proof aircraft factories, and Göring took the civil engineer up to
see Hitler that evening. The Führer told them both to go ahead,
regardless of what Speer might say. Walking on the seventeenth
with Göring on the sunny slopes of the Obersalzberg, Hitler told
him that he would brook no further delay he had to have a
multi-storey underground factory to manufacture five hun-
dred s per month, working around the clock. “First and
foremost,” Hitler explained, wearily spelling it out to the
Reichsmarschall yet again, “I’ve got to be able to put a fighter
‘dome’ over anything I can’t get under cover immediately. If
I’ve got two thousand fighters on hand in the Reich, then the
raids are going to cost the enemy too much... This ‘cheese
dome’ of fighter planes constantly overhead that’s our top
priority.”
Göring passed this unchallengeable wisdom on two days
later to Milch, Korten, Saur, Dorsch, and his own ubiquitous
“little air staff.” Blaming Speer for the delays, Göring recalled
that he had asked for such a bombproof factory eight months
before “We could have had it long ago already.”
Speer learned of this. From his place of “convalescence” he
sent a long, paranoid letter to Hitler accusing everybody of
plotting against him. Hitler ignored him, issued a formal decree
to Dorsch to get on with the job, and ordered Göring to call a
conference of civil engineers “And do it without Herr Speer,”
he said, “so it is tackled with some gusto!”
Words like these were music to Göring’s ears as he fought
to maintain position on the slippery power slopes of the Ober-
salzberg. Fate had so far been exceptionally kind to him. He
congratulated himself that the Allied strategic air forces had still
not realized the real Achilles’ heel of the Reich the synthetic-
oil plants. “I have heard,” he speculated on April , “that the
enemy isn’t attacking them because he wants them for his own