conferences. He was his Führer’s enfant gâté. For six days the
record even shows Göring invited to tea with the Führer. But
then the skies cleared, the enemy air forces came out again, and
Göring hurried back to his family at Carinhall.
Like a true Christmas-card setting, the romantic Swedish-
style mansion was canopied in foot-thick snow, with a thin fro-
zen mist drifting in and out of the surrounding conifers. The
forest’s surviving bison, stags, and reindeer grazed quietly,
cocking their ears from time to time at the unfamiliar rumble
coming from the east. Emmy greeted her returning warrior
husband warmly. Baskets of presents stood ready, locked in the
large hall, to distribute to staff and friends Loerzer, Körner,
Bouhler, and now Pelz were still in residence and Hermann
Göring had never been parsimonious with his wealth. Two fur-
niture vans had arrived, bringing the household contents of
Rominten Lodge, and Emmy distributed the furniture among
her bombed-out friends of the Prussian State Theater. She too
was a Christmas person. Every Yuletide she listed one thousand
needy families for Hermann to send money to, and sat down
with her sister Else and Heli Bouhler packing toys and writing
cards to put in each gift parcel.
Not many soldiers could enjoy Christmas of with their
families like this. After a flying visit back to Hitler’s headquarters
on December , just to inquire how the Ardennes fighting was
going, Göring returned to Carinhall for the rest of his self-
granted leave. The cloying odor of self-indulgence and corrup-
tion would cling to Carinhall until the end.
Seeking a new scapegoat for the failure of the air defenses,
Göring had picked on General Galland, the colorful general of
fighters, and began to freeze him out of his staff conferences. He
made insulting remarks in the young general’s absence; adopt-
ing a turn of phrase oddly reminiscent of his own controversial