paintings, sixty pieces of sculpture, and fifty tapestries. He also
turned over the seventeen priceless paintings and eleven crates
of other relics “rescued from Monte Cassino” to the party Chan-
cellery for separate shipment south, in a truck that left Berlin
late on the fourteenth. It was loaded, as Martin Bormann was
careful to notify his staff in Bavaria, with “the most valuable
paintings from the Reichsmarschall,” and arrived at its destina-
tion, a disused mineshaft at Alt Aussee in Austria, two days later.
Göring now remained at Carinhall, although the walls were
bare and the bookshelves empty. He descended into Hitler’s
bunker only infrequently. On March , a thousand American
bombers again blasted Berlin, escorted by seven hundred fighter
planes. Galland sent twenty-eight of his Me s into action
against them. Hitler had now ordered every captured bomber
aviator turned over to the Gestapo for liquidation. “Listen,”
shouted Göring to his chief of air staff, “has that man gone stark
raving mad?”
Not caring what impression he made, Göring wheedled out
of his Führer permission to travel down to Berchtesgaden briefly
to “inspect the flak.” More probably he wanted to check that his
trainload of art had arrived safely at Veldenstein. He was living
in a deranged world of his own. Hearing of the starvation
among the refugees, he ordered one of his rare Schorf Heath
bison shot and the carcass distributed to them. Choking upon a
newspaper report of this, Goebbels recalled Marie Antoinette
and her haughty advice to her own paupered subjects. His field
offices reported an “unbridled hatred” of the Reichsmarschall:
“Not a trace remains,” rejoiced Goebbels, “of his former popu-
larity.”
In Göring’s absence there emerged a crippling indecisive-
ness about certain secret Luftwaffe projects. Back in February,
acting on the advice of Speer and Baumbach, Hitler had agreed