Junkers to gloat over the destruction at Rotterdam. Taking
just Loerzer and Udet with him, he continued by road to Am-
sterdam, treasure city of the world of art and antiques. His
growing lust for costly baubles temporarily satisfied with well-
timed purchases, he flew in a Storch light plane back to Hitler’s
headquarters to report on the “mopping up” at Dunkirk. “Only
fishing boats are coming over for the British,” he scoffed. “Let’s
hope the Tommies can swim!”
As he left France on May and returned to Potsdam, he
was unaware that three hundred thousand British and French
troops were slipping away from the beaches of Dunkirk. Three
hundred German bombers stood impotently by, grounded by
ten-tenths cloud. Milch broke the bad news about the com-
pleted evacuation to Göring when Asia returned to France on
June . “I saw six or seven dead Negroes,” Milch told him, “and
perhaps twenty or thirty other dead. The rest have got clean
away. They abandoned their equipment and fled.” He suggested
that they throw airborne troops straight over to seize a beach-
head and capture airfields in southern England, just as they had
in Norway.
Göring dismissed the idea. “It can’t be done,” he said. He
had only one airborne division, he would later explain. “If I had
had four, I would have gone straight over to Britain.”
The worst of the fighting in France over, he resumed his
direction of the war economy, summoning Cabinet-style meet-
ings aboard his train. Looking not unlike Prince Danilo in The
Merry Widow, he appeared afterward in his dining car resplen-
dent in white uniform, sash, and sparkling brooches, his belly
held in by a belt inlaid with jeweled golden plates. First Lieuten-
ant Göring, his nephew, went off on scavenging expeditions
across occupied France. From a clothing store at Rheims he “lib-
erated” a truckload of shirts, stockings, and other booty, which