Goering Comment

[SaxMan]

I think color was something added to embellish the story. For instance, a lot of accounts refer to attacking German fighters as being "Yellow nosed". While JG26 did, in fact, have yellow nosed planes, there were certainly other Jaegergeschwader (sp?) that were involved in air combat in the West

[Stephan Wilkinson]

the jig was up

There's no such cliche in German. Yes, he could have said "the dance was finished," but why would he have, any more than he might have said "the casserole was cooked" or "the oil was drained"?

[k5083]

The difficulties of attributing it to August, and pointing out that it is a bastardization of a possible quote by Goering, mute the joke.

I'm flattered, and think it works best the way it is, without attribution to either me or Hermann.

As to the Meyer/Meier, comment, and especially the aspect that he might have called himself that in a shelter late in the war, it's almost disconcerting to think that HG might have had a self-deprecating sense of humor. We hesitate to attribute any positive personal qualities to baddies, and no mistake, by the 1940s HG personified everything that was bad about Nazism. Just goes to show ... something.

August