Staff conference in ten minutes followed by dinner. All officers
are to attend and eat dinner as usual.”
Hermann Göring believed the war virtually over. The French
had asked for an armistice. “All this planning,” asserted Udet,
downgrading the He four-engined bomber project after he
returned to Berlin, “is garbage.”
Göring had begun one of his major wartime pursuits,
beefing up his art collection from the galleries of the defeated
nations. On the expensive notepaper of the Amstel Hotel, Am-
sterdam, he penned a “list of pictures delivered to Carinhall on
June , ” nineteen priceless Flemish paintings by Rubens
and other Old Masters from the Königs collection and seven
more bought from other sources, including several works by
Rembrandt, Pieter Breughel the Elder, and Göring’s favorite,
Lucas Cranach the Elder.
When, one week later, on June , Milch warned Göring in
a report written on the basis of his front-line inspections that
the Ju was not meeting its specifications as a bomber, Göring
turned a deaf ear. Final victory seemed just around the corner
to him as he took his generals to the pompous armistice cere-
mony at Compiègne on June . “The town of Compiègne is still
smoldering,” wrote Lieutenant General Hoffmann von Waldau
in his diary:
Barely any population left, houses sliced open to
display their shattered contents, stray dogs roaming
the streets. Huge applause from the soldiers, Labor
Front, and auxiliary services. Our “Hermann” really is
immensely popular. Drive through the fine forest and
broad avenues to the dining car of [Marshal] Foch.
[The car of France’s famous World War commander
was a static exhibit in the forest.] An avenue leads to a