Göring, and directed Bormann to read out the letters that Hess
had left behind. The sixty or seventy Nazi leaders clustered
round in a silent semicircle. Hans Frank had not seen Hitler so
grief-stricken since the suicide of his niece Geli, ten years before.
It was obvious that Hess’s venture had taken him by surprise.
Pausing only briefly at the showrooms of United Handi-
crafts (Vereinigte Werkstätten) in Munich to select more fur-
niture for his castle, Göring resumed his interrupted vacation at
Veldenstein. A few days later his morning newspaper told him
that Hitler had opted for Bormann after all, appointing him
“director of the party chancellery.” This hundredfold increase
in the powers and status of Hess’s ruthless red-neck chief of staff
was a real setback for Göring. He had never got on well with
Bormann. “Bormann,” he would subsequently lament, “was a
glutton for hard work and thus he consolidated his position...
He matched his daily routine to the Führer’s. He was always on
hand when the Führer needed him.” Bormann was far more
radical in his anti-clerical and anti-Jewish campaign than
Göring. From now on, a chance lunchtime remark by Hitler
would be converted instantly by Bormann into a written Führer
decree. Clean-living and not susceptible to bribery, he loathed
the Reichsmarschall and the style of life that he led. As the trou-
bles of the air force began to multiply, Bormann undertook a
personal vendetta against its commander that Göring would re-
ciprocate beyond the grave.
“Do you think Bormann is dead?” he would be asked in
October .
“If I had any say in it,” he spat out, tossing both hands in
the air, “I hope he’s frying in hell.”
In the air force his own prestige was still high. Even in enemy
hands his officers showed by their private remarks that they