around more art galleries for a couple of days, those at The
Hague and Amsterdam. With his sisters and the latest loot from
the Jeu de Paume loaded safely aboard, his train took him back
to Berlin. Here, on February , he made one of his last attempts
to talk Hitler out of attacking Russia, asking Schnurre, the Ger-
man diplomat handling the renewal of the Soviet trade agree-
ment, to put to him the serious economic disadvantages of
fighting Nazi Germany’s principal supplier of both grain and
petroleum.
Without waiting for the result, Göring left for East Prussia
and spent the next days hunting stags, stalking elk, and sleigh-
riding.
In the second half of February he began to accept Bar-
barossa as a necessary evil. Riding his train south to Bavaria on
February , he thoughtfully discussed Germany’s alternative
petroleum supplies with a Dr. Fischer, his principal expert on
Romanian oil. Soon after, Göring began actually to advocate the
benefits of capturing the Soviet oil fields. His diary shows that
on February he lunched at Hitler’s Berghof and spent the
next six hours in private conclave with Hitler and General
Jeschonnek, the chief of air staff. Hitler robustly stated that if
anybody else talked to him about the economic drawbacks of
Barbarossa, he was going to block his ears. “If Russia is on the
point of attacking Germany,” he reasoned with the Reichsmar-
schall, “then economics don’t come into it.”
Still uncomfortable, Göring reminded him of Napoleon’s
defeat in Russia. Hitler would not heed him, and Göring, char-
acteristically, saw no choice but to fall into line. When the Reich
minister of finance, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, wrote to him
pleading against Barbarossa, Göring instructed Paul Körner to
reply orally that the planned campaign was preventive, and