Goring

One wonders what would have happened if someone other than Göring, a drug addict, slacker, looter and idiot, commanded the Luftwaffe? All in all, a gem of a book and as ususal, in Irving;s meticulously high standards. Read it togther with Irving's biography of Milch, and you get a feel of the real Luftwaffe.

It is precisely because of the "idiosyncracities" of the subject that jazzes this excellently written volume and sets it apart from the more generalized biographies of Hitler's henchmen authored by Peter Padfield and others. It is of course impossible to separate these men from the events of World War II, and most historians do not attempt it. Thus,the spate of biographies of Goebbels, Himmler, et. al., appearing in recent years are more generalized histories of World War II; tactics, politics, etc; than a close exploration into the inner workings of self, and environmental factors that drove these individuals into Hitler's orbit. Mr. Irving does a better job of unmasking the man that was Hermann Goring than most, and manages to capture the essence of the man against the larger themes of war, the Holocaust, and the mad delusions of the Third Reich.

Look up the word sybarite in your dictionary and a life sized portrait in living color of Hermann Goring should jump out at you. Even as Germany's fortunes waned in the latter stages of W.W.II, Goring spared no expense in providing himself an ever more luxurious life style.His sumptious hunting retreat became the repository of one of the most impressive art collections in history. Using stolen and extorted funds he spent millions obtaining, for his personal collection, great works of art by the trainload, most of whose legitimate owners died in the gas chambers of the concentration camps.Irving's well researched book traces Goring's life from his childhood in Bavaria through his education at a military academy where he first fell in love with smartly trimmed uniforms, through his experience as a Fighter Pilot in W.W.I, then through his early connection with Hitler and what Hitler stood for in the years of humiliation and finally, to the years of power as Hitler's second in command.Irving leaves no doubt that Goring was a monster, a monster who had no second thoughts about engineering the deaths of countless numbers of innocent people. He found it aesthetically unpleasing, however, to actually witness any of these "unpleasantries."Goring was a coward who pretended to be brave and heroic. He was a morphine addict because he couldn't tolerate pain, but had no qualms about inflicting pain on others. He was honest to no one, not to himself, not to his fellow officers, and certainly not to Hitler. A great percentage of his energy during the war years went to fabricating alibis and hiding from Hitler so he wouldn't have to admit to his responsibility for many great failures, particularly where the Luftwaffe was concerned.He was an open transvestite, frequently appearing in public in effeminate clothing, including his ermine cape, and wearing heavy facial make-up. In spite of all this, Hitler rewarded him for his early loyalty by making Goring his heir apparent. As the war drew to an unsuccesful end, Goring had grandiose ideas of sitting down with Eisenhower, and negotiating, as equals, a peace settlement. He was shocked when, instead of being treated as the honored and honorable leader of a nation defeated in war, he was arrested, stripped of all medals and symbols of rank, interrogated, and imprisoned in an unpleasant cell and fed soup out of a tin plate.At the Neurenberg Trials, he was not allowed to make any of his carefully prepared statements and was sentenced to death by hanging. This planned method of execution was, to him, humiliating. He believed that he was entitled to the death of an honorable soldier, death by firing squad. To avoid this final humiliation, he managed to obtain a cyanide capsule and committed suicide, thus cheating the hangman.In preparing GORING, Irving had access to materials that had only recently become available. He meticulously cited all of his sources and took the ext

As a big WW2 history buff I enjoy reading biographies of the major figures in that period of history. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and got a better understanding of the man that helped rebuild Germany and then destroy it in one of the most violent periods of modern history