Hermann Göring

Hermann Göring is a senior Nazi leader whose role links the novel’s military operations to its account of political power in Germany. He is identified as the architect of the plan that enables Charles A. Lindbergh to disappear from the United States and as a key participant in Adolf Hitler’s wartime deliberations. His authority is formidable but not permanent: the retrospective account ends with his dismissal, conviction for war crimes, and suicide shortly before execution.

Identity and Position

Göring occupies several levels of the Nazi hierarchy. The novel’s biographical account identifies him as the founder and first head of the Gestapo, the secret police, and credits him with responsibility for creating the German air force. In 1940, Hitler names him as successor, placing him in the line of political authority as well as at the center of Germany’s military and internal-security apparatus.

The political narrative further describes him as director of the German economy. These roles make him more than a background figure or a single-episode conspirator: he stands at the intersection of policing, military power, economic direction, and succession. The novel’s account uses this accumulation of offices to establish the reach of the regime that is acting beyond Germany’s borders.

Lindbergh’s Disappearance

When reports emerge that Lindbergh is alive in Germany, the account attributes the operation to a long-standing plan conceived by Göring. British intelligence reports that, on October 7, Lindbergh deliberately ditched the Spirit of St. Louis at predetermined coordinates in the Atlantic, about three hundred miles east of Washington. A waiting German U-boat transferred him to a naval vessel stationed off Portugal; from there, the route led to Italian-occupied Kotor in Montenegro.

The reports describe the recovery of the aircraft as part of the same effort. A German military freighter took the wreckage aboard, and it was dismantled, crated, and sent to a Gestapo warehouse in Bremen. Lindbergh, meanwhile, left an airstrip at Kotor in a camouflaged Luftwaffe plane. Göring accompanied him on the flight to Germany, after which Lindbergh was driven to Hitler’s hideaway at Berchtesgaden for a meeting. The details turn the president’s apparent disappearance into a coordinated transfer across military and intelligence networks, rather than an unexplained loss at sea.

The account presents the revelations through reports first attributed to British intelligence and then corroborated by Serbian resistance groups drawing on sources inside the German-installed government in Belgrade. Göring’s presence in the operation gives the reports a direct link to the senior leadership: he is both the originator of the plan and a participant in Lindbergh’s journey to Hitler.

Power and Policy

After Lindbergh’s election, Hitler takes charge of preparing a foreign policy for the United States that will serve German wartime aims. Göring attends weekly meetings with Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, described respectively as the regime’s leader, designated successor, and chief of internal affairs. Their discussions connect the American presidency to Germany’s wider military and imperial strategy.

Göring’s place in these meetings gives him a role in the political context surrounding the Lindbergh administration, even though the account does not assign him each specific policy decision. The German leadership considers how to use the time gained while the United States remains outside the war. It also anticipates a future conflict with American industrial and military power. In this structure, Göring is part of the senior circle shaping the strategic environment in which Lindbergh’s presidency operates.

His prominence also sharpens the contrast between authority and control. Although Hitler has named him successor, Göring’s position does not protect him from later political reversal. The narrative’s wider account of Nazi plans shows power concentrated around Hitler, with senior officeholders influential but ultimately subject to his decisions and the changing fortunes of the regime.

Defeat and Narrative Role

The biographical ending places Göring’s trajectory within the collapse of Nazi Germany. Hitler dismisses him near the end of the war. At Nuremberg, he is convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death, but dies by suicide two hours before his scheduled execution. The abruptness of that ending contrasts with the reach of his earlier offices and with his participation in operations that had seemed to put presidents and governments within the regime’s grasp.

Göring’s characterization is delivered through two complementary forms: dated political reports establish his role in the Lindbergh operation, while the concluding biographical entries summarize his career and downfall. Together they make him a connecting figure in the novel’s alternate history. His military and security authority helps explain how Germany can stage a secret transatlantic operation; his presence in Hitler’s policy meetings places that operation within a larger design; and his later fall marks the eventual limits of the power he once wielded.