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 

The Thousand-Bomber Raid

As  began Hitler’s armies in Russia were in crisis. From the
Crimea and Kharkov northward to Kursk, Moscow, and Lenin-
grad, the starving, ill-equipped, and frozen German troops
could barely withstand the furious onslaught. Hitler changed
his army generals all along the front, but he had only praise for
the Luftwaffe commanders like the hard-bitten General von
Richthofen.
Göring willingly joined in his Führer’s lashing of the army
generals. Meeting Hitler in sub-zero temperatures at the Wolf’s
Lair on January , , he marveled at the way the dictator
halted the army’s stampede and consolidated the crumbling
front lines. “I have rarely seen such greatness,” he told Musso-
lini, visiting Italy later that month.
In the last days of the old year, Lieutenant General Hans
von Sponeck, acting against orders, had abandoned the penin-
sula of Kerch in the Crimea. The Reichsmarschall took it upon