days later, on January , at which the Führer “spoke in great
agitation of his concern about the spreading of anarchist propa-
ganda in the army.” Fritsch asked for proof, but Hitler declined
to show it. (Probably it was Forschungsamt evidence, which a
general could not be shown.) Six days later, Hitler delivered a
three-hour dissertation to hundreds of senior generals in Blom-
berg’s ministry, lecturing them on history, race, and nation
and on Germany’s need for Lebensraum, “which we are going to
have to seize by force.”
That same day, January , the bubble burst in Berlin. An
anonymous caller, impersonating a general, telephoned the
army high command and demanded to be put through to Gen-
eral von Fritsch. When this was refused, the caller shouted, “Tell
the general that Field Marshal von Blomberg has married a
whore!”
Hitler had left Berlin for the Obersalzberg; Blomberg had
been called to his mother’s funeral. The Brown Page reporting
the anonymous phone call to Fritsch rocketed across Berlin into
Göring’s villa. Everything began happening at once. At : ..
Count Wolf von Helldorf, Berlin’s police chief, brought into the
War Ministry a police index card and asked Blomberg’s chief of
staff, General Wilhelm Keitel, if he recognized the photo: Was
this Blomberg’s bride? Keitel replied uneasily that he had not yet
set eyes on her perhaps the police chief ought to try General
Göring instead?
Late the next morning Helldorf drove up the autobahn to
Carinhall. Perhaps the photograph came as no surprise to
Göring. More than one person suspected that he might even
have engineered Blomberg’s meeting with this particular
woman. (He denied it.) Others (Fritsch, Göring himself, and
Keitel among them) suspected the SS had rigged it. “They ex-
ploited Blomberg’s vulnerability to railroad him into this mar-