his name,” but he would be loath to let him go. Powerful bonds
of party history still linked their destinies.
After Korten’s painful death, the appointment of a successor
showed neither Göring nor Loerzer in a favorable light. Karl
Koller, the stubborn Bavarian general now running the Luft-
waffe from Goldap, was the obvious man to take over as chief of
air staff. On July , however, Göring summoned instead the
mild-mannered and academic chief of flying training, Lieuten-
ant General Werner Kreipe, from Berlin to Rominten. There
followed what Kreipe called in his personal diary a “long mono-
logue about the bad situation.”
Göring [asked] was I aware that Korten had
wanted me to take over as chief of air staff from Octo-
ber ?
I said I was, and touched upon Koller he was,
after all, my superior at Luftflotte , and he’s going to
feel hurt if he’s passed over.... Göring said he can’t
get on with the Bavarian.
Lunched with him and Loerzer, then strolled with
Loerzer who... made some spiteful comments about
Milch. Back to Reichsmarschall, who’s running a tem-
perature and swallowing pills the whole time.Göring appointed Kreipe and told him to rebuild the fighter
force, establish “blitz-bomber” squadrons in Normandy, and ex-
pand the paratroop force. Kreipe was a puzzling choice. He had
all the general-staff qualities that both Hitler and Göring de-
tested. Knowing nothing, and caring even less, about Nazi Ger-
many’s coming world monopoly in jet-aircraft operations and in
surface- and air-to-air missiles, the general was a dyed-in-the-
wool pessimist. That evening Kreipe lugubriously moaned to a
friend, Göring’s former war diarist Werner Beumelburg, that