tapestries.”
The gods of war did not stand aside while Göring indulged his
muses. In June his defenses shot down their first British
Mosquito bomber. Its fuselage was made of wood, which made it
both fast and virtually invisible to radar. Göring angrily recalled
that back in he too had ordered the manufacture of
wooden planes (though “suggested” would probably be more
accurate). Udet’s staff had vetoed the production of “such gar-
bage.” Göring’s investigators were unanimous, however, that he,
Göring, could not escape the blame entirely and he still pre-
ferred jaunts to Paris, Amsterdam, and Florence to listening to
bad news at the ministry. “According to both the figures you
supply and those we are getting from Britain,” he jeered to
Milch on June , “the British are making more bombers and
more fighters than we are!” (The conference minutes add that
he himself considered this “out of the question.”) The truth was
there, written in the skies, but he averted his gaze to more pleas-
urable horizons. His air force was overextended on every front,
but he would not believe it. At the end of July the high com-
mand’s General Walter Warlimont would return from North
Africa with a bleak picture of Rommel’s troops fighting against
crushing enemy air superiority. “Do you hear that, Göring?”
said Hitler, with an unpleasant edge to his voice. “Saturation
bombing in the desert now!”
Hitler shifted his headquarters to Vinnitsa in the Ukraine
in mid-July . Göring settled at Kalinovka, about half an
hour’s drive away. The countryside was devastated and idle,
there were airplane wrecks on the local airfield, and the sur-
rounding peasantry were desperately poor. Göring made only
one sortie into the conquered Ukrainian countryside, venturing
forth into a local town. He sent a servant off with two cigar boxes