with them in the front line but the Führer won’t let
him go, has told him that only he can rebuild the air
force yet again.Koller reminded him of the insults he had heaped on the air
staff; but he took the job, under the proviso that he could speak
his mind. “Reichsmarschall said that of course I could, and took
my hands in both of his, beaming with happiness.” “How long
will this last?” noted Koller in a wise afterthought.
Two days after that, Göring was visiting Bodenschatz at the
flak bunker hospital in Berlin. To Reichsminister Walter Darré,
lying in a neighboring bed, Göring looked oddly naked without
his medals, but “very well and self-satisfied” nonetheless. “You
should have seen him eight weeks ago,” the nurses told Darré.
“Pale as death he looked then. We thought he wasn’t going to
last more than a few weeks.”
Through party channels still more criticism reached Hitler
this time from Lieutenant Colonel von Klosinski, the party’s
NSFO (indoctrination officer) in the air force. Göring seethed,
but asked Klosinski to Carinhall and invited him to take charge
of purging the air force of its superannuated generals and colo-
nels.
Klosinski balked at the job. “Herr Reichsmarschall,” he
lectured Göring, “you shut yourself away here at Carinhall....
You must get rid of the more unsavory officers of your entou-
rage, like Brauchitsch and Loerzer.” “Before Dunkirk,” the colo-
nel continued remorselessly, “I myself once heard you say Bruno
is my laziest general!”
“I need somebody I can drink a bottle of cognac with in the
evenings,” said Göring truculently.
To the chagrin of Galland and the fighter force he now in-
vited Pelz, the former bomber commander, to move into Carin-