perceptibly, and after addressing air-force officers on the nine-
teenth he suffered a midnight heart attack. Clearly it was not his
first, since his diary treats it almost routinely. Professor Siebert
took an electrocardiogram, and on the twenty-second Göring
was fit enough to meet Kesselring, Jeschonnek, and other gener-
als again.
The coming war with Russia overshadowed all else. His
differences with Hitler over forward strategy became more
marked as the shaping of Barbarossa now began. For some weeks
Göring found that he was getting phone calls discouraging him
from attending Hitler’s daily war conference, the Führerlage. “I
don’t know what’s up,” Emmy heard her husband remark. “The
Führer stops me going over. Something’s going on.” The diary
confirms this. Between November and mid-March he met
Hitler only four times, and they telephoned each other only
rarely e.g., on January , when he reported that Air Corps
had sunk the British cruisers Southampton and York and the
aircraft carrier Illustrious.
General Kurt Student, the Parachute Division’s com-
mander, came out to Carinhall with Jeschonnek on January
and stayed aboard Göring’s train when it left for Berchtesgaden.
As they talked that evening, Student found the Reichsmarschall
bitterly opposed to Barbarossa. Arriving at Berchtesgaden,
Göring tackled Hitler at midday, lunched with him, and stayed
with him alone until : .. They were probably arguing, be-
cause General Student would recall four years later that Hitler
left afterward “sunk deep in thought.” According to Student,
Göring was already thinking he had succeeded “Thank God,
no war with Russia!” when Hitler phoned two days later:
“Göring,” he said, “I have changed my mind. We shall attack in
the east.”
By that time Hermann Göring was back in Berlin, im-