quence that surprised him. “Our time,” he declared, “will come
again!”
He was uncertain about his future. For a while he stayed
with fellow fighter ace Ernst Udet in Berlin, then returned to his
widowed mother, Fanny Göring, in Munich. A British air-force
officer, Frank Beaumont, had been charged with the local en-
forcement of the armistice terms. As luck would have it, Göring
had ensured that this officer was treated with more than cus-
tomary chivalry when he had been shot down, and Beaumont
now returned that kindness in various ways; this softened the
transition from the unreal wartime world of heroism and ad-
venture to the harsher reality of postwar Munich.
Seeing no future for military aviation here, he sought his
fortune in Scandinavia. The Fokker company invited him to
demonstrate their latest plane in Denmark, and Göring agreed
provided he could keep the plane as payment. That spring of
the Danish government asked him to recommend which
aircraft their forces should purchase. His reputation as the
Richthofen Squadron’s last commander was high, but his life
had an undeniable aimlessness now. He staged aerobatic displays
with four former Richthofen Squadron pilots. On another oc-
casion fawning Danish pilots paid him twenty-five hundred
kroner and “all the champagne he could drink” for two days’
aerobatics over Odense. Emboldened by the liquid portion of
the honorarium, that night Göring switched around all the
guests’ shoes outside their rooms at the Grand Hotel and carted
several young ladies about in a wheelbarrow singing loudly; his
sponsors had to retrieve him from the local police station.
He had broken several maidens’ hearts; one now broke his.
At Mainz in he had fallen in love with Käthe Dorsch, a
young actress appearing on the local stage; blond and blue-eyed,
this Garbo-like creature would become one of Germany’s most