Word: field
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Into a German munitions factory last week walked Field Marshal Hermann Wilhelm Goring, most popular (after Hitler) and most portly of Nazis. On the eighth day of Germany's advance into Poland, he had a great job to do. To munitions workers standing with outstretched arms in the shadow of long-barreled artillery, to Germans waiting at the radio all over the Reich, to listeners in countries at war with Germany or neutral, Adolf Hitler's second in command came bearing tidings of victory, offers of peace, warnings of struggle, and bad news...
Where was Italy? For two hours the Field Marshal talked, joked, praised the Führer, talked of Russia's raw materials, did not once mention Mussolini or the Axis...
Hardheaded, commonsensical, down-to-earth, tough guy-to-tough guys as the Führer is mystical, Field Marshal Goring made a good job of it. For home consumption he piled up the cheering news: Victory in Poland within two weeks ("our divisions marched as humans never marched before") would release 70 divisions for the Western Front. At the moment Germany's coal ran short-"and I might say at that very exact moment"-the seizure of Polish mines* relieved the strain. The failure of Britain to attack meant "their desire to fight does not seem too great." Reassuring...
...foreign consumption Field Marshal Goring adroitly suggested that Germany would consider peace negotiations. But "you will not dictate another Versailles to us, my dear Britons. . . . Do not mistake our offer of peace for weakness. We have a deep will to peace. It is greater and deeper in the spirit of the Führer...
Significance. For all his talk, the Field Marshal announced nothing concrete about raw materials, nor did he clarify German-Russian relations. Jeers at the blockade were scarcely enough to a generation that remembered the starvation of 1918. Violence of his denunciations of British leaflet propaganda dumped on Germany suggested an underlying fear of it: "To think these laughable flyleaves might have any effect! Chamberlain may know something about umbrellas, but he knows nothing about German propaganda. . . . No, Mr. Chamberlain, we want peace, but giving up the Führer, as others think we might, is too big a price...