mersed in three days of Cabinet-level conferences on raw mate-
rials and the coming campaign in the Balkans. On January ,
, he was again summoned to the Führer’s presence, this time
in the Reich Chancellery. On the following day the Reichsmar-
schall revealed in a three-hour conference with his arms experts
and economics advisers, according to Körner’s later testimony,
that war with Russia was definite. He asked each of those seated
around the table for his view. Fritz Todt, Friedrich Syrup, Erich
Neumann, Georg Thomas, Carl Krauch, and Fritz Fromm all
declared that such a war was “economically unthinkable,” citing
precisely the same raw-material considerations that had vexed
Göring. The exception was Herbert Backe. Backe, born in Russia
himself, pointed out pensively that the conquest of the Ukraine
would solve Germany’s chronic grain shortages. Unconvinced,
unhappy too, Göring directed Thomas to set up a special eco-
nomic unit to study the problem.
Visibly agitated, he took Emmy for a walk afterward and
confided to her that Hitler had decided to invade Russia. Emmy
was about to leave for Bad Gastein to take the cure for her
rheumatism. This, Emmy later testified, was the only political
conversation that she ever had with her husband the
Reichsmarschall. How unlike Carin she was! “Is that why the
Führer wouldn’t see you for weeks?” she asked. Göring laughed
out loud. “You may not be a very political animal,” he said, “but
you’ve got your head screwed on.” He now told her that Hitler
had confirmed it himself. “I refused to see you, Göring, because
I knew you would do all you could to talk me out of it.”
Disconsolate at his failure, the Reichsmarschall left for
Holland on January , the party’s anniversary taking
his sisters and a one-hundred-member staff. He parked his train
and strolled around the art dealers at The Hague and Amster-
dam with Miedl and Hofer, dealing indiscriminately with Jew