Göring’s envy was prompted by the performance of the RAF’s de Havilland Mosquito aircraft. Wikipedia’s page on the Mosquito explains:
The Mosquito famously annoyed Luftwaffe Commander in Chief Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring when on 20 January 1943, the 10th anniversary of the Nazis’ seizure of power, a Mosquito attack knocked out the main Berlin broadcasting station, putting his speech off air. Göring complained about the high speed of the aircraft and its wooden structure, built by a nation he considered to have large metal reserves, while Germany had shortages of such materials and could not produce such a design.Göring said:
“In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I’m going to buy a British radio set – then at least I’ll own something that has always worked.”That’s where the Nazis went wrong. They had no Vorsprung durch Technik.
Where did the British go wrong? They replaced their geniuses with nincompoops.
