zow, Hans Hahn, and Gordon Mac Gollob. They filled the front
rows in the great hall of the ministry, with the party, govern-
ment, and diplomatic notables arrayed behind them. “The last
to appear,” described bomber commander Werner Baumbach,
“was the Reichsmarschall, wearing red-brown boots, light-gray
uniform and smart gold braid.” After the strains of Ludwig von
Beethoven’s Eroica had died away, Göring clanked up to the dais
in his golden spurs and spoke with a voice breaking with emo-
tion. “I can only say I have lost my best friend,” he said.
“A tour de force by actor Hermann Göring,” observed
Baumbach cynically.
Hitler appointed Milch as the new GL a sound decision,
because by June the aircraft industry would be manufac-
turing fifteen times as many planes. Göring’s indulgence of his
unstable, happy-go-lucky World War companion had cost
Germany dear.
A second disaster compounded the Udet tragedy. Re-
turning to the eastern front, Mölders, general of fighters,
crashed at Breslau. After that funeral, Göring motioned to Gal-
land with his baton and appointed him Mölder’s successor.
He took Galland with him as his special train conveyed him
once more in state and style across Germany to France. On the
first day of December he tackled the aged French collaboration-
ist leader Marshal Pétain, remarking to Galland that he expected
to be through in twenty minutes. But three hours passed before
he emerged, ruffled, pink-faced, and angry. He told Mussolini
two months later that Pétain, acting as though France had won
the war, had tried to hand him a document setting out French
conditions on further collaboration, and when he had declined
to accept it, the Frenchman had leaned forward and tucked it
into his pocket.
Far away, on the snow-gripped Russian front, Field Mar-