

 

Fall from Grace

A quarter of a million of Hitler’s troops were encircled in Stalin-
grad; they would become Stalin’s hostages, and very few would
ever be seen alive again. Göring would soon suspect that, given
the simultaneous failure to prevent the Allied landings in
northwest Africa, only a deal with Stalin would offer Nazi Ger-
many any chance of survival. But, as he admitted to interroga-
tors three years later, whenever he tried to speak frankly to Hit-
ler, his heart sank to the seat of his pants.
At first he did not realize the scale of the Stalingrad trag-
edy, but that did not make his personal movements any less
scandalous or unforgivable.
He arrived in Paris on November , , and on the next
day  even as Field Marshal von Manstein was signaling to
Paulus, “We shall hack you free!”  Göring continued his Paris
spree with a visit to the Jeu de Paume. It was to be his last visit to
this treasure-house. He was in an ill humor, which he worked