worked up if our units took over the finest châteaux in France
or caroused or womanized. But now the times are rougher, eve-
rybody’s glaring at us.... Yes, when we were winning, people
told me straight out I ought to fly whorehouses out to the men.”
While Pohl in Italy and the Luftwaffe in France brazenly
used precious truck transport and gasoline to loot and pillage,
Allied code-breakers could hear Fighter Corps in France ad-
vising its squadrons to “get hold of horse-drawn vehicles” if they
could; and in Germany, since each Me used up liters of
J- fuel taxiing for five minutes, the squadrons were forced to
use oxen to pull the jet planes around the airfields to save fuel.
Sensing his powers of intercession waning, in August
Göring speeded up the escape of his remaining Jewish business
friends. A year before, in The Hague, the Gestapo had detained
art dealer Kurt Walter Bachstitz, a Jew. Bachstitz had the good
fortune to be married to Walter Hofer’s (non-Jewish) sister.
Hofer wrote to SS Brigadeführer Harster, the Gestapo chief in
Holland, “The Reichsmarschall wants Bachstitz permitted to
emigrate, and the case held over until I report to him on the
matter.” Göring instructed that the case be dropped. “Bach-
stitz,” he ruled, “is to be left alone.” In September the dealer
divorced his wife and transferred his property to her, thereby
protecting it from seizure. And now, on August , , he was
escorted by Göring’s private detective to Basel, Switzerland,
leaving behind, of course, valuable paintings to express his
gratitude to Hermann Göring.
In the Reichsmarschall’s absence, Koller had continued to sweat
out Hitler’s tantrums at the Wolf’s Lair. “At every conference
the Führer rants on for hours about the Luftwaffe,” Koller wrote
on August , , in a shorthand note that verged on the hys-
terical. “He levels the meanest accusations about our meager air-