At : .. his valet, Robert, often found him up on
deck, swathed in blankets and contemplating the rising sun.
Göring would motion to the valet to switch on the phonograph
down below, and then the chosen riverside village would be
awakened by an entire Wagner opera blaring from the boat’s
loudspeakers. When, toward midday, the final golden chords
had enveloped the countryside, Göring would send for Robert.
“Again!” he might command; or, more mercifully, “Let it run
through again as far as ‘Behold the golden pommel’s gleam in
the sun’s bright rays.’ ”
“I wouldn’t have your job for a thousand marks a month!”
whispered the chief adjutant, Major Conrath, to the valet once.
Robert showed him a glittering new air-force dagger, and asked
him to get Göring’s name engraved on the hilt.
The major was a pessimist. “Nobody’ll give you anything
for it,” he sniffed, “ afterward!”
These summer weeks of , which should have been golden-
hued after the birth of his daughter, Edda, were overclouded
for Göring by Hitler’s planning against Czechoslovakia. Presi-
dent Bene was proving less tractable than Schuschnigg he
relied on his country’s Maginot-style frontier fortifications, and
on his alliance with France. Britain, however, though treaty-
bound to help the French, was not eager to assist Bene. “There
can be no doubt that Britain doesn’t want war,” Göring assured
his aircraft industrialists in a secret speech at Carinhall on July .
“Nor does France, for that matter. With America,” he added,
“you can’t be certain.”
The aircraft manufacturers in his audience, including the
big names like Claude Dornier, Ernst Heinkel, Willi Messer-
schmitt, and the directors of Hugo Junkers, heard him again
predict a Czech “provocation.”