and Gentile as he traded guilders and Reichsmarks for gilt and
canvas. Arriving back at La Boissière, the air staff’s forward
headquarters, on the first day of February amid snow and slush,
he resumed operational command from Milch but stayed in bed
with a headache until, brightening, he recalled Alfred Rosenberg
and his haul of “ownerless” Jewish treasures. He executed an art
raid on Paris that would exceed anything else to date, last for
three days, from February to February , and demonstrate his
ruthlessness as he pursued the barely legal enrichment of his art
hoard.
His thieving friend General Hanesse collected him from
the Gare du Nord. Hanesse had housed his offices in the gallery
of Roger & Gallet, at rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré; this was
just down the street from the opulent former residence of the
Rothschilds, which Hanesse had converted into a Luftwaffe
hostel complete with priceless Persian carpets and crested plates
and cutlery. Göring liked that: He had developed something of
a taste for fine tapestries and carpets himself.
Here in Paris, Göring and Hanesse lunched with Subma-
rine Commander Günther Prien, who had sunk the British bat-
tleship Royal Oak, then strolled around fine jewelers like Peru-
gia, Magnet, and Hermès. He jotted the one word shopping in
his diary, and that said it all. The same little notebook shows that
he was visited after tea by Dr. Hermann Bunjes, the German
Army’s “art-protection officer,” and Colonel Kurt von Behr, an
unpleasant, bullying official whose high-ranking Red Cross
uniform concealed his true rank, that of a Feldführer in Rosen-
berg’s task force in Paris.
Reichsmarschall Göring [stated Bunjes in his subse-
quent report] took the opportunity to hand to Feld-
führer von Behr a file of photographs of the works of