The offensive made colossal strides. The German armies,
aided by their allies, trapped seventy-five Soviet divisions at
Vyazma and Bryansk. Millions of Russian prisoners began the
long march into captivity. “We have finally and without any ex-
aggeration won the war!” triumphed General Jodl on the eighth.
Göring too believed that it was game, set, and match. He went to
Berlin for a heart checkup and a new suit. He phoned Emmy
every day. Immense battles were now raging on the Russian
front, but on October the Reichsmarschall inscribed in his di-
ary, “Strolled around the house [Carinhall] with Emmy and
[Fräulein] Limberger inspecting the new art treasures.” With
total lack of emotion, he entered the news that his nineteen-
year-old nephew Peter had been killed as a fighter-pilot in
France.
Victory seemed within their grasp. On October , the air
staff issued a map of their proposed new air zone, Luftgau
Moskau. But Göring returned to Rominten the next day to find
the weather once more deteriorating. “Our wildest dreams,”
wrote deputy chief of air staff von Waldau that same day, “have
been washed out by rain and snow.... Everything is bogged
down in a bottomless quagmire. The temperature drops to –°C
[°F], eight inches of snow fall, and then it rains on top of that.”
Even in the warmer southern Ukraine ice and snow
grounded the Luftwaffe’s squadrons. Interservice bickering
broke out anew. General von Richthofen, frustrated, wrote on
October , “I know that the Russians are through... but the
fatigue and disarray of our [army] commands right down to
regimental level are horrendous.” Tempers frayed. That day,
Vice-Admiral Canaris visited the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s head-
quarters, to report on Abwehr plans to seize the Caucasus oil
fields. When he mentioned that he would be seeing Göring the
next day, Field Marshal Keitel (chief of the OKW) flew off the