Goering: Hitler's Iron Knight

by Richard Overy

Book Overview

Hermann Goering was Hitler's most loyal supporter, his designated successor, and the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. One of the main architects of the Nazi regime, he was also instrumental in the creation of the Gestapo and directly ordered the Final Solution. But who was the man behind the carefully constructed mask? Self-indulgent and ruthless, sybaritic and brutal, egotistical yet capable of self-effacement, weak-willed yet fiercely...

• Format: Hardcover
• ISBN: 1617939102
• ISBN13: 9781617939105
• Release Date: January 2012
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Informative but somewhat difficult to read

This is a good book even if it does not resemble a conventional biography. The book has scant information on Goering's private life concentrating itself, rather, on Goering's performance at the helm of the German economy during Nazi rule. The author has a superb grasp of the subject at hand and he does portray an encompassing picture of German economic affairs during World War 2. Mr. Overy is an accomplished writer; his sentences are elegant and clear. Nonetheless, the book is difficult to read because the chapters and, even many paragraphs, are overly extensive causing fatigue to the reader. Overall, it is a good book that taught me a lot about Goering, the Nazis, and the German war effort.

Profiling Goering, the Nazi economic czar

~Goering~ is an overall objective biography of the so called Iron Man, Hermann Goering. Goering is most famous for his ominous statement: "I have no conscience, Adolf Hitler is my conscience." Pragmatic, arrogant, callous, and always eager to impress his unflinching loyalty to Hitler, Goering secured a considerable power base in Hitler's Reich. Goering was an economic czar of sorts who controlled a portfolio of coveted positions in the Nazi state. He played a pivotal role in the organization of Germany's Wehrwirtschaft (i.e. war economy.) Chief among those roles: was his role as the head of the Reichswerke A.G.-a state holding company-which consisted largely of nationalized industries, properties expropriated from Jews, as well as assets captured in Lorraine, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Romania, and all the way to the Donetz basin of the Ukraine. This enterprise was to supplant the primacy of the I.G. Farben conglomerate and become the fulcrum of the Nazi war machine providing steel, iron, coal, munitions and oil. Also, it was to facilitate the phased shifting of the Reich industrial base into Eurasia while ratcheting up production for the war effort. These plans never really materialized for various reasons: first, the Nazis quickly alienated the conquered Slavs; second, they recklessly pillaged and plundered-destroying many productive assets in the east, which otherwise could have been attained intact and unscathed because of the speed of the blitzkrieg; and lastly because Goering ineffectually diverted resources and manipulated the economy incessantly. Richard Overy captures some of the more naïve economic views of Goering rooted in his affinity for socialist ideas. Goering avowed, in a Nazi economic system, "Profits cannot be considered... Calculations cannot be made as to cost. " Such naïve economic thinking characterized a man greedily obsessed with bringing the German economy under his control. Likewise, he made sporadic interventions in the economy as if the law of supply and demand could somehow be negated or supplanted with the force of the Nazi will to power. Not surprisingly, the results Goering desired were seldom found. Moreover, shortages were common and production seldom met expectations. As a rule, the ambitious Goering zealously guarded his perceived prerogatives and was apt to look for more private industry to gobble up into his inefficient socialist conglomerate. Moreover, in his role as head of the German Luftwaffe (Air Force), Goering zealously pushed for an inefficient reallocation of material resources to his pet projects while diverting them from private industry and other military branches. He may have won Hitler's respect initially, because of their shared obsession with wunder-waffens (i.e. wonder weapons.) Despite, the engineering ingenuity and pioneering ambition of Germany in aviation and military technologies, the sporadic and tempestuous state interventions in the economy made any German tec