The Reich Marshal;: A biography of Hermann Goering Hardcover – January 1, 1974

Of all the leading figures of Hitler's Third Reich, Hermann Goering is one of the more interesting if not the most sympathetic. Leonard Mosley, an accomplished journalist and biographer with a long list of excellent books to his credit, gives us here a highly readable and entertaining biography of Hitler's onetime deputy. This is not a scholarly work along the lines of the biographies of other Nazi personalities such as Ian Kershaw has done for Hitler, Peter Padfield for Himmler, or Ralf Reuth for Goebbels; don't look for meticulous endnotes or deep analysis. That is not because Mosely did not use sources, he did and he lists them at the end of the book. Mosely gives us here a full-length portrait of Goering the man as he was in real life -- bigger than life, that was Hermann Goering -- and while Mosely is sometimes sympathetic and sometimes judgmental, he is honest and I think in the end he succeeded admirably in capturing the essence of this intriguing and tragic figure. Mosely has one great advantage over other biographers, however: He actually met Hermann Goering before the war, was a guest at his estate in East Prussia, and after the war conducted extensive interviews with people who knew the Reichsmarshal intimately his whole life. That sets him apart from other biographers. While I disagree somewhat with Mosely's conclusion that Goering's greatest fault was his lack of moral courage to stand up to Hitler, that certainly was a defect in his makeup. But I think this book proves that Goering had no control over his relationship with Hitler. He, like many others, couldn't stand up to Hilter simply because he worshipped the man. In Goering's particular case, he was totally under the influence of the Fuhrer's charismatic personality and so dependent upon him for so long that in the end it was impossible for him to contradict the dictator. And when his god rejected him and then failed him, and Goering knew in the end that Hitler had failed him, there was nothing he could do but accept his fate. Those who condemn Hermann Goering because he didn't have the courage to defy his idol have not been put to that test themselves. For the serious student of the history of the Third Reich, this book is a valuable source.

We all like our villains to be mean, sniveling and despicable, tinged with evil, cowards and hand-rubbing, sneering hypocrites. Like the Nazi Goebbels or Mengele for example.Field Marshal, Luftwaffe flying ace, Hermann Goering is more difficult to hate, and even harder to despise. Despite his luke-warm resistance to the extremism of Hitler, his greedy theft of art and his gross appetites - he had immense courage, great love for his wife, Baroness Carin von Kantzow of Sweden, and was, by all accounts, extremely likeable. Wounded three times in his career, the slow to heal wounds gave him both pain, and the treatment, as was nearly usual in those times, a morphine addiction. These are not excuses for the horror of the holocaust, and Mosley - a British journalist, historian, biographer and novelist - does not offer them up as such, but the author knew his subject personally and reveals all sides to Goering, including those to which he gives far from grudging admiration.An intriguing but rather tragic figure, unable to resist - like so many others - the domination of Hitler, one feels from Mosley's work that there was a wasted value and potential in Goering - that he could, in fact, been a positive influence if he had tried. He did use that skill during his trial in Nuremberg, as the highest ranking Nazi Goering tried to lead the other defendants towards a more honorable, if defiant, defense, and - having been denied the soldiers death of a firing squad - he persuaded his young American guard to bring him his confiscated brief-case and swallowed the hidden cyanide, cheating the hangman and dying, but strangely with a certain courage.An excellent history and interestingly constructed biography.

A scholarly readable biography of a complex man who perhaps in another time would have achieved heroic stature rather than infamy as a Hitler yes man. Kind yet cruel, loyal to a fault regarding Hitler and remarkably faithful in not implicating others during his interrogations at Nuremberg, a visionary in conservation and reintroducing endangered species, Goering often is presented as a demon with no redeeming qualities. Here he is presented by Mosley as the paradox and the enigma that Goering was.Goering's fatal flaw was that of "moral cowardice". He only challenged Hitler's decisions on very rare occasions, and seemed increasingly aware that Hitler's path was doomed by its immoralities and increasingly poor decisions. Yet he was crippled from doing so by his inability to separate what was adulation and loyalty to Hitler and Hitler's increasingly complete breaking of any moral compass from what he sensed were the right and/or moral actions that should be taken.Far from a whitewash, this portrait is finely balanced. The best biography of Goering I have read.

Book came exactly as described

This is the only purchase ever made from Amazon.com. However, purchase two different Reich Marshal books, and received two of the same... preposterous and ludicrous but are Amazon.com predatory tactics.

old info but correct.

Got it for a friend, perfect condition.

Would highly recommend this author who kept the storyline interesting. Read another WWII book on Himmler and it wasn't near as good.

The book was superb , cii oh old not put it down