Hermann Goering in the First World War

Book excerpt: When modern readers think of Hermann Goring, what probably comes to mind is the overweight drug addict and convicted war criminal who cheated the hangman's noose at Nuremberg by committing suicide just hours before he was due to be hanged. Next up might be the image of his powerful German air force in the Second World War---the Luftwaffe---bombing defenseless European cities and towns in the early part of the war, until it was defeated by the British Royal Air Force in the epic Battle of Britain in 1940. Next might come Goring the debauched art collector who pirated captured collections all over Nazi Europe during the Occupation years. All of these images are correct, but here we see another Hermann Goring: the slim, dashing fighter pilot and combat ace of an earlier struggle, the Great War, or World War I of 1914-18, which he began as an infantry officer fighting the French Army in the 1914 Battle of the Frontiers. During a hospitalization, his friend Bruno Lorzer convinced him to become an aerial observer-photographer, photographing the mighty French fortress of Verdun. He did, and began these never-before-seen personal photo albums of men and aircraft at war: up close.