Madrid. Hitler nodded, Göring concurred, and Milch sum-
moned secretly from Berlin the next day was put in charge.
By the end of the month he had already sent the first eighty-six
Luftwaffe volunteers, thinly disguised as tourists, to crew the
Junkers transport planes.
Upon his return from Bayreuth to Berlin, Göring was host
to America’s most famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh. He in-
vited the tousle-haired tourist to see anything he wanted and
himself showed him the crown prince at Potsdam, the resur-
rected Richthofen Geschwader at Döberitz, the dazzling Wed-
ding Sword at Carinhall. He flattered him with a seat at the
opening of the Berlin Olympics, then tantalized him with
glimpses of Germany’s coming bomber production at Dessau.
(“We have nothing in America,” Lindbergh wrote on August
to the U.S. air attaché, “to even compare with the Junkers fac-
tory.” It had, of course, been carefully “dressed” for Lindbergh’s
benefit.) He lunched at Göring’s palatial Berlin villa on July ,
and he left overwhelmed with admiration for the Germans,
compared with whom, he said, the French were “decadent.”
Göring forwarded to Lindbergh an album of snapshots of the
tour their quality, Lindbergh found, was exceeded only by
the thoroughness with which Göring’s censors had excised all
structural details.
That summer, at Hitler’s command, Göring had called for
written submissions from government and industry about ways
of expanding their native production of steel, synthetic petro-
leum, rubber, and textiles. Göring took this file down to Hitler
at the Berghof at the end of August, and here, he later testified,
they strolled off together into the mountains to discuss the
Reich’s economic strategy. By the time they returned to the
villa, they had jointly reached agreement perhaps the last time
in their lives that they would do so and Hitler dictated a fa-