to him his first Vollmacht, or supreme authority to act in his
behalf. The work was hard, but Göring thrived on it. “Often,”
he bragged a year later to an Italian correspondent, “I was on the
go until four .. and was back at the office at seven .. the
next day. I didn’t have a moment’s respite all day. One visitor
followed the other... You know we Germans are great beavers
for work. Out of twenty-four hours we will work twenty-three!
Believe me, I have often very often come home dead tired
at eleven .., spent fifteen minutes grabbing some tea or sup-
per with my wife and then, instead of going to bed, reviewed the
day’s activities for two or three hours; the next morning at seven
.. the first adjutant would come to report.”
Hitler became a frequent visitor to the Göring household,
and Carin heard them endlessly discussing the same old topics
Chancellor Gustav Stresemann, his “Jew government” in Berlin,
and the economic crisis since Versailles. Robbed of the Ruhr in-
dustries, the economy had toppled into an abyss. In the Ruhr,
the French occupation troops sent to the firing squad any Ger-
mans who offered resistance. Currency had become virtually
valueless: On August , one American dollar equaled three mil-
lion German Reichsmarks; by late September it would buy
million Reichsmarks people had to pay even the smallest bills
with suitcases of overprinted and double-overprinted paper
money.
Hitler and Göring, the SA, and the other private armies
were restless for action any kind of action. But Berlin refused
now to act; Spring Training was off.
Envious of Benito Mussolini’s recent March on Rome,
Hitler and Göring hatched grandiose plans to raise all Bavaria
for a March on Berlin. But time was running out. Feeding on
the economic chaos, Communist revolutions had broken out in
Saxony and Thuringia, to the north of Bavaria. Hitler urged