was still not ready for combat. “Boundless reproaches against the
air force,” wrote Kreipe after Hitler’s conference on August ,
. The next day Hitler apologized to him. “It wasn’t you I
was getting at!” he said, unconsciously repeating almost verbatim
his remarks to Jeschonnek the year before.
Four evenings later Hermann Göring, wheezing and pale-
faced, ventured back into the Wolf’s Lair. He reemerged smugly
after three hours. Hitler, he said, had not even raised the subject
of the Me .
Kreipe was not so fortunate when he asked Hitler on the
thirtieth to lift the veto on the Me as a fighter. After ten
minutes the Führer shouted him down. “None of you,” he
snapped, “has the faintest idea how to use the Me . I forbid
any further discussion of it.”
The next evening Kreipe phoned Göring to report that
France had now caved in. The strategic effects would be disas-
trous. The Luftwaffe would forfeit its radar outfield, while the
enemy would obtain bases for beam transmitters for precision-
bombing raids on synthetic-rubber plants and the smaller towns
like Bonn. But everybody blamed the Luftwaffe. “The general
grumbling about Göring’s setup,” wrote Martin Bormann pri-
vately, “is attaining quite unparliamentary forms of expression.”
On September , word reached the Reichsmarschall that Hitler
was again complaining about his prolonged absence, and threat-
ening to wind up the air force altogether.
Göring hurried over on the fifth, and Kreipe, who went
with him, wrote this record of their joint confrontation with
Hitler:
Just abuse of the Luftwaffe it does nothing, it
has gone down over the years, he has been constantly
deceived over both production and performance