ceptibly, not taking his eyes off the matching blue set of luggage
as it was stowed into the American cars. They parted. It would
be eighteen months before he saw either wife or daughter again.
The Texas Division had its headquarters in the five-star
Grand Hotel at Kitzbühl. G.I.s and reporters mobbed the little
convoy as it arrived. The division commander, Major General
John E. Dahlquist, saluted Göring, shook hands, and invited
him to share his lunch of chicken, potatoes, and peas eaten out
of a mess tin. Afterwards, the Reichsmarschall for such was
still his rank went out onto the hotel balcony so that the
American and German troops milling around the Maybach
could take snapshots. One report even said he had a champagne
glass in his hand.
Dahlquist asked his opinion of the other Nazi leaders. Still
angry at the Führer’s all too recent death sentence on him,
Göring described Hitler as narrow-minded and ignorant, add-
ing that Ribbentrop was a scoundrel and Hess an eccentric.
Dahlquist perceived an underlying irritation at his captors’ tar-
diness in bringing him together with Eisenhower.
As the days wore on, such a meeting seemed increasingly
unlikely. A tiny Piper Cub flew him on May across to U.S.
Seventh Army headquarters at Augsburg. His composure was
unshaken until Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch asked
him why Nazi Germany had not overrun Spain and Gibraltar in
, thus bottling up the British Fleet in the Mediterranean.
“That was always my advice!” screamed Göring. “Always, always,
always! And it was never, never taken.”
At : .. he was brought face to face with his principal
American adversary, General Spaatz, commanding general of
the U.S. strategic air forces. Göring saluted, and Spaatz gave the
correct salute in response (nor did he have the slightest misgiv-
ings about doing so, as he told Colonel Lindbergh five days