“The Russians have wrecked everything,” was the explana-
tion. “So we have to rebuild from scratch.”
“Getting oil wells working in winter,” one expert lectured
him, “is exceptionally tough.”
“That’s not the point,” rasped Göring. “Even if it’s tough,
it’s still got to be done.”
As the armies hammered their way southward and southeast-
ward into Russia, Göring reviewed his art collections yet again.
The Dutch art dealer Hubert Menten offered him Adriaen
Ysenbrant’s “Madonna and Child”; Göring paid him thirty
thousand Swiss francs for it. Deals in less valuable currencies ran
less smoothly. After buying a series of Flemish tapestries depict-
ing the life of the emperor Charlemagne for million French
francs from the Galerie Charpentier in Paris, Göring learned
that the delighted vendors had only recently purchased them
for one tenth of that price. The furious Reichsmarschall re-
sorted to the usual offices of Dr. Helmuth Knochen, chief of the
Paris Gestapo, but recovered only eight hundred thousand
francs.
The most lurid example of his Byzantine purchasing
methods came when he learned of two magnificent Flemish
hunting tapestries in the Château de Bort, near Limoges. Owned
jointly by the Marquis de Sèze and his estranged wife, each was
thirty feet long and over fifteen feet high, woven over four
hundred years before but with colors as fresh as yesterday. “If
my uncle sees those,” Lieutenant Göring had gasped, “they’ll be
packed up and taken away!” Sure enough, in September
Göring sent two French art agents, Messrs. Violet and Bourda-
niat, to photograph them, ostensibly for an art catalog. The
agents casually mentioned to the estranged Madame de Sèze the
tempting sum of million francs, but she said the tapestries