THE RISE AND FALL OF HERMANN GOERING

by Willi Frischauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

The author, an Austrian journalist, has based this somewhat naive biography of Goering on personal interviews with many who were closest to him in life, and has himself allowed his feelings about Hermann Goering to be colored by the unflagging devotion and loyalty of his widow, his valet and others. Somehow Goering emerges as a rather likeable figure, although his intellectual capacity, his impress of the Nazi Germany of which he as an integral part, do not make themselves felt. He does attribute certain key moments to Goering,- the Austrian Anschluss for instance, while passing over his involvement in the drastic violence and cruelties of the regime. His relations with Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler are shown as erratic, with many ups and downs. On the whole, a thorough if not a profoundly penetrating biography which follows Goering's life from his birth in Bavaria to his suicide in the Nuremburg jail. A swaggering young pilot in World War I; head of the Luftwaffe and an important cog in the political machine (albeit an unimpressive one), a man whom wives and employees found admirable, and whose loyalty was seldom questioned by the Nazi he served, he paid the price of the failure of his air forces and turned- in later years- to dependence on drugs to keep his spirits up. One questions the market for a life of Goering which rarely has anything new to offer.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 0548451923

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

Categories: NONFICTION