dred miles closer to us or not that is not vital.
What is vital is to be able... to prevent any sec-
ond front emerging in the west at the same time.
And this is where our air force is of crucial im-
portance. The Führer made this quite clear yesterday,
in the presence of Dönitz. The Führer said, “The jet
fighter with bombs will be vital, because at the given
moment it will scream at top speed along the [inva-
sion] beaches and hurl its bombs into the massive
buildup that is bound to be there.”
I thought to myself, “I don’t know if we’ll have the
jets by then.”He had informed Hitler that he had just run into Messerschmitt
at Neuburg Airfield, and that the professor had warned him the
Me was running three months late because he needed four
thousand more workers. Hitler “almost had a stroke,” said
Göring.
Arriving at Messerschmitt’s now-tattered Regensburg fac-
tory on November , , Milch challenged Göring with what
he regarded as the vital question how the Reich was to be de-
fended in the spring when the Americans began returning with
long-range fighter escorts.
“Even if every single German city is razed to the ground,”
barked Göring, “the German nation will survive!... It lived
long before there were cities. Even if we have to live in caves! But
if the Bolsheviks pour in, life comes to an end for us.” Resorting
to a rhetoric that masked the really prophetic quality of his
words, he continued that he saw in fact two cardinal dangers:
the first, “When we are told one fine day that the Soviets have
Army Group So-and-So in Silesia, and another in East Prussia
that there’s one on the river Vistula and another advancing u p
the Oder.” The second danger was Britain and her air force, the
RAF. “That’s why I still need a bomber force for defense. I’ve