Jacket text to
the original US (William Morrow Inc) edition of David
Irving: Göring: A Biography
Jacket
of UK edition (click for Grafton edition)Hermann Göring -- Hitler's chosen successor, last
commander of the legendary Richthofen Squadron, chief of
the storm troopers and of the German Air Force, prime
minister of Prussia, president of the Prussian State
Council, Reich master of forestry and game, Hitler's
special commissioner for the Four-Year Plan, chairman of
the Reich Defense Council, Reichsmarschall of the Greater
German Reich, chairman of the Scientific Research Council
-- accumulated titles and power in the same single-minded
and ruthless way he acquired the countless masterpieces
in his legendary art collection. The story of how he did
both -- and more -- is here in this ground-breaking new
biography, the first since 1972 and the only one to use a
critical array of new sources.
Göring was one of the twentieth century's most
influential and colorful villains -- Hitler's partner and
alter ego. He became head of a secret
intelligence-gathering agency and was architect of the
Gestapo and the concentration camp. As head of Hitler's
Four-Year Plan and Nazi Germany's largest industrial
conglomerate, Göring amassed incredible wealth and
indulged a seemingly endless appetite for jewels,
exquisite wines, and art masterpieces. He was a near
transvestite, a megalomaniac, and a morphine addict who
became grotesquely fat and corrupt.
Göring's personal diaries and family letters, the
verbatim records of his wartime conferences, the Bormann
documents found in Hitler's bunker, and six letters he
wrote from his prison cell that shed light on the mystery
of his death are among the impressive finds that have
contributed to this completely new appraisal -- a
biography that reveals the inner workings of Nazi Germany
and a gripping military history that reads like a
thriller.
David Irving, called "one of Britain's foremost
historians" by The Times of London, has written a number
of World War II histories, including The Destruction of
Dresden and his most recent widely acclaimed biography,
The Trail of the Fox: The Search for the True Field
Marshal Rommel. He lives in London.
