invite a decidedly unfriendly flypast by the RAF. On 20 July caution prevailed; the whole scheme was abandoned and the men went back to their units.
By that time, Berlin had enjoyed a victory parade. It was a modest affair. Local conscripts of the 218th Infantry Division marched through the Brandenburg Gate. Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, took the salute. Hitler was not present. He was saving himself for the following evening, when the whole Reichstag and an astounding array of Generals had been summoned to hear his speech. Appropriately this glittering event took place in the Kroll Opera House. Hitler’s speech was a long one and he used it to claim personal credit for the victories of 1940. ‘I advised the German forces of the possibility of such a development and gave them the necessary detailed orders,’ said the ex-Corporal to one of the most dazzling arrays of military brains ever gathered under one roof. ‘I planned to aim for the Seine and Loire rivers, and also get a position on the Somme and the Aisne from which the third attack could be made.’
One eye-witness was William Shirer, who later described Hitler as an actor who this day mixed the confidence of the conqueror with a humility that always goes down well when a man is on top. Almost in passing, Hitler offered Churchill a chance to make peace. It was ‘an appeal to reason’, said Hitler. Whether he hoped that his appeal would bring peace is still argued. Some say it was no more than a way of ‘proving’ to the German public that it was the British – and more specifically Churchill – who wanted the war. We shall never know. It was in Hitler’s nature to seek opportunities and pursue those that seemed most promising. ‘So oder so,’ he would repeatedly tell the men around him: achieve it either this way or that way.
When the applause of that multitude of generals, politicians and foreign dignitaries died away, Hitler began to distribute the honours. He created no less than twenty-seven new generals. Mostly they were men who had commanded armies or panzer groups to win for him the great victories in Poland, Norway and the west. But artfully Hitler arranged that yes-men such as Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel – who had told Hitler, ‘my Führer, you are the greatest military commander of history’ – got double promotions and seniority. While Gustav von Wietersheim – whose motorised infantry corps had consolidated the panzer thrust by which Guderian skewered France – was passed over because he had argued with the Führer in 1938. The lesson was learned by some.
So many new promotions were announced that there was not time for the Generals to receive Hitler’s personal congratulations. As each name was called, a General stood up and gave the Nazi salute. There was then a brief pause while other officers leaned across to shake hands and, according again to Shirer, slap the back of the officer honoured.
By the time that Hitler had finished creating Generals, and no less than a dozen Field Marshals, there could have been few men in the opera house who did not understand that this was a cunning piece of megalomania that, while thoroughly debasing the coinage of high rank, defined Hitler as the man who owned the mint.
It was an unprecedented step. The Kaiser made only five Field Marshals in the whole of the First World War. Even General Erich Ludendorff had failed to find a baton in his knapsack. Now Hitler made twelve after less than a year of war, and the fighting had covered only a few weeks. But the new Generalfeldmarschälle were delighted. In Germany such exalted rank, from which the holder could neither be retired nor demoted (or even promoted), brought the provision of an office, a secretary, a staff officer, motor vehicles and horses, and full pay and privileges. And all this for life – or until defeat. A Field Marshal ranked above Reich Chancellor in the protocol lists but not above Führer, which was a new post invented by Hitler for himself.
In order to rescue Göring from the new squalor of Field Marshal rank, Hitler invented a new post for him too. Göring received an extra-large baton. Hitler passed it to where Göring was sitting alone in the Speaker’s Chair, and the Reichsmarschall could not resist opening the box to get a glimpse of it. And for Göring an old medal, the Grosskreuz, was revived. From this date onwards Göring can be seen in photographs wearing his special uniform with the huge cross dangling at his neck.
Three of Göring’s Luftwaffe Generals became Field Marshals at the Kroll Opera House ceremony. One was the dapper little Erhard Milch, senior man at the Air Ministry, as well as Inspector General of the Luftwaffe. The other two were Albert Kesselring, commander of Air Fleet 2, and Hugo Sperrle of Air Fleet 3. Both men were double-jumped in promotion from General der Flieger to Field Marshal. Was this an idea of Göring’s, to lessen Milch’s power? Until this day he had been the Luftwaffe’s only Generaloberst. If so, this divide-and-conquer policy was something Göring had learned from Hitler. To be an arbitrator between rival subordinates is a well-established device of the tyrant. It consolidates power. But in July, as the first skirmishes of the Battle of Britain were taking place, Göring and his three Field Marshals were about to learn that it was no way to win a battle.
Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring grew up in the gothic shadows of a castle at Veldenstein near Nuremberg. His father was a retired government official, once senior officer in German South-West Africa and Consul-General in Haiti. Göring’s godfather – a wealthy bachelor named Epenstein – was a friend of his family. He owned the castle, lived in stylish quarters on the top floor, and shared his bed with Göring’s mother. Her husband tolerated this arrangement.
While still a small child, Hermann went to boarding school. He grew up to be an ill-disciplined boy, so bold that he seemed incapable of recognising physical danger. This seemed exactly the right qualification for military college, and so it proved. By the time war began, in the summer of 1914, Göring was a promising young infantry officer, although not promising enough to be accepted for flying training. So, without him, his closest friend, Bruno Loerzer, went off to get his wings.
As Loerzer finished pilot training, Hermann Göring was nearby, hospitalised by arthritis, after considerable front-line service. Göring could hardly walk, and there was no question of his returning to the trenches. Defying all military regulations, Loerzer put his friend into the back seat of his aeroplane, and they reported for duty, with Field Aviation Unit No. 25, as pilot and observer.
It says much for Göring’s famous charm that the crippled young officer escaped a court-martial, and was allowed to become an aviator. For the Air Service it proved a wise decision. This lame subaltern became one of Germany’s most famous fighter pilots. He won the coveted Orden Pour le Mérite – the Blue Max – and succeeded von Richthofen to command Jagdgeschwader 1, the legendary ‘flying circus’.
For Loerzer it was also a wise decision. Göring never forgot his friend’s loyalty, and on 19 July 1940 at the Kroll Opera House he became a full Luftwaffe General.
In the final hours of the First World War, as communists fought to seize power throughout Germany, Göring came into conflict with a ‘soldiers’ soviet’ in Darmstadt. Göring came off best, as he did later when faced with a mob intent on roughing up any officer in uniform, on the grounds that such men were responsible for the war which Germany had lost. But doubtless these events played a part in Göring’s acceptance of the Nazi creed. And the Nazis’ pathological hatred and fear of Jews went unchallenged by a man who had seen his father humiliated by his mother’s Jewish lover.
In 1922 Hermann Göring joined the Nazi Party. The presence of this ex-officer war hero was very reassuring to the middle classes whose support the Nazis badly needed.
Göring was always the Nazi candidate for political office. He was used to show the voter how responsible the party could be when in power and how willing it was to conform to parliamentary democracy. And so it was Göring who became the President of the Reichstag and the Prime Minister of Prussia.
Hitler
