Hermann Göring

Hermann Wilhelm Göring (12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German aviator, military commander, politician, and convicted war criminal. A leading figure in the Nazi Party that governed Germany from 1933 to 1945, he also served as Supreme Commander of the Luftwaffe until the regime’s final days. Born in Rosenheim, Bavaria, he was a decorated World War I fighter ace and the last commander of Jagdgeschwader 1, the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen. An early Nazi Party member, he was wounded in Adolf Hitler’s failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch; while recovering, he became addicted to morphine, a dependency that lasted until his final year. After Hitler became chancellor in 1933, Göring was appointed minister without portfolio. One of his first acts was overseeing the creation of the Gestapo, which he handed over to Heinrich Himmler in 1934.

As the Nazi state consolidated, Göring accumulated power, becoming the second most influential man in Germany. In 1936 he was named Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, tasked with mobilizing the economy for war, which brought numerous agencies under his control. In September 1939, Hitler designated him as his successor. Following the fall of France in 1940, he received a specially created rank that gave him seniority over all German armed forces officers. By 1941, Göring was at the height of his influence. However, as World War II progressed, his standing with Hitler and the public declined after the Luftwaffe failed to prevent Allied bombing of German cities or to resupply surrounded Axis forces at Stalingrad. Increasingly, he withdrew from military and political duties to focus on collecting property and artwork, much of it stolen from Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

On 22 April 1945, informed that Hitler planned to commit suicide, Göring sent a telegram requesting permission to assume leadership of the Reich. Hitler viewed this as treason, stripping Göring of all positions, expelling him from the party, and ordering his arrest. After the war, Göring was convicted at the 1946 Nuremberg trials of conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. He requested execution by firing squad but was denied and sentenced to death by hanging. The night before his scheduled execution, he died by suicide after ingesting cyanide.

Göring was born on 12 January 1893 at the Marienbad Sanatorium in Rosenheim, Bavaria. His father, Heinrich Ernst Göring, a former cavalry officer, had been the first governor-general of German South West Africa and had three children from a previous marriage. Göring was the fourth of five children from Heinrich’s second wife, Franziska Tiefenbrunn, a Bavarian peasant. His siblings were Karl, Olga, Paula, and younger brother Albert. At his birth, his father was consul general in Haiti; his mother had returned briefly to give birth, leaving the six-week-old with a friend in Bavaria. She did not see him again for three years, when she and Heinrich returned to Germany. His godfather was Hermann Epenstein, a wealthy Jewish physician and businessman his father had met in Africa. Epenstein provided the family—living on Heinrich’s pension—first a home in Berlin-Friedenau, then a small castle near Nuremberg. Around this time, Göring’s mother became Epenstein’s mistress for some fifteen years. Epenstein later acquired the minor title Ritter (knight) von Epenstein through service and donations to the Crown.

From an early age, Göring wanted a military career, playing with toy soldiers and wearing a Boer uniform his father gave him. At eleven, he was sent to boarding school with poor food and harsh discipline. He sold a violin to buy a train ticket home, then feigned illness until told he would not have to return. He continued enjoying war games, pretending to besiege the castle Veldenstein, and studying Teutonic legends. He became a mountain climber, scaling peaks in Germany, the Mont Blanc massif, and the Austrian Alps. At sixteen, he entered a military academy in Berlin-Lichterfelde, graduating with distinction. In 1912, he joined the Prussian Army’s Prince Wilhelm Regiment. The next year, his mother’s falling-out with Epenstein forced the family to leave Veldenstein for Munich; his father died shortly after. In Bavaria, Göring developed a “romantic sense of Germanness” that later evolved under Nazism. When World War I began in August 1914, he was stationed at Mülhausen with his regiment.

During the war’s first year, Göring served with his infantry regiment near Mülhausen, less than 2 km from the French border. He was hospitalized with rheumatism from trench dampness. While recovering, his friend...