inflicted serious damage on the ministries and factories, and to-
tally wrecked Göring’s “pet,” his Forschungsamt. On the fol-
lowing morning he invited Korten, Milch, and their bleary-eyed
production experts out to Carinhall to discuss routine problems
of jet-aircraft production and the shortage of skilled industrial
manpower. Milch pleaded with him to draw Hitler’s attention to
the army’s reserves of manpower the field marshal claimed
that of . million German soldiers now on the eastern front
only , were actually fighting. “Two million soldiers,” he
insisted, “could be moved into the front line proper in three
weeks.” But visiting Hitler on the twenty-fourth, Göring was
cowed into adopting precisely the opposite line: According to
Admiral Dönitz’s record, Göring declared himself convinced
that a large number of new front-line soldiers could be obtained
from the Luftwaffe’s rear areas, never mentioning the army’s.
That night the RAF returned to Berlin, killing twelve hun-
dred civilians and devastating the Chancellery, the famous Kais-
erhof Hotel, and the entire government district. Göring had
forbidden the flak to open fire since German fighters were
scrambled, but on this occasion the fighters arrived too late to
destroy more than a few attackers.
To restore his Luftwaffe’s sagging prestige, Göring ordered
an impromptu display of its newest equipment for Hitler. He
directed his engineers to assemble everything possible in-
cluding the Hs and Fritz anti-shipping missiles, the radars,
jets, and the flying bomb at Insterburg airbase, which was a short
train journey from the Wolf’s Lair on November . With the
same recklessness that he kept accusing his engineers of, Göring
even ordered prototypes of planes not yet in production to be
shown, like the Junkers bomber, an updated Ju powered
by two double-row radial BMW s. “It doesn’t actually have to
fly,” he had pleaded to them on the twenty-third. “Just so the