the daily operations. As the tide eventually turned
against Germany, he would unashamedly color his reports too,
to favor and reassure his chief.
Göring’s extra-long command train reached its assigned
halt at : .. on May , close to a tunnel in western Ger-
many’s mountainous Eiffel country. A special wooden platform
had been erected alongside the track to enable the portly field
marshal to dismount though he rarely did so. He and his
closer cronies partook of free wine and caviar at the long table in
the No. dining car, while the lesser fry ate (and paid for) their
meals in the less comfortably appointed No. . Since extra car-
riages had been coupled on for Brauchitsch’s young team, the
train’s toilet outlets no longer coincided with the sewer inlets
beneath. Such being the prerogatives of absolute power, Göring
claimed for himself the only one that still functioned properly
and ordered all other lavatories sealed.
Once Göring ordered Fritz Görnnert, his train’s comman-
dant, to sound a dummy air-raid alert. The results were farcical.
The locomotive engineer sent it plunging into the tunnel, rip-
ping out all the communication cables from their railside sock-
ets. Trailing cables and wires, the train hurtled through the
sheltering tunnel and emerged, still accelerating, from the far
end. Göring’s handsome adjutants pulled every emergency