plane had managed to set down its cargo and nine agents behind
Allied lines. As it returned, an Allied night fighter shot it down,
mistaking it for a German FW .
On the day after this incident Goebbels urged Hitler to re-
place the Reichsmarschall. Hitler had to reply that the air force
had not produced one suitable successor. He also refused to
force Göring to appoint an efficient Staatssekretär “He’d
freeze him out the moment he was appointed,” Hitler said. “The
Reichsmarschall can’t abide strong personalities around him!”
Listening to the guns along the Oder, Göring dreamed that
even now Hitler might stand down and allow him, the
Reichsmarschall, to steer Germany into a negotiated peace. He
admitted to Görnnert that this seemed unlikely, but he cau-
tiously ventilated the subject of a deal to Hitler. “Frederick the
Great,” Hitler admonished him, “never struck bargains.” He re-
lated to Goebbels on the eleventh that Göring had recom-
mended they generate what he called “a new atmosphere” to-
ward the enemy. “I told him,” said Hitler, “he’d do better to oc-
cupy himself with generating a new atmosphere in the air.” He
could see the Reichsmarschall was completely shattered by his
retort. “I just couldn’t take it any longer,” admitted Göring four
months later. “I finally worked myself up into a state of nerves.”
Hitler instructed him to lay the wreath at that year’s He-
roes Memorial Day. This was probably how he planned to em-
ploy Göring in the future as a figurehead once more, while
real men ran the war in the air. He engaged Himmler’s ruthless
engineer chief, SS Gruppenführer Hans Kammler, to take over
the Me deliveries to the squadrons.
On March , , Göring sent his train to southern Germany
loaded with a second cargo of art treasures from Carinhall