on medieval Nuremberg. Hitler had Bodenschatz fetched out of
bed and raged at him.
Twenty-four hours later Munich was the British bombers’
target. The fear of German retaliation was evidently no deter-
rent at all. Hitler blamed this on Göring’s portly friend Field
Marshal Hugo Sperrle, who had set up his Luftflotte head-
quarters in a French château. “He has about as much interest in
bombing Britain as in wolfing down a gourmet dinner,” said
Hitler, and ordered Göring back from Italy.
To his adjutant, Jeschonnek remarked emptily that per-
haps he ought to commit suicide then Göring might mend
his ways. The remark revealed how much the general was being
pulverized between these heaving millstones of the high com-
mand. Later that spring the adjutant managed to wrest a re-
volver out of Jeschonnek’s hand he heard the general mut-
tering about wanting to be buried in East Prussia on the shores
of Lake Goldap.
He arrived back at the Wolf’s Lair at : .. on March ,
, chatted for a while with Rommel, who had relinquished
command of his army in Tunisia the previous day, and slunk in
to see Hitler at :.
Hitler gave Göring one more chance to redeem himself.
Göring put pressure on his plane manufacturers. Assem-
bling them for a ninety-minute tirade at Carinhall a week later,
he ladled vitriol over them the Professors Messerschmitt,
Heinkel, and Dornier for Germany’s “total failure” in aviation
technology. “I have been deceived,” he roared, “on a scale to
which I was hitherto accustomed only in the variety acts of ma-
gicians and conjurers.” “There are some things which were re-
ported to me before the war as completely ready, but which are
still not ready even today!” To which remark he significantly
added, “I am not talking of the eastern theater at all. When I