“that I actually went red and squirmed. I preferred to go to the
front to avoid these scenes.”) Once, or so he would later claim,
his car came under fire; and another time, sensing himself outfl-
anked in the darkness by Russian tanks, Göring palmed a lethal
cyanide capsule that Philipp Bouhler had obtained for him. The
press ignored Göring’s front-line visits, while those made by
Admiral Dönitz were widely acclaimed. Hitler sneered at what
he called Göring’s “ridiculous excursions.” “He ordered me to
attend his war conferences,” recalled Göring, “as though to say,
‘Stand there and take it, damn you!’ ”
By February , his air force had emplaced heavy flak
batteries along the eastern front. Evidently none too sanguine
about the battle’s outcome, on the seventh the Reichsmarschall
quietly called in Walter Hofer and chief architect Hetzelt to dis-
cuss evacuating the Carinhall treasures to Veldenstein where
to distribute the various items around the structure of this
Franconian castle, and what modifications would be necessary to
house the sculptures, paintings, tapestries, and furniture in its
towers, tunnels, keeps, and stables.
The Russians launched a dangerous attack from their
bridgehead at Steinau on the Oder. That day, February ,
Göring was briefly glimpsed down in Hitler’s bunker with
Field Marshal von Richthofen, now retired and terminally ill.
That day too the American bombers were wrecking his syn-
thetic-oil plant at Pölitz. With stocks of only six thousand tons
of aviation fuel left, the air force would get only four hundred
more tons in February. Inevitably, flying operations virtually
halted.
Each time the Reichsmarschall eased his bulk into Hitler’s
bunker wearing the familiar uniform of soft, pearl-gray cloth,
the diehard Nazis swooned with rage. Goebbels protested to
Hitler. “Medal-jangling asses and vain, perfumed dandies don’t