My intention in this connection—and I had personally ordered it—was entirely clear. The statement that it was to do reconnaissance work in or in the direction of the Caucasus is not quite correct. It would have been more correct to say in the direction of the Caucasus, Syria, and Turkey. But this mistake may have occurred in the report transmitted by Canaris.

I had received more and more intelligence reports to the effect that from Asia Minor actions were to be undertaken against the Russian oilfields of the Caucasus—Baku—and likewise actions for the purpose of gravely disrupting the oil supply from Romania to Germany.

As Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force I was the one chiefly interested in obtaining Romanian oil as well as Caucasian oil, more precisely petroleum and gasoline, on the basis of a trade agreement with Russia, because at that time the refineries were not completed and not working to capacity. A disturbance in either one of these supplying regions would have affected my Air Force very badly. Therefore I had to watch this closely. I anticipated disruption of the oil regions in the Caucasus.

I had the agents’ report checked by very reliable people and found that in Syria an army was actually formed under General Weygand which had the name of “Orient Army.” I was more interested, however, in the concentration of squadrons of aircraft in the Syrian area, not only of French but also English squadrons. As far as I remember I received these reports about the intentions of the French-British air squadrons through agents in Turkey, that is to say, from Turks, because there had been negotiations with Turkey regarding permission to fly over her territory in order to carry out the intention of the English-French air squadrons of suddenly bombing the Baku area and thereby severely damaging the Russian oil fields and eliminating deliveries to Germany.

I therefore had to, or rather I was obliged to find out constantly, through long-range reconnaissance flights, the extent to which the airfields in Syria were becoming more active than before. There could be no other reason for massing aircraft there exactly at this time, for it was not a theater of war nor was any threat there on the part of Germany at that moment. On the contrary, it would have been understandable if all British and French aircraft had been needed in England and France themselves.

If, therefore, my long-range reconnaissance flights established the fact that the airdromes in Syria were being used more than ever, and further confirmed that possibly the airfields in the east of Turkey were being increased, this would have been, and actually was, a confirmation of the alleged intentions. In this case, as soon as I was fully convinced of this, I should have to point out to the Führer that Germany should draw Russia’s attention to the danger threatening her.

The establishing of listening posts, not in the Caucasus but before the Caucasus, naturally served the same purpose, namely that of setting up secret radio stations along the general line of flight, Syria-Caucasus, Syria-Baku, East Turkey-Baku, one, two or three, in order to find out whether preparatory flights by the French and English Air Forces were taking place; that is to say, reconnaissance on the oilfields, et cetera, in order to get more information that way also.

Since at the time I did not yet have conclusive and final proof in my hands, I kept these things to myself and dealt with them only in the offices responsible to my sector of the Air Force until I could obtain a clear picture. Only later, after the termination of the French campaign, absolute confirmation of these intentions was obtained by the discovery of the secret reports of the French General Staff and of the meetings of the combined Supreme Military Council of England and France, which proved that my information was entirely correct and that a plan for a surprise bombing attack on all the Russian oilfields had been prepared. In the meantime the confirmation of the plan to eliminate the Romanian oilfields, already known to us, was communicated to the Romanian Government and this attack on neutral Romania was then prevented.

DR. SIEMERS: I understood you correctly, did I not, that these plans were made by both England and France?

GÖRING: Yes.