Andrew Nagorski - Hitlerland

On the first full day of his visit, Charles was the guest of honor at an Air Club luncheon attended by senior German officials and American diplomats. Knowing that he would be asked to speak, he had prepared a text and showed it to Truman ahead of time. His message was a somber one. “We, who are in aviation, carry a heavy responsibility on our shoulders, for while we have been drawing the world closer together in peace, we have stripped the armor from every nation in war,” he declared. “The army can no more stop an air attack than a suit of mail can stop a rifle bullet.”

Air power had changed “defense into attack,” and made it impossible “to protect our families with an army. Our libraries, our museums, every institution we value most, are laid bare to bombardment.” All of which underscored the importance of how the “revolutionary change” of aviation would be handled. “It is our responsibility to make sure that in doing so, we do not destroy the very things which we wish to protect,” Lindbergh asserted. His speech received widespread international coverage; the German press printed the text without offering any comments. According to Kay, “the Germans were not too pleased with the speech.” Later, while discussing plans for Lindbergh’s subsequent visits, one Air Ministry official added, “But no more speeches.”

The most important social event during Lindbergh’s visit was a formal luncheon at Goering’s official residence on Wilhelmstrasse. It was attended by many of the most important aviation officials, including the legendary World War I pilot Ernst Udet. Arriving in a black Mercedes escorted by several motorcycles, the Lindberghs and the Smiths were treated as honored guests. For Truman, this was the first time he had the chance to talk with the Luftwaffe’s chief—and he took full advantage of the occasion to observe him. “Goering showed many facets of his personality,” he noted. “In turn he was magnetic, genial, vain, intelligent, frightening, and grotesque. Despite excessive corpulence, it could be seen that in his youth he had been both handsome and formidable looking.”

Anne Lindbergh wrote that the forty-three-year-old Goering was “blazoned in white coat, with gold braid, good-looking, young, colossal—an inflated Alcibiades…” The host shook her hand but didn’t look at her. Anne was seated on Goering’s and his wife Emmy’s right and Kay on their left, but the host focused all his attention on Charles. When he asked who had been his copilot and checked his instruments on one of his longer recent flights, Kay volunteered that it was Anne. In response, he used a familiar German expression that directly translates as: “I find that to laugh to death.” In other words, he didn’t believe her.

Lunch was an elaborate affair, with five different wines, one for each course, leaving Kay to marvel: “I have never tasted such nectar.” But if this display suitably impressed Goering’s guests, they were also curious about some of his stranger habits. Charles asked if they could see his pet lion cub, and the host happily obliged. They walked through large halls, decked out with old tapestries, illuminated as if they were pictures, and other artwork. Then they assembled in a library, and the doors were dramatically opened for the young lion. Kay estimated he was about three feet tall and four feet long, and “not too happy” when he saw the large gathering of people there. “I want you to see how nice my Augie is,” Goering announced. “Come here Augie.”

Goering was sitting on a sofa and the lion bounded to him, jumping up into his lap and licking his face. Kay kept a safe distance, with a table between her and this scene, but could clearly see what happened next. One of the German aides laughed. “The startled lion let loose a flood of yellow urine all over the snow white uniform!” Kay recalled. “A wave of red flowed up Goering’s neck.” The host pushed off the lion and jumped up, “his face red with anger, his blue eyes blazing.” Emmy Goering rushed over, putting her arms around him. “Hermann, Hermann, it is like a little baby,” she pleaded. “There are too many people!” Goering calmed down, conceding that the animal was like a little baby.

Truman had turned away, pretending not to witness all of this, and Anne had the same instinct. “I see and say nothing,” she recorded in her diary. While the guests studiously admired the library’s artwork, Goering rushed off to change. Returning, he was dressed “in a pongee suit, whiffs of eau de Cologne, and a diamond pin,” Anne wrote.

Although Kay had worried that Goering would hold this incident against Truman and the others in the room, the luncheon started a relationship that allowed the military attaché to maintain contact with the Luftwaffe chief for the rest of his tour in Berlin. When Goering’s lion grew too difficult to handle and was sent back to the Berlin Zoo, Truman arranged for his daughter to see the animal there and even hold it on her lap. In the photo of that scene, Kätchen is looking at the camera, flashing a weak smile while wearing gloves to avoid touching the lion directly. “I was scared to death,” she recalls. “My father loved that picture.”

The lunch wasn’t the only occasion where Truman didn’t know what to say in Goering’s presence. As he recalled, during a meeting at the Air Club a year later, Goering kept going on about his devotion to Hitler. His eyes were moist when he declared: “Smith, there are only three truly great characters in all history: Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Adolf Hitler.” Referring to himself as usual in the third person in his writing, Truman noted: “This remark reduced the military attaché to speechlessness.”

But the real payoff of Lindbergh’s visit came in the form of the daily visits to Germany’s air installations. At Rostock, for instance, Lindbergh and Koenig, the assistant attaché, were allowed to inspect the new Heinkel He 111 medium bomber. Lindbergh concluded that it was comparable to British and American bombers, and superior to French ones. They also watched Udet fly the He 112, the prototype of a new fighter—and saw the plane disintegrate during a dive, forcing the famed pilot to parachute to safety. Still, based on what they saw of those and two other Heinkel planes (the He 70 observation plane, and the He 118 dive bomber), along with the company’s modern factory for navy planes at Warnemünde, the Americans were suitably impressed. “I have never seen four planes, each distinct in type and built by one manufacturer, which were so well designed,” Lindbergh told Smith when he returned to Berlin that evening.

Writing to the banker Harry Davison, Lindbergh pointed out that “we have nothing to compare in size to either the Heinkel or Junkers factories.” In another letter, he professed he was struck by “a spirit in Germany which I have not seen in any other country,” and the fact that the country’s new rulers had already built up “tremendous strength.”

Captain Koenig continued to be allowed to visit more airfields and factories after Lindbergh’s first visit, which meant that his reports about Germany’s air capabilities were packed with increasingly detailed rundowns. Based on such observations and the second visit by Lindbergh in October 1937, Smith reported to Washington that, if current trends continued, Germany would “obtain technical parity with the USA by 1941 or 1942.” If the United States slowed down its program for any reason, he warned further, “German air superiority will be realized still sooner.”

Goering may have deliberately exaggerated some of his claims to Lindbergh about Germany’s capabilities, but his guest was inclined to take them all seriously. At a cocktail party hosted by Ambassador Dodd’s wife, the society reporter Bella Fromm overheard Lindbergh telling Udet: “German aviation ranks higher than that in any other country. It is invincible.” And German officials boasted that Lindbergh would prove to be “the best promotion campaign we could possibly invest in.”