underground floor space as soon as possible for production.
“What has been damaged by fire,” he told them, “is beyond re-
pair.” Speaking to the assembled gauleiters in Munich on No-
vember , he asked their help in locating suitable tunnels and
caves. He also promised them that the He bomber in
which he had still not lost faith would one day carry to Lon-
don six tons of Trialen, an explosive twice as powerful as any-
thing the RAF had developed. “There are, thank God,” he
added, “lots of extraordinarily important targets along the east
coast that we shall tackle first. It is better to wipe out a town of
one hundred thousand people entirely by a terror raid, than to
make a dent in a giant city.”
His fighter planes were now also much more heavily armed
than a year earlier, and he was imbuing a spirit of self-sacrifice in
the pilots. On the same November , Colonel Galland was heard
issuing this order, number , to his squadron commanders,
creating an élite shock troop within the fighter force: “The
Reichsmarschall has ordered the setting up of a Sturm Staffel
[storm unit]. It is to scatter the enemy bombers using heavily
armored fighters in level, close-formation attack, pressed home
to point-blank range.”
The intercepted signal specifically left it to each pilot
whether to destroy the enemy by shooting him down at mini-
mum range “or by ramming.” “Once initiated, the attack by
storm units will,” Galland continued, quoting Göring’s order,
“be carried right into the heart of the enemy without regard for
losses.” Galland asked for volunteers “pilots who are absolutely
determined to take their opponent down with them rather than
land without a victory.”
RAF Bomber Command had promised to win the war by
obliterating Berlin. On November , , they began their at-
tempt, launching a raid that killed fifteen hundred Berliners,