daylight thrust into Germany yet, to targets near Berlin. On the
seventh, after they bombed Berlin itself, Hitler assigned top pri-
ority to aircraft production putting Göring’s factories even
above those producing the tanks and submarines on which vic-
tory must ultimately depend. On the eighth, Milch and Galland
stood outside the st Fighter Division operations room at
Döberitz watching the glittering procession of hundreds of
American bombers high above the capital yet again “An ex-
traordinary picture with their condensation trails,” Milch en-
tered thoughtfully in his pocket notebook.
Despite these raids, morale in Berlin remained high. The
Japanese ambassador cabled to Tokyo that he had seen people
crowding the streets to watch the spectacle “with scarcely any
signs of cringing on their faces.” He attributed this “excellent
morale” to the Nazi party’s prompt relief measures like the
“Göring Relief Train” (which distributed the food and black-
market luxuries bought by Colonel Veltjens in the occupied
west). The Allies’ saturation-bombing raids were, in short, pro-
ducing an unintended result people felt that they had no al-
ternative but to fight on to the bitter end.
This trend was reflected in the ascendancy of radicals like
Himmler and Bormann. Himmler came to Veldenstein for the
afternoon on March to report to the Reichsmarschall on the
use of slave labor. He had already supplied thirty-six thousand
convicts to Göring, and promised over fifty thousand more for
the mass-production lines, as well as one hundred thousand ad-
ditional convicts to labor on the underground and bunker exca-
vations.
Later that month Hitler arrived in Bavaria. Fearing an in-
crease in Bormann’s influence the Obersalzberg was Bor-
mann’s domain Göring moved from Veldenstein to his villa,
to be closer to Hitler. He did not attend many conferences,