with pride and began poring over suitable fabrics for the new
uniform immediately a color that would establish that he was
Reichsmarschall of all three services, and not just of the Luft-
waffe. He finally plumped for a soft pearl gray. Valet Robert
murmured that it was a woman’s fabric. “If I wear it,” hissed
Göring, “then it’s for men.”
Before delivering his speech on July , Hitler once again
displayed his real contempt for Göring’s authority by refusing
to let him see his speech in advance. He delivered his peace offer
to the British in such clumsy terms that Göring realized at once,
as he told interrogators later, that “the fat was in the fire.”
As Reichsmarschall, however, he was the highest-ranking
officer in Europe, indeed the world. Göring hurried home and
tried on the new uniform before a mirror, then paraded it for
Hitler’s benefit in the Chancellery. Hitler handed him the
parchment title deed as Reichsmarschall in a specially designed
casket encrusted with diamonds and emeralds that Göring
would later describe as the most precious gift he had ever re-
ceived from the Führer. Göring, wrote General von Richthofen,
visiting Carinhall on July , “was radiant, full of the Führer’s
acclamation of him, full of his house, of his paintings, of his
daughter in short, full of everything.”
The new Reichsmarschall had invited the generals over to
Carinhall on that day to hear his plans for the next weeks of the
air war against Britain. For most of those entering his large study
it was their first glimpse of their commander’s accumulating
wealth. A detailed inventory of this room’s contents, compiled a
few weeks earlier, survives: four long marble-topped tables, two
green leather-topped tables, six smaller round tables; an outsize
desk and chairs, with their green leather upholstery embossed
with the Göring crest a mailed fist clutching at a ring. Six
chandeliers illuminated the room, two of baroque pewter style,