figures. Total failure in France, the ground organiza-
tion and signals troops just took to their heels... in-
stead of joining the army in battle.
Then back to discussion of Me operations.
Same old arguments... Then, in modified form, he
developed his idea of manufacturing no more planes
apart from the Me and tripling the flak artillery.“Sat for a long time afterward with Göring,” the general’s diary
continued, “who purred with contentment, congratulated me,
and said we’d killed off the idea of dissolving the air force.”
Hanging around the air-staff headquarters, Göring tired
easily: He was tired of this war, in fact, but not yet tired of life
itself. Once his personal assistant Fritz Görnnert ventured to
remark, “Herr Reichsmarschall it ought to be possible to make
Adolf Hitler disappear. Not liquidate him, just spirit him away
to the Zugspitze Mountain and lock him away. Then a big state
funeral, and Hitler is ‘dead’!”
Göring changed the subject.
On September he learned from Kreipe that Hitler was
devising an extraordinary counteroffensive against the British
and American armies “from out of the Ardennes.” “In bad
weather,” Hitler had said pointedly, “the enemy air force won’t
be flying either!” He intended to punch three armies through
the weakest part of the Allied line and seize Antwerp. He would
thus “Dunkirk” the British Army for a second time; Roosevelt
would be defeated in the election; Germany would have won the
war. His target date for this was November , .
It was perhaps foolish for Göring now to have left the
Wolf’s Lair for his own domains at Carinhall, because it gave his
rivals a clear field of fire. Hitler even regarded the Battle of
Arnhem that began on September as a major Luftwaffe defeat,
although Göring had operated planes against the Allied ar-