hence necessary. On February , the Reichsmarschall wrote two
eloquent, perhaps even fatalistic, words in his diary. “East: dead-
lines.”
The change in his posture was apparent when he discussed
the long-term economic effects of Barbarossa with General
Thomas of the OKW on the twenty-sixth. He agreed that there
was little point in occupying just the Ukraine. “At all costs,” said
Göring, “we must get the petroleum fields around Baku too.”
He shares the Führer’s opinion [noted Thomas im-
mediately afterward] that when the German troops
march into Russia the whole Bolshevik state will col-
lapse and that in consequence we have no cause to an-
ticipate the large-scale destruction of supplies or
demolition of railroads that I fear.“What matters most,” said Göring, “is to finish off the Bolshevik
leaders, fast, first, and foremost.”
Visiting Vienna on March , he casually asked the visiting
right-wing dictator of Romania, General Ion Antonescu,
whether his country could increase its petroleum output
“Since our other oil supplier [Russia] might one day drop out.”
He asked equally casually, “How many of your Romanians live
on Russian soil?” and when Antonescu told him, the
Reichsmarschall made a silent scooping gesture with one hand.
To dupe the British into believing they were next on his
menu, Hitler sent the gaudy Luftwaffe commander back to the
west for two weeks later that month. Göring bore this banish-
ment with fortitude, happily hobnobbing with his shady art-
dealer acquaintances in The Hague and Amsterdam where
Nathan Katz, the Jew who had sold him three paintings, in-
cluding Van Dyck’s “Family Portrait” (for eighty thousand dol-
lars), was now wangling exit visas to Switzerland and in Paris,