When Göring Was Asked Where the Luftwaffe Lost, He Named One City.

Two days after V-E Day, American generals sat Hermann Göring down in a school building in Augsburg and asked him one question: when did he know the Luftwaffe was losing control of the air? He did not name a battle or a front line. He named one German city, and that answer said more about the American airmen who flew there than about Göring himself. This is the story of that interrogation: the promise he made in 1939, the bombers that flew into Germany alone, the escort fighters the crews called their Little Friends, and what Göring told U.S. generals about American production, oil, and jets. Chapters 00:00 Too Late 01:00 The Promise 02:05 The Surrender 03:00 The Room in Augsburg 04:18 The Answer 04:41 Alone Over Germany 06:21 Little Friends 07:42 Berlin 08:39 The Jet Factory 09:26 Oil and Pilots 11:08 Blaming Hitler 12:20 What He Said About America 13:22 The Transcript 13:55 The Real Cost 14:34 The Last Word SOURCES Interrogation of Reich Marshal Hermann Göring, Augsburg, 10 May 1945 (Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection, Cornell University Library): the questions and answers. Frederick A. Johnsen, "The Goering Interrogation," Air & Space Forces Magazine, August 2015: transcript text and context of the interrogation. Associated Press interview with Capt. Mayhew "Bo" Foster: the flight from Kitzbühel to Augsburg and the "Too late" remark. "36th Division in World War II," Texas Military Forces Museum, and The Pittsburgh Press, 9 May 1945: Göring's surrender to Brig. Gen. Robert Stack. Eighth Air Force Mission 250 summary, 6 March 1944 (American Air Museum in Britain, 445th Bomb Group records): bomber losses and escort strength over Berlin. Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum: Eighth Air Force killed in action and prisoners of war. Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air (2006): crew survival odds in October 1943 and Eighth Air Force casualties compared with the U.S. Marine Corps. Albert Speer's account of the Schweinfurt raids, via World History Encyclopedia: ball bearing production figures. Adolf Galland, The First and the Last (1954), as cited in secondary sources: the Aachen episode. Walpersberg Documentation Center (REIMAHG history) and weaponsandwarfare.com: output of the Kahla jet factory. HistoryNet, "Why Did Goering Say You Can Call Me Meyer?": the 1939 promise. Sources & Archives U.S. National Archives Internet Archive Wikimedia Commons Periscope Film Archival Footage Archival footage: U.S. National Archives, Prelinger Archives, Die Deutsche Wochenschau; some scenes use illustrative footage of the period not the people named. How This Episode Was Made Original research and script by World War 2 Desk. Archival film, photographs, documents and other historical material from the U.S. National Archives, Prelinger Archives and other collections are re-edited to match the narration and combined with our own maps, document reconstructions and graphics. Some scenes use illustrative footage of the period to represent locations, events, equipment and environments described in the narration and are not necessarily footage of the specific people named. Sources are listed above.