

 

The Big Decision

Reichsmarschall Göring called his deputy, Milch, out to Carin-
hall on November , , handed over command of the Luft-
waffe, and departed for Rominten in East Prussia. Here he
would stay, barely thirty miles from the Soviet demarcation line,
until his forty-eighth birthday lured him back to Berlin in Janu-
ary .
By November  he had learned of Hitler’s half-formed
intent of attacking the Soviet Union in the coming spring. That
he opposed this decision was confirmed by all Göring’s personal
aides. Karl Bodenschatz, talking in British captivity (he believed
without being overheard), was later adamant about this: “I could
tell you,” he related to fellow generals, “of many moments in the
Hitler–Göring saga where it was all or nothing.”

For instance [continued Bodenschatz], their first god-

almighty clash was over whether to attack Russia.