‘I’m intrigued, Remer.’ At Göring’s uniformed neck was the Orden Pour le Mérite, the nation’s highest award for valour, which he had won as a fighter pilot in 1917. Taking up his favourite position he perched his considerable bulk on the corner of his massive desk. ‘And when you have disclosed to me your “personal matter,” I would like to discuss with you the need for massively increased production where the Remer textile and clothing factories are concerned. The Führer is demanding that military uniform production be increased a hundredfold.’

‘And it will certainly be so, Herr Reichsminister. The personal matter I wish to discuss with you is of a delicate nature. As you are no doubt aware, my uncle, Berthold Remer, was once married to an Englishwoman. The marriage ended in divorce many years ago but a child of the marriage, born in England and a British subject with a British passport, married a German woman in 1933. A Jewess.’

For Göring’s benefit he made a moue of distaste. ‘She has since become a British subject,’ he continued when Göring made no attempt to stop the conversation there and then, ‘and, like her husband, travels on a British passport. For reasons that are unclear to me, she returned to Berlin yesterday and was arrested by the Gestapo. I think it likely that there was a mistake over her identity—or that the arrest was made in order to facilitate her immediate deportation back to Britain. Either way, her whereabouts are now unknown and, with war imminent, it is a matter of great concern to her husband, who is, by the way, a British Foreign Office official.’

British Foreign Office officials cut no ice with Göring. ‘I’m a Field Marshal, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe and Minister for Economic Affairs, Remer,’ he said bluntly. ‘Not a source of information on Jewish arrests. The Gestapo are not there to protect rogues, vagabonds, usurers and traitors. If people say that here and there someone has been taken away and maltreated, I can only reply: You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. And that is my reply to you, Remer.’

The bonhomie with which Göring had greeted him was slipping away fast and Claus knew he was on exceedingly dangerous ground. The sensible thing for him to do was to now smilingly concur and resume the subject of increased military uniform production.

He said, ‘I appreciate your comments, Herr Reichsminister, and am in complete agreement with them. I am also acutely aware of the irregularity of my coming to you on such a matter. If it were not for the fact of Hester Remer’s British citizenship I would not have done so. A phone call will perhaps resolve the matter and it will be one less Jew to clog up the concentration camp or internment camp system.’

Göring, who, after the Night of Broken Glass, had ordered the elimination of all Jews from the German economy and their total exclusion from public places, even from parks and forests, was indifferent to how clogged concentration camps and internment camps might become. With anyone else his temper would have flared, but he thought of Claus as being a man after his own heart. A man not only of extreme good looks—it pained Göring that so many of Hitler’s inner circle, men like Goebbels and Himmler, were so lacking in physical appeal—but a man of culture into the bargain.