that at least it had given his fighter crews a chance to take off.
But Hitler forbade any repetition he wanted the air battles to
be in German skies, where his revenge-hungry public could see
them.
Göring attended every conference at the Eagle’s Nest until
January , but they were increasingly joyless occasions. As Hit-
ler’s Ardennes gamble faltered and finally failed, his attitude to-
ward Göring congealed to ice. With evident malice Martin Bor-
mann wrote in his diary on the fifth, “Reichsmarschall sum-
moned to the Führer on account of the air-war situation.” At-
tending these conferences, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt
noticed that Hitler allowed him to sit, but always obliged the
Reichsmarschall to stand.
“Things got so crazy,” confessed Göring to American histo-
rian Shuster, “that I said to myself: Let’s hope it’s all over
quickly so I can get out of this lunatic asylum.” He barricaded
himself in his special train, read cheap detective novels some-
times devouring the same pulp book three times over and
smoked his favorite cigars, very slowly. “Three quarters of my
shattered nerves are due not to the war,” he shouted to Boden-
schatz, deaf ever since the bomb blast, “but to the Führer! I’ve
been under massive attack for a whole year now.” On January ,
having served his penance long enough, he fled the Eagle’s Nest
and returned to the uxorious comforts of Carinhall.
Indignant at the Bodenplatte casualties, and egged on by
Koller and Greim, three fighter aces formed a deputation, with
Oak Leaves-holder Günther Lützow at their head, to protest to
the Reichsmarschall his exclusion of Galland. Göring listened
soberly, then summoned all the Geschwader commodores to the
sumptuous Aviators’ Building in Berlin. Lützow again headed
the deputation; he had tabulated their complaints, which in-
cluded the undue influence of former bomber commanders like