Gastein, then took his train on to Austria on April . He would
remain there languidly directing air-force operations from a
tourist hotel on the Semmering until the Balkan campaign
ended three weeks later. It opened with a vicious Air Corps
raid by three hundred bombers on Belgrade at : .. on the
sixth (the Yugoslavs claimed that the raid left seventeen thou-
sand dead). Hitler had, however, forbidden Göring to bomb
Athens, and during the remaining fighting there was little for
Göring’s squadrons to do other than harry the transport ships
that eventually evacuated the British expeditionary force.
On the Semmering he walked and swam, trying to
strengthen his heart, but the mountain air was heavy with the
sleet and drizzle of early spring. For company he took Pili
Körner and Milch, or Udet and Jeschonnek, but these Luftwaffe
generals were vain and immiscible. Jeschonnek, his chief of air
staff, was sensitive, withdrawn, and unimaginative the very
opposite of the flamboyant and corrupt Reichsmarschall. Every
two or three days Göring drove over to Hitler’s command train,
which was halted between two tunnels at Mönnichkirchen. He
reported that his bombers had again raided Coventry, Glasgow,
Bristol, and Liverpool. On April , the British retaliated against
Berlin. Göring’s State Opera was gutted. The British newspapers
boasted that three thousand Berliners had died in the fires (the
true figure was eleven). Göring retaliated with a violent attack
on London a week later.
A few days after the London raid an air-force technical
mission returned from Moscow. The air-force experts brought
disturbing news of the Soviet Union’s industrial mobilization.
They had been allowed to tour half a dozen huge factories
manufacturing equipment from ball bearings and special alloys
to warplanes and aero-engines. Over dinner on the eighth, So-
viet aircraft designer Mikoyan had blustered, “You have now