starting the blitz on Britain. In March alone, KG, based in
Holland, had lost twenty-six crews. Over the following months
Göring was obliged to limit operations to only two squadrons of
FW s and Me s carrying out high-speed nuisance attacks
by full moon on targets like Hull, Norwich, Ipswich, Chelms-
ford, Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Cardiff. The “Kammhuber
Line,” Göring’s ponderous, extravagant night-fighter defense
organization, meanwhile proved incapable of halting the con-
centrated British bomber tactics. Terrifying conflagrations rav-
aged the German cities. On June , the RAF again dropped two
thousand tons of bombs on Düsseldorf. Thousands more civil-
ians were killed in a second fire raid on little Wuppertal. Still
Hitler and Göring hankered after ways of hitting back at Britain,
when their air force could not even do damage now to Russia.
One of Göring’s lengthier diary entries that June shows
that he was not entirely insensible to advice:
Our air force in Russia is fresh and keen! Willing
to fight but weak in manpower, technical staff, and
planes, because reinforcements don’t keep pace. They
feel that they’re being used like a fire brigade every-
where, that they can’t stage mass raids of their own
and that they don’t get much chance to relax just
dogsbodies to the army!! Tossed this way and that
this army one day, that the next, and then back again.
Particularly damaging how the Geschwader get split
up: This freezes out the Geschwader commodores,
although they’re very important people. Three
squadrons may be operating from the same base, but
each belongs to a different Geschwader...
The troops want a reasonable degree of forward
planning and not just these fire-brigade duties.Hitler was planning ahead. While he plotted Citadel, his final