was plain from the cold language of his Reichsmarschall Order
of January , commending the new man to the Luftwaffe.
“What matters,” he suggested, “is neither the organization nor
the man, only the aim that is common to us all regaining
mastery of Germany’s air space.”
Under house arrest in the Harz Mountains, General Gal-
land learned that the increasingly influential Colonel Gollob was
building up a dossier on him on his private use of Luftwaffe
cars, his gambling, and his philandering. Galland lost his nerve
as his private staff were called in for questioning about his al-
leged defeatism and disloyalty, and he talked of shooting himself
like Udet and Jeschonnek. Acting through Hitler’s adjutant von
Below, Milch and Speer forced the Gestapo to drop the witch
hunt to avoid yet another suicide scandal. Milch threatened to
reveal to the Führer what he knew against Göring. “Just one
percent of it,” the stocky field marshal assured Colonel von Be-
low, “will suffice to bring him a court-martial!”
The solution that Göring hereupon devised for the Gal-
land problem was an uncharacteristically neat one: He sum-
moned the general once more to Carinhall, ordered him to form
an élite fighter squadron using only Me jets, and to take the
other “mutineers” like Steinhoff with him. In effect, given the
crushing American daylight-fighter supremacy, Göring was
making these fighter aces walk the plank. Galland’s appointment
to command this esoteric jet-fighter squadron, Jagdverband ,
was entered in the Luftwaffe war diary early in February .
The evacuation of Silesia was almost over. Shortly these ancient,
blood-soaked marshlands would become part of Poland. Asked
by Hitler on January about rumors that the British and
American airmen held at the Sagan camp were going to be
abandoned to the advancing Soviet Army, Göring heatedly