the slightest doubt that there would have been a reconciliation
between the Führer and myself once we had begun winning in
the air again.”
To Kenneth W. Hechler, one of Shuster’s team, such an
interview was like reeling in a big fish playing out just enough
line to bring him in eventually. “Morgen, Herr Reichsmarschall!”
he would greet him ingratiatingly, and listen with apparent sin-
cerity to Göring’s recital of the humiliations he was suffering
and his role in the Nazi victories in France. Once Hechler
tried to ask about the far more interesting Ardennes offen-
sive, but Göring began by comparing it at length to the great
Nazi lunge through Sedan in and never reached in his
narrative.
“Göring,” the interrogators warned on July , “has the
happy faculty of believing his own fabrications, which upon
repetition become more and more plausible to him.” Hechler
found he could detect when Göring was about to tell a whopper.
His smile twisted, his words became more guttural, his hands
swept fractionally wider; he tossed in more humorous quips too,
as though to throw dust in his interrogators’ eyes.
“If we had not invaded Normandy,” he asked, “do you
think you could have beaten Russia?”
Göring leaned forward and whispered in mock confidence
that if Eisenhower had given his personal guarantee, the Ger-
mans would have socked the Soviets so hard that they would
have seen the sun (he jabbed one finger skyward), the moon
(another jab), and the stars (a whole galaxy of jabs). Hechler
roared with laughter.
That Monday, July , a Soviet officers’ commission ar-
rived. Bellowing, “The Russians are coming!” Göring vanished
into his cell. The next day he saw them nonetheless, and Hechler
heard the Russians screaming at him.