of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dutch and French
paintings. Göring grasped these treasures too, and returned
contentedly to the sweltering heat of Berlin.
There is good reason to dwell upon Göring’s shopping mania.
Like the crude attack of dysentery that now smote Hitler him-
self, it is the kind of petty factor that History ignores at its peril:
During Göring’s three-week absence from East Prussia a strate-
gic controversy had developed between Hitler and the general
staff Hitler had always demanded a diverging, two-pronged
attack with pincer arms extending toward Leningrad and the
Caucasus, while the army had inclined to a frontal assault on
Moscow. Now that the general staff found the Russian armies
massing in front of the capital, all their inclinations were to ig-
nore Hitler. Hitler forbade any advance on Moscow until Len-
ingrad had fallen. The battle slowed. “The seasons are drawing
on,” wrote General von Waldau, incensed, on August . “At the
beginning of October the war will choke on its own mud.”
The army held out for Moscow. Weak and nauseous from
dysentery, Hitler took three days to dictate a reply, rejecting the
army’s arguments. Returning to Hitler’s headquarters for the
first time on the nineteenth, Göring protested at the way that
Field Marshal von Brauchitsch had “watered down” the Führer’s
brilliant strategies. He accused Brauchitsch of double-crossing
Hitler, of going behind his back.
They pulled no punches in their altercations. Brauchitsch
suffered a mild heart attack, but showed up for afternoon tea
with Göring aboard his train Asia. Göring suffered too his di-
ary shows that his heart thumped so much that he called in his
doctor, Ondarza, again that evening. Neither fish nor fowl, the
German autumn offensive faltered and eventually failed.
The metal-toothed paratroop general Bernhard Ramcke