two of gilt (gifts from the city of Aachen), and two of silver and
crystal (gifts of the Reich Handicrafts Association on his most
recent birthday). Fourteen wood carvings, including three me-
dieval Madonnas (one donated by the publisher Brockhaus at
Christmas) stood in niches between the twenty-two paintings
that Göring’s experts had selected for him some of them liter-
ally beyond price, like Leonardo da Vinci’s “Leda,” while others
were dictated by a sense of history, like Lenbach’s portrait
of Bismarck, and Knirr’s painting of the Führer.
This naked display of wealth had its purpose, of course. It
was an implicit statement by Göring that his piratical authority
was absolute and an unspoken promise that similar riches
awaited all those who followed him.
Looking around this sumptuous chamber, Göring made
out the faces of Kesselring, Sperrle, and Milch all three had
been promoted to field marshal. He told them that the End-
kampf against Britain would begin in about one week, since Brit-
ain was refusing to throw in the sponge. Meanwhile he directed
them to attack Britain’s merchant shipping, promising to follow
with “violent attacks” (he did not say on what) “to unsettle the
whole country.” Ten days later Hitler told his army generals
that he intended to await the results of the first ten days of this
“intensified air warfare.” His purpose was to bully Britain into
accepting his peace offer. In secret, Göring resumed his clandes-
tine contacts with London, inviting, on July , the Dutch air-
line director Albert Plesman to Carinhall to act as an intermedi-
ary.
But the air war did not produce the results Hitler had ex-
pected. He himself had applied such irksome restrictions to it
forbidding attacks by night or on civilian targets, and upholding
a total embargo on bombing London that Göring was pre-
vented from unfolding his real air power against the enemy. It