neers had moored reflectors on thousands of lakes and erected
jamming transmitters code-named Roderich up and down the
country; decoy sites as big as cities were torched in the path of
the invading aircraft. Each night Göring’s controllers fed the
fighter squadrons into the bomber stream, led by “shadowers”
equipped with sophisticated tracking gear and homing beacons.
Each night the single- and twin-engined fighters jousted with
the marauding bombers over the guttering cities. Sometimes one
controller at Arnhem was directing fighter pilots by running
radio commentary.
The RAF fought back with all that deviltry that had won
the British a great empire. Planes laden with advanced electronic
gear cruised amid the bombers, monitoring, jamming, interfer-
ing. Fake fighter “controllers” sent Göring’s pilots to the wrong
end of Germany or, more devilishly, warned of worsening
weather, panicking them into landing prematurely.
Uncertainty about Italy lay like a pall across the Wolf’s Lair.
When Marshal Badoglio demanded that Germany supply no
less than . million tons of grain, whereas the little-lamented
Mussolini had made do with less than , tons (of which
, tons were returned each time from the somewhat later
Italian harvest), it became clear that Badoglio was just searching
for a pretext to get out of the war. Göring’s agriculture expert
Herbert Backe, who visited him at Rominten at the end of
August, shared this view.
Backe pleaded with Göring to prevent further retreats in
Russia, as Germany was now largely dependent on food imports
from there. “If we are really going to fall back on the lines now
being sketched in,” Backe noted on the last day of August, “I’ll
have to chuck in the sponge.” The Reichsmarschall evidently
recognized this too, and promised to mention this “higher up,”
i.e., to Hitler.