the first time on the Nazi strategic horizon); and “a colony.” The
French now ratified an alliance with Moscow, in violation of the
Locarno Treaty, which also bound Hitler not to station troops in
the Rhineland. On February , speaking again with Phipps,
Göring pointed to France’s violation. On March , Hitler recip-
rocated by sending his troops into the demilitarized German
Rhineland. This act of temerity panicked his more craven gen-
erals and caused even Göring, as he admitted to Ivone Kirkpa-
trick, a senior official at the British embassy, moments of “intense
anxiety.” The operation was a brilliant coup, but it reinforced a
feeling that had first gnawed at Göring during the Röhm purge
that his Führer was taking the curves too fast.
This was probably the last occasion on which his neighbors
could have cheaply forestalled Hitler, but the bluff came off. “I
don’t think,” Milch later wrote, “that either Hitler or Göring
were fully aware of just how weak we were, particularly in the
Luftwaffe.” The air force had three squadrons (Gruppen) of
fighters /JG commanded by Major Wieck at Döberitz; /JG
at Jüterbog under Major Raithel (operating the obsolete Arado
and Heinkel planes respectively); and Bruno Loerzer’s
/JG, flying Arado biplanes at Bernburg-an-der-Saale.
Only one of these squadrons was actually operational, and its
guns had not been calibrated. Göring ordered these ancient bi-
planes to be flown in a circus around the Rhineland airfields,
painting fresh insignia on them between each showing to create
an illusion of armadas.
Göring knew that a war of imperial conquest in the east
would have to be prefaced by years of solid rearmament. Recog-
nizing that imported raw materials like oil, rubber, and iron ore
would be the strategic bottlenecks, he had signed a synthetic-
gasoline contract with Dr. Carl Krauch of I.G. Farben as early as
December , , and in the spring of Hitler gave him