home of the Fieseler Aircraft Works, where the Luftwaffe flying
bomb was being mass-produced, was ablaze. Six thousand citi-
zens would perish in this second fire storm in Germany.
Addressing fighter pilots the next morning in a hangar at
Arnhem’s Deelen Airbase, Göring angrily accused them of being
“leery” “In fact, a lot of you are very leery.” He scornfully re-
called their boast that they would make a meal of the “four-
engine jobs” if they came close. “Well,” he said, “they’ve come
close. But so far, no meal!” “Bear one thing in mind: The Ger-
man public is suffering terribly, day and night, from the enemy
bombing terror. By night, they can understand in part, because
they realize it isn’t all that easy to tackle a bomber in the dark.
What they don’t grasp is why you can’t do it by day in bril-
liant weather and they say so in countless letters to me. After
seeing how you fight, they tell me I obviously just recalled crip-
ples to take over the air defense. If I now make your losses pub-
lic, and tell them, ‘Wait we have three airmen dead and eight
or even twelve are missing,’ they’re going to tell me: ‘We
thought they were soldiers! They know war isn’t child’s play!’ ”
Glowering at the rows of pilots, Göring thundered, “I can assure
you of one thing. I will not have cowards in my air force. I will
root them out.”
On October , , Hitler called a top-level conference on
whether or not to pull out of the Crimea. Göring repeated the
arguments to his own staff the next day.
In Russia, in the vast outfield that we have won,
we can operieren [make tactical withdrawals]. But we
must have the firm resolve to have so many troops
under arms by a given time spring [] at the lat-
est that we can kick the Russians out all over again.
Whether the Russians are at Krivoy Rog or one hun-