madas of troop transports and gliders both that day and the
next, shooting down hundreds of them.
“New reports about fresh landings in Holland,” noted
Kreipe after Hitler’s conference on the eighteenth.
Führer rages about Luftwaffe’s failure. Wants im-
mediate information which fighter forces were scram-
bled in Holland. Führer violently abuses me.... Says
the air force is incompetent, cowardly, and letting
him down. He has further reports of air-force units
streaming back across the Rhine....
I ask for concrete details.
Führer replies, “I refuse to talk with you further. I
want to speak to the Reichsmarschall tomorrow. No
doubt you are capable of arranging that?”Kreipe had by now shifted the air-staff headquarters to the rear,
a forest location at Rosengarten in East Prussia. When Göring
now arrived here at Robinson , Kreipe warned him that the
witch hunt was against him, the Reichsmarschall, alone. Göring
just laughed.
The laughter faded after they went over together to the
Wolf’s Lair on the nineteenth. The mood was icy, and Hitler
asked to see Göring alone. He instructed him to disband the air
staff and its academy and get rid of Kreipe a scheming, cold-
blooded general staff officer, “defeatist and unreliable.”
When Göring emerged hours later, “broken up and dis-
mayed,” Kreipe challenged him. “Now do you believe me? The
whole vendetta is against you.”
“The Führer,” Göring retorted stiffly, “has again expressed
complete confidence in me.”
Told of Hitler’s Diktat about the air staff, Kreipe shrewdly
rejoined that this would give great comfort to the Allies, since