a group of such order cannot have a trivial center. Why? Use the class equation and write
$G=Z(G)+\sum\limits_{i=1}^r \frac{G}{C_g(G)}$ where $g_1,g_2\dots g_r$ are representatives for the non-trivial conjugacy classes.
If the center where trivial it would mean one of the classes say the class of $g$ is not a multiple of $p$ which in turn would imply it's centralizer is all of $G$ which would mean that $g$ is in the center, contradicting the center is trivial.
Since the center is not trivial it has a subgroup $H$ of order $p$, since any subgroup of the center is normal we can take $\frac{G}{H}$ which has order $p^{\alpha-1}$ and apply the inductive hypothesis to obtain a normal subgroup of $\frac{G}{H}$ of order $p^{\alpha-2}$ which we shall call $E$
The preimage or pullback of $E$ under the natural homomorphism from $G$ to $\frac{G}{H}$ will be a normal subgroup of $G$ of order $p^{\alpha-1}$.
Why? The preimage of a normal subgroup under any homomorphism is always normal.
Moreover let $I$ be the preimage of $E$. consider the restriction of the natural homomorphism from $I$ into $E$, this map is surjective. So by the first ismorphism theorem we have $\frac{I}{H}\cong E$ looking only at the orders we get $|E|=p^{\alpha-2}p=p^{\alpha-1}$
So $I$ is indeed a normal subgroup of $G$ of the desired order.