THIRTY FOUR

Amidst the giddy chaos of Berlin, Hitler toys with death in his bunker. The golden boy of Nazism, Hermann Goering, looks set to succeed as Fuehrer. But his bid for power ends with a cyanide capsule in a gaol cell in Nuremberg. And there history signs off on Hermann. Yet buried in the footnotes sits the extraordinary story of Hermann Goering's little brother, Albert.

A defiant anti-Nazi, Albert Goering spent the war years busting the persecuted out of concentration camps, smuggling them across borders and funnelling aid to refugees throughout Europe. He did everything to undermine his brother's regime. But by 1944 the Gestapo were hunting him down like a dog. Did Hermann step in and save his brother?

Enter William, a twentysomething from Sydney, Australia, who stumbles upon the tattered pieces of Albert's history. Shelving plans for a Ph.D., William sets off on a three year odyssey across eight countries and three continents to piece together the puzzling life of Albert Goering.

Forget staid biography. Think seat of your pants travelogue mixed with a Spielberg eye for storytelling and you start to get a taste for the energy William brings to the page. Delivering the kind of must-read story that turns history on its head, Thirty Four gives us a new hero. Standing alongside Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg is the Goering history forgot.

HERMANNS BRUDER
Wer war Albert Goering?
Deutsch von Gesine Schroeder
[HC Aufbau 05/12; TB atb 12/14]