Aware that his air force was meeting its match in the skies
over southern England, Göring was mentally and physically
drained. He returned briefly to Berlin early that October, but
did not enjoy it as the sirens now often wailed there, forcing
four million Berliners to seek shelter many of them muttering
incantations about “Meier the Broom.” (To his earlier promise
to change his name to Meier, Göring had foolishly added an-
other: to eat a broomstick if one enemy bomber should reach the
Reich capital.) On October , he had to preside over a ministe-
rial conference on providing flak defenses and air-raid shelters
for the city. Two days later he saw Hitler briefly the Führer
directed him not to concern himself with food shortages in
France and Belgium, but to treat the “Nordic” countries Nor-
way, Denmark, and Holland well “for political reasons” and
then returned unenthusiastically to France. The diary of the
later-famous Hermann Göring Regiment records that his train
Asia arrived back at headquarters at : .. on October ,
.
While losing the initiative in the Battle of Britain, Hitler had
taken the first steps to seize an historic initiative in the east. He
was preparing for the coming Nazi assault on the Soviet Union.
Göring had remained at Carinhall while Hitler and his army
generals brooded over these momentous decisions in Bavaria,
and he had not been consulted. At the August Chancellery
conference he had not paid much attention to Hitler’s apparent
afterthought, that he would attack the Russians if they deviated
from their present pro-Nazi policies or if they turned against
Finland or Romania. Those “ifs” probably occluded Göring’s
perception of danger; besides, Hitler undertook not to make u p
his mind until May which way to turn next whether
against Britain or the Soviet Union. Talking to munitions expert