Pelz and Herrmann, the misuse of the Me , the Reichsmar-
schall’s slurs on his fighter pilots, and his humiliation of Gal-
land. Göring, his knuckles turning white with anger, shouted
that this was a “mutiny without parallel in history,” and threat-
ened them all with the firing squad. Two days later he pro-
nounced the banishment of Lützow to Italy; Galland was placed
under house arrest, forbidden to return to Berlin.
Göring spent his last wartime birthday skulking at Carinhall,
surrounded by his camarilla, and entertaining at luncheon the
few remaining Axis attachés still accredited to Berlin. The Japa-
nese attaché’s report to Tokyo portrays a Göring in a chastened,
introspective mood, candidly admitting that he himself had be-
lieved that for large enemy bomber formations to operate over
Germany for any length of time was “a complete impossibility.”
Without appreciating it yet, however, he was already re-
gaining air supremacy for Germany. A week earlier, on January
, , the U.S. Air Force generals Carl F. Spaatz and Jimmy
Doolittle had frankly warned Eisenhower that they were going
to have to attack the jet-fighter production very soon. They es-
timated that ten thousand tons of well-aimed bombs might set
the Me back by three months. Eisenhower agreed, and on
this very day, January , Spaatz issued a new directive estab-
lishing the German jet aircraft as the “principal objective for at-
tack.” If Hitler could prolong the war beyond the summer,
Spaatz warned, he would have “jets of such superior perform-
ance and such numbers as to challenge our aerial supremacy
over not only Germany but all of Western Europe.”
The Soviet winter offensive that began that same day was
going to be hard to stop. To halt the masses of tanks and infan-
try, Göring transferred twenty squadrons of single-engined
fighters from the Reich defenses. Hitler left the Eagle’s Nest and