Hitler that the minister’s sixty-five-year-old Staatssekretär, Wil-
helm Kleinmann, was to blame for the railway chaos. Acting on
Göring’s advice, on May Hitler told Speer and Milch to take
charge of the transport system. Addressing these two men, he
significantly reaffirmed his own esteem for Göring “That’s
why I have appointed my best man,” said Hitler, “who is some-
what younger than myself, as my successor.”
Göring needed this kind of reassurance. He suspected that
the Führer had begun to go behind his back. Hitler had spent
several hours eating alone with Göring’s subordinate, General
von Richthofen, on May , discussing the Crimean campaign.
He had even scoffed at the hunting fraternity. “I wonder why,”
mocked Hitler, “our soldiers don’t hang up the jawbones of
dead Russians in their rooms!” A few days later Richthofen dic-
tated this smug note into his diary: “Göring has bawled out
Jeschonnek [chief of air staff] because I was with the Führer!”
Far worse was to come for Göring. Late on May , , as
he was entertaining Speer and Milch, the new “transport over-
lords,” at Veldenstein Castle, the phone rang. It was the Nazi
gauleiter of Cologne, Josef Grohé. A violent British air raid had
begun, he screamed. After a further exchange during which
Göring claimed that it could only be a small-scale attack the
guests heard him bellow, “Are you calling me a liar?” and slam
the phone down. The phone rang again, and Göring snatched
it. This time he fell silent and it was obvious who was calling
now. Hitler, telephoning from his special train in East Prussia,
told him the gauleiter was talking of “hundreds” of British
bombers attacking. There had never been a British raid in such
numbers before. But Göring assured him that the gauleiter’s
figures were wrong seventy planes, at most, had attacked. As
daybreak came, he learned that his defenses had shot down forty
bombers. It looked like a big victory, even though five hundred