tament dated April , as the next Führer. And when Hitler de-
parted for his great state visit to Rome on May , he again left
Göring in Berlin as acting head of state. There was therefore a
dual track emerging in Göring’s character. He was peaceably in-
clined, but his greed for the ultimate office kept him aboard
Hitler’s accelerating military juggernaut. He adopted Hitler’s
language as his own. On May , as the king of Sweden passed
through Berlin, we find Field Marshal Göring gossiping grandly
with him, as one head of state to another, about “pushing the
Czechs back to Russia, where they belong.”
Hitler returned to Berlin, and all Europe awaited his next
move. On May , Czech gendarmes shot dead two Sudeten
German farmers. The jumpy British press abused Hitler, accus-
ing him of moving his troops. For once he was not guilty. H u -
miliated by his own momentary military impotence, on May
he concluded from the Fleet Street clamor for the first time that
the British might well figure among his enemies after all in some
future war. He summoned his high command to a briefing in
Berlin four days later.
Shortly before he addressed these generals, he broke it to
Göring that he was going ahead with Green in the fall that a
purely political settlement was no longer acceptable. Göring
clutched at straws. He argued that the army generals had made
barely any progress on the vital West Wall, the line of bunkers
defending Germany’s frontier against France. Hitler was un-
moved. “We’ll deal with Czechoslovakia using these old gener-
als,” he said mockingly, “then we’ve got four or five years.”
Göring’s awe of Hitler was absolute, and this was his gravest
impediment. “I try so hard,” he once admitted to Hjalmar
Schacht, “but every time I stand before the Führer, my heart
drops into the seat of my pants.” His heart wallowing around
those nether regions now, he buttonholed Hitler’s personal ad-