Göring fought that one tooth and nail. But he was
just a loyal henchman and ultimately there was noth-
ing else he could do. The Führer just said, “I com-
mand it!”This capitulation was typical of the Hitler–Göring relationship.
Although Major von Below, Hitler’s air-force adjutant, had no-
ticed an estrangement during the Battle of Britain, he observed
that Hitler continued to consult his air-force chief on any major
initiative for three more years. Not that he felt bound to heed
Göring’s advice: As Ribbentrop would write in August ,
once Hitler had made up his mind, nobody “not even Göring
with his overbearing influence” could change it for him.
Göring hated the developing Nazi plan to attack Russia. In
vain he canvassed his own strategy, for a concerted action by
German, Italian, and Spanish forces to seize the British Empire’s
fortress at Gibraltar and capture the Suez Canal, thus sealing off
the Mediterranean. After that he proposed they occupy the Bal-
kans and North Africa. Hitler would not listen, and invited the
Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, to Berlin for one
final parley before making up his mind. Göring and Ribbentrop
entertained the Soviet potentate at the Kaiserhof Hotel on No-
vember , but the price that the stocky little Russian shortly
stated for further Soviet collaboration took Ribbentrop’s breath
away: The U.S.S.R. now demanded Finland, Romania, and Bul-
garia, control of the Dardanelles Straits and more, because
when British bombers arrived over Berlin after dark that night,
Molotov confidentially stated to Ribbentrop in the air-raid
shelter beneath the Reich Chancellery a demand that made the
Nazi leaders tumble out of their seats, as Göring later put it.
Moscow now insisted on being awarded naval bases on the North
Sea outlets of the Baltic. “I told them,” Ribbentrop haughtily