Goering

Rating:
Summary: Read it together with David Irving's biography
Review: This book is very much an analysis of the malignant effects of putting Göring in charge of the Four Year Economic Plan, the wastage and inefficiency resulting from his mis and non management of the economy. To get a better feel of Göring as a person, vile, vainglorious, vulgar, you should also read Irving's book.

Rating:
Summary: Profiling Goering, the Nazi economic czar
Review: This 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 technological advantage superfluous. Both Hitler and Goering were obsessed with constant perfection of designs as well as getting new ones online. As a result, assembly lines had to be constantly retooled and components redesigned, typically on the orders of Goering. For all these reasons, the idea of mass production became rather comical with the incessant changes ordered by Goering. Throughout the war, Nazi Germany-obsessed with perfecting tank and aircraft designs-made piecemeal gains in productivity while the Western Allies were busy churning out far more armaments and equipment. The full potency of Allied arms and munitions was cognizable in the sheer quantity they produced. These were volleyed at the crumbling Reich with full force.

The Ruhr capitalists expressed frustrations at the sporadic interventions of the state. Though, the radicalism of Goering was somewhat tempered by others in power since he would have preferred more nationalization and state control over the economy. As a practical matter, at the behest of Speer and Hitler, the power base of Goering was finally curtailed after 1943 as concessions were made to industry and 'party moderates' in vain hopes of turning things around for the German war economy. In the end, it seems that Goering's bungling, anti-capitalist tendencies, and unintentional economic sabotage coupled with the Allied bombing campaign fortunately kept the German war machine from ever reaching its full productive potential. Richard Overy captures this reality quite well. In the end, the so-called Thousand-year Reich died in its infancy. History and divine providence, which was so often was invoked by Hitler to legitimize his assent to power, proved to be against him in actuality.

Rating:
Summary: More German Economics than Goering Bio
Review: While this book may be considered a biography it deals more with German economics and Luftwaffe related events than with the actual life of Hermann Goering.
If you are expecting a bio along the lines of Padfield's exhaustive "Himmler" or Kershaw's masterful "Hitler: Hubris" or "Hitler: Nemesis" forget it, this isn't for you. There are other Goering Bios that do a much better job of fleshing out the life of their subject than this relatively short book.
This book does do a passable job of covering Goering's war years and his influence on ,and failure of, the Third Reich.