Aegean Sea that Nazi Germany (highly visibly personified by
Hermann Göring) would not abandon them to Mussolini’s It-
aly.
It was altogether an odd episode, for Hitler was due to pay
his own first state visit to Rome in three weeks’ time. Mussolini
unleashed his newspapers on Germany, and he confidentially
indicated to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin that Herr Göring
would not be made welcome if he accompanied Hitler on the
trip. It was a calculated affront, since Göring had, as Dr. Ren-
zetti, the Duce’s personal emissary to the Nazis, pointed out on
the fourteenth, labored hardest since at German-Italian re-
lations, “in conditions that were certainly not easy, and attract-
ing the fury of many politicians.”
Göring, anxious to demonstrate that his position had not
slipped as the number-two man in the Reich, secured the
Führer’s personal attendance at a macabre ceremony at Carin-
hall immediately upon his return from Italy.
It was June , , the day that Göring had appointed for
the reburial of Carin’s remains in the lakeside mausoleum he
had built for her. Few pharaohs’ wives can have been buried
with more solemn ceremony. A special train bore the pewter sar-
cophagus across northern Prussia from the Swedish ferry to the
railroad station where Göring and Hitler, both hatless and som-
ber, awaited her arrival. At Göring’s command, towns and cities
along the train’s whole route were cast into deep mourning.
Teenage Hitler Youth units stood at attention on their local rail-
road platforms; the League of Maidens lined the bridges, salut-
ing and showering flowers; flags were dipped as the train slowly
passed, and thousands of women lined the railroad tracks to pay
homage to their prime minister’s long-dead wife.
The scene at Carinhall itself was like the setting for a
Bayreuth opera the thin summer mists steaming slowly off the