mas reported to Göring on July , then recorded, “Reichsmar-
schall wants rapid investigation of ways of increasing German
fuel imports from (a) Romania (b) the Caucasus.”
The Soviets were still far from collapse. Hitler ordered the
Luftwaffe to execute “terror raids” on Moscow. Göring called in
Jeschonnek on July and , and his bomber and fighter ex-
perts Galland and Werner Baumbach on the twentieth to dis-
cuss the raids. “The signs are multiplying,” intelligence chief
Canaris told his Abwehr staff that day, however, “that this war
will not bring about the internal collapse of Bolshevism that we
had anticipated, so much as its invigoration.” Göring evidently
felt the same misgivings, as he had a four-hour talk alone with
the mysterious Swede, Dahlerus, that same day, and invited Ca-
naris for a similar secret talk five days later. The air force mean-
while bombed Moscow on July and ; Stalin showed no signs
of yielding.
At the end of July Emmy Göring came back from Bavaria
to meet her husband in Berlin. The Reich capital was dampened
by summer rains. Late the following afternoon, July , as the
drizzle cleared, Göring called in briefly at his ministry. Here, at
: .., he had a visitor Gestapo Chief Reinhard Heydrich
wanted the favor of the Reichsmarschall’s signature on a docu-
ment. The SS officer had drafted it himself; he had even typed
Göring’s letterhead. Göring obliged the young Obergruppen-
führer, then hurried off to the station a few minutes later to
meet Emmy, unaware that he had just signed the document that
would be used to condemn him to the gallows five years later: a
paper empowering Heydrich to “make all necessary prepara-
tions... for an overall unraveling (Lösung) of the Jewish prob-
lem within Germany’s sphere of influence in Europe.”
He was tired of the war, and awarded himself several weeks’
leave at Carinhall. His mind strayed far from the battlefields.