admired him. “Hermann,” said one officer in June , “is
definitely the man who rakes in the most money in Germany.
But there’s not a man who begrudges it, because he really earns
it!” They admired his even-handedness. “There was this unit on
the West Wall,” said one Messerschmitt F pilot shot down
over Malta. “Some officers with only two sorties to their name
already had the Iron Cross Second Class, while rookies with ten
sorties had nothing. Then Hermann paid them a visit... he
had some Iron Crosses brought in at once and dished them out
to these men himself. The CO was sacked boy did Hermann
have a temper! Driving off, his car got stuck in the mud. In
front of all the men he tipped the generals out and made them
push it free.”
Air-force morale was high, and this carried it through its
bloodier episodes, like the parachute assault on Crete on May .
Göring prided himself on having planned this coup, but it
stood under an ill omen. He and Brauchitsch had refused to
agree whether the airborne division should come under air-
force or army control, which left only General Student’s one
parachute division for the assault. What was far worse was that
through the Luftwaffe’s insecure machine ciphers the British
learned the precise hour and dropping zones of the paratroops,
and four thousand were killed in the first assault wave. “We had
the impression,” said General Rudolf Meister, “and I don’t think
I’m mistaken, that the British knew the exact time and the
morning on which we were coming, because full preparations
had been made.” Despite this, the air force never investigated
the possibility that their ciphers had been broken. There is indi-
rect evidence that Göring knew that some ciphers were insecure,
because in June British code-breakers heard him issuing to his
bomber forces target priorities for a “new blitz” against British
cities which was, in fact, just part of the high command’s