back to Britain. After this catastrophe the RAF virtually called
off their night offensive for six months.
A few hours later Milch was on the phone from Berlin with
the March production figures.
“Tell him I got them already from Saur,” said Göring at
the Obersalzberg. Despite the crippling losses of Big Week, their
factories had manufactured more planes that month than ever
before turning out , new fighter aircraft and repairing
more. It was in its way a victory over the Americans as satis-
factory as the one just inflicted on the British.
As April began, Albert Speer was convalescing or as some
cynics put it, malingering in the Tyrol. Walking on the
mountainside with Speer’s forceful deputy Karl-Otto Saur on
the seventh, Hitler revealed his production strategy for the
coming year. They could reconquer the Soviet Union and win
the war only by increasing tank production. “But the prerequi-
site for that,” he said, “is the one hundred percent fulfillment of
the air-force program, to clear the skies over Germany this
year.” He said the same to Göring himself six days later. “I need
tanks and assault guns in deadly earnest. But first of all we’ve got
to have a fighter umbrella over the Reich. That is the alpha and
the omega of it all.”
Hitler considered that Speer had let him down badly. He
had begun building a bunker for Me jet production near
Landsberg, but progress was slow. Now he told Göring to get on
with the job, with or without Speer.
The next day Göring sent for Xavier Dorsch, chief of the
Todt Organization that had built the autobahns before the war.
Dorsch was on Speer’s payroll, and loyally explained that Speer
would not allow the OT to operate inside the Reich territories
now. However, he did send for his own blueprints for bomb-