paign would be over and Britain’s turn would come. When
General Thomas reminded him of Stalin’s growing industrial
base beyond the Ural mountains, he replied, “My air force will
smash that too. My airborne troops will seize the Trans-Siberian
Railroad and restore our links to the Far East.” “He got me to
help him,” recalled the Reichsmarschall, describing Hitler’s
persuasiveness with a thin smile in August , and added, “as
always.”
Four years later Bodenschatz would suggest that men like
Göring had become “infected” with their own life-style. “He has
Carinhall,” the general, Göring’s longtime friend, observed.
“And that’s the cancer within him.”
On November , the night that he handed over power
to Milch the air force that Göring built fire-bombed the Brit-
ish industrial city of Coventry, pathfinding by the new elec-
tronic beams. Perhaps, if the Luftwaffe’s high command had not
been so geographically far flung, the subsequent autumn and
winter air offensive might have been really dangerous for Brit-
ain. But Göring was sulking at Rominten in East Prussia. He had
fetched the young chief of air staff, Hans Jeschonnek, to his side.
Kesselring, Sperrle, and Stumpff were at their widely dispersed
Luftflotte headquarters, and Milch was deputizing for the
Reichsmarschall at La Boissière. “There’s a lot that needs doing,”
cursed Jeschonnek’s deputy Hoffmann von Waldau in a private
diary entry on November , “and for want of the Reichsmar-
schall we have to act on our own.”
It seemed a bizarre way to run a modern air force. Milch,
Waldau, and Galland found themselves getting orders dictated
by phone from Göring’s nurse, Christa Gormanns, canceling
night raids on one town and ordering attacks on others. The
Reichsmarschall’s health was clearly indifferent. From one of