Goering at Carinhall — the promise to Hitler
, 47, Reichsmarschall and head of the Luftwaffe, is on 23 May 1940 at his Carinhall residence, the vast hunting estate of the Schorfheide, northeast of Berlin. An ace of 1918 and the regime's number two, he follows the campaign in France from a distance.
On the ground, Sichelschnitt has succeeded: 's Panzers have reached the Channel and closed the trap on the BEF and the French armies of the North, driven back to the coast around Dunkirk. Total victory seems within tank-reach.
But this glory would go to the Heer, the ground army of Brauchitsch and Halder, Goering's rival within the Nazi system. Yet Hitler lends a particularly attentive ear to his old comrade of 1933.
On the telephone, Goering can claim the kill of the pocket for his Luftwaffe alone — without having consulted his Luftflotte commanders, Kesselring and Sperrle, or measured the wear on his units. He has a few minutes to formulate what he will say to the Führer.
Should Goering promise Hitler that his Luftwaffe alone can annihilate the pocket, or consult his generals first?
Goering chose A. On 23 May, he telephoned Hitler and demanded that destruction of the encircled forces be entrusted primarily to the Luftwaffe. This assurance reinforced Hitler's belief that the BEF would not escape and weighed on the armoured halt order of 24 May. But the promise proved a losing bet: mediocre weather in late May, dense anti-aircraft defence over the beaches, intervention by RAF Fighter Command from England, and a rescue fleet the bombers could not break. More than 338,000 men were evacuated by Dynamo. Dunkirk inaugurated a series of aerial failures — soon the Battle of Britain — that lastingly eroded Goering's prestige. Condemned at Nuremberg, he committed suicide with cyanide on 15 October 1946, the day before his execution.
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