(Heart).” Professor Zahler was sent for.*
In part the heart problems were a consequence of his mas-
sive obesity; in part the malaise was probably psychological. He
could see his authority being openly dismantled. On January ,
Hitler created a “Commission of Three” (Dreierausschuss) to
control manpower. Göring was excluded. On the fourteenth,
bypassing Göring, Hitler sent for Staatssekretär Milch and in-
structed him to take over even at this eleventh hour the
vital Stalingrad airlift.
On the night of January –, the RAF attacked Berlin
using new “blockbuster” bombs. After inspecting the damage,
Göring lunched at Hitler’s headquarters on the eighteenth.
Hitler showed him the latest hysterical signals from Paulus about
the airlift. Göring phoned them through to Milch, now at the
front line. “The most frightful signals are coming from the for-
tress,” Göring complained.
In fact Göring had provided the planes he promised, but
the squadron commanders were letting him down. They had
done nothing to keep the waiting air crews warm, the crews
themselves were ignorant of standard cold-start procedures, and
morale was rock-bottom. Of Junkers transports, only
fifteen were operational on the day Milch arrived; of
Heinkel s only , of twenty FW s only one. Of these
planes, only seven Junkers and eleven Heinkels were actually
scheduled to make the round trip that day. Milch at once sacked
the incompetent generals, organized new landing grounds,
parachuted radio beacons and flare-path equipment into the
fortress. But as the weeks passed, the airfields in Stalingrad were
- Göring was now taking Cardiazol (pentamethylene-tetrazol), a heart
stimulant of relatively short-lived effect. Back in November his staff had
ordered from Siemens a portable electrocardiograph for Professor Zahler, and
Görnnert had endorsed the order as “very urgent.”