factories. The foreman told him that the whole town was devas-
tated. Speer hurried back to report this to Hitler in his own tri-
umphant way. Speer’s report at least temporarily diminished
the impact of Göring’s. In fact, not one tank or plane was lost to
the Nazi production in consequence of this raid. The Americans
made no further attempt to penetrate deep into the Reich until
they obtained proper long-range fighter cover in early .
After Schweinfurt, Göring decided it was safe to go out
and tour the ravaged cities of the Rhineland. He had already
decided to inspect the fighter, flak, and radar organizations.
Surprisingly, wherever his bulletproof limousine halted
whether in Cologne, Wuppertal, Krefeld, or Bochum he was
mobbed by cheering civilians. He took in all the unfamiliar
sights of the blitz people reopening stores amid the rubble;
messages chalked on broken walls from relatives seeking next of
kin; signboards pointing to shelters; and broad arrows indicating
safe escape routes if the whole city should catch fire. True, when
Göring appeared, there were ironic shouts of “Call me Meier!”
but there were mothers holding out babies to him as well. “I’m
human too,” he said a few days later, “and I would have under-
stood it if these people who had just ruins all around them
just rubble to the left and right of them upon seeing a brass
hat go by (and the one responsible for the whole mess at that, or
at least responsible for their defense) might, well, not exactly
toss rotten eggs at me, but at least throw the odd scowl or shout
‘You fat old lump!’ ” He turned to the generals who had wit-
nessed these scenes with him. “You saw how the people all
streamed over to me. What a welcome! I could have cried. And
in the fifth year of the war at that! That’s when I knew,” he con-
tinued, “that provided we, their leaders, don’t perpetrate any
really serious blunders, we can’t lose this war!”
In a similarly optimistic vein he addressed bomber pilots of