shan’t be able to send him to Germany for another three weeks
to assemble the parts. This sculptor can then also retouch the
Diana as the Reichsmarschall desires.”) Rommel’s troops were
still containing the Allied beachhead in Normandy, but Göring
did not expect them to do so much longer. In mid-July he had
an urgent consignment shipped from France, including forty
crates of “porcelain and liquors” for himself and Loerzer.
Strategically speaking, Hitler too had seen the truth but
was drawing more positive conclusions. “Everything depends on
our fighter program now,” Hitler explained to Korten and
Koller, revealing his interim strategic thinking. “We must keep
this program strictly secret and conserve our strength mean-
while. The enemy will be astonished when the balance of air
power begins to tilt against them four months from now.”
With the Red Army now pouring through Poland toward
the German frontiers, Hitler demonstratively returned to East
Prussia on July , . Soon, the Russian spearheads were only
forty miles from Rominten.
Göring opted for Carinhall. Here, he received visitors in
plain clothes if plain is the word for silk pantaloons, red slip-
pers, diamond-studded belt, green silk shirt, and violet-hued
stockings that were an ill match for his peroxided hair and
seemingly rouged cheeks. This chameleon existence was shat-
tered a few days later, July . It was a stifling morning in East
Prussia. The windows were open at the Wolf’s Lair, where
Göring, not far from Hitler’s bunker, was grumpily discussing
with Colonel Friedrich Kless, Greim’s chief of staff, the reasons
that Luftflotte still felt unable to send its few He s to bomb
Soviet power stations as far away as the Urals. “Our private dis-
cussion took place,” Kless now recalls, “in a very heated atmos-
phere. Suddenly an alarm was telephoned to Göring. An at-
tempt had been made on Hitler’s life a few hundred yards