Hermann Göring

German military and political leader

• Born: January 12, 1893
• Birthplace: Rosenheim, Germany
• Died: October 15, 1946
• Place of death: Nuremberg, Germany

Göring, a highly decorated fighter pilot in World War I who cultivated contacts with conservative-nationalist elements in Germany before 1933, contributed to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and played a major role in his consolidation of power. After 1935, Göring directed both the massive rebuilding of the German air force and economic efforts to prepare Germany for war. One of the most powerful leaders of the Third Reich until 1942, and for many years Hitler’s designated successor, Göring was tried and convicted at Nuremberg in 1946 for his part in the crimes of the Third Reich.

Early Life

Hermann Göring (GEHR-rihng) was the fourth child of Franziska Göring, the second wife of Heinrich Ernst Göring, a former Prussian provincial judge and German consul-general in Haiti at the time of young Göring’s birth. After Franziska returned to her husband in Haiti, Göring was reared during the first three years of his life by a friend of his mother in Fürth, Bavaria. Following the return of Göring’s father to Berlin, shortly before his retirement from government service in 1896, the boy was reunited with his parents. In 1901, the family moved into Castle Veldenstein, Bavaria, which was only thirty miles from Fürth, where young Göring had started elementary school the previous year. The castle belonged to Hermann Göring’s godfather, Ritter von Epenstein, who was also the lover of Göring’s mother. Ironically, Epenstein, a Roman Catholic, was of Jewish descent. Göring’s experience at Veldenstein stimulated his interest in pageantry and implanted a romantic attachment to Germany’s medieval past. Both interests would be ostentatiously displayed during the Third Reich at Karinhall, Göring’s huge estate twenty-five miles north of Berlin.

Following a year of unsatisfactory academic performance at a boarding school in Ansbach, Bavaria, Göring was enrolled as a cadet at a military school in Karlsruhe, Baden, in 1905. He thrived in this atmosphere, and, after completing his military education at the prestigious advanced cadet school in Grosslichterfelde, near Berlin, he received a commission as a second lieutenant in June, 1912. He was soon posted with a regiment in Mühlhausen, Alsace. During the first months of World War I, Göring saw action as an infantry officer in Alsace until he was hospitalized in late 1914 with rheumatism. At the hospital, Bruno Loerzer, a pilot, recruited him for the air force. Göring’s career as a fighter pilot was so successful that he was awarded the coveted Pour le Mérite award on June 2, 1918, and given command of the famous Manfred von Richthofen fighter squadron on July 6, 1918.

After Germany’s defeat, Göring was discharged from the army with the rank of captain. Like many nationalistic officers, he could not accept the new Weimar Republic and blamed Marxists and Jews for Germany’s defeat. In early 1919, Göring left Germany and for the next two years earned a living in Denmark and Sweden as a pilot and salesman for aircraft companies and parachute manufacturers. In the winter of 1920, he met the Swedish baroness Carin von Kantzow, who became a major influence on his life until her death in 1931. In 1921, she left her husband and son and followed Göring to Germany, where they were married on February 3, 1922. With no regular income and an uncertain future, Göring was enrolled at the University of Munich in 1921 to prepare for a new career at the age of twenty-eight.

Life’s Work

After Göring’s first meeting with Adolf Hitler in October, 1922, he joined the Nazi Party and soon was given command of the Sturm Abteilung (SA), the party’s paramilitary organization. Hitler welcomed the services of a highly decorated former officer. After less than a year as commander of the SA, Göring’s new career ended abruptly when he was wounded during Hitler’s abortive attempt to seize power in Munich on November 9, 1923. Sought by the authorities, Göring and his wife fled to Austria and later Italy. Not until 1925 did Göring return to the safety of Sweden, where he was hospitalized and cured of an addiction to morphine between September and November of that year. Disillusioned with the Nazi Party, and with no serious prospects for the future, Göring had little contact with the Hitler movement for the next two years.

Following a general amnesty, Göring returned to Germany in November, 1927. He established himself in Berlin as a representative of the Bavarian Motor Works, and he renewed his contacts with Hitler. The Nazi leader placed Göring on the party’s election slate in May, 1928. Elected as one of twelve Nazi delegates to the Reichstag, Göring became the president of this legislative body after the spectacular Nazi success in the election of July 31, 1932. Between 1928 and 1932, Göring was little involved in the Nazi Party’s day-to-day organizational and administrative work, although he did act as Hitler’s representative in Berlin. Indeed, Göring never held a leading party post either before or after 1933. Prior to that year, Göring was mainly useful to Hitler in helping to foster contacts with conservative-nationalist interests in Germany. Göring visited the former kaiser in Holland in 1931 and 1932, and he maintained cordial relations with the crown prince August Wilhelm. Beginning in the fall of 1930, Hitler used Göring’s residence in Berlin for negotiations with political, economic, and military spokespersons.

As president of the Reichstag after July, 1932, Göring used his powers to further Nazi interests and to disrupt effective parliamentary action. During the crucial discussions in January, 1933, that led to Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, Göring played a major role. In that fateful month, Göring was able to inform Hitler that President Paul von Hindenburg, after repeated refusals, had finally agreed to appoint Hitler chancellor of Germany.

Through his control of key state offices and the information obtained from the Forschungsamt, a secret intelligence gathering office, Göring contributed significantly to the Nazi consolidation of power in 1933. As Reichstag president, he guided the Enabling Act of 1933 , through that legislative body. Although he had been appointed Reich minister without portfolio on January 30, 1933, Göring’s real power rested on his position as Prussian minister of the interior and later as minister president of Prussia. In these capacities, Göring was able to use the Prussian police against the enemies of the Nazis, particularly after the suspicious Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933. In 1933, Göring established the first state-controlled concentration camps, and he organized the dreaded Gestapo. Finally, in the summer of 1934, Göring helped Hitler consolidate his power in the Nazi Party by directing the purge of suspected supporters of Ernst Röhm in Prussia.

After Göring relinquished his control of the Gestapo and the concentration camps to Heinrich Himmler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1934, he focused his interests primarily on the air force (Luftwaffe), German economic preparations for war, and Eastern Europe. Although Göring had been appointed Reich commissioner for air transport in January, 1933, it was not until March, 1935, when Hitler announced Germany’s official establishment of the Luftwaffe, that Göring was named commander in chief of the air force. Göring was committed to a massive rearmament program in anticipation of a major conflict by the mid-1940’s. He was appointed director of the Office of Raw Materials and Foreign Exchange in April, 1936, to deal with Germany’s foreign currency crisis. Named head of the Four Year Plan on October 18, 1936, Göring supported a policy of autarchy that would permit massive German rearmament free from foreign economic pressures. In June, 1937, the first Reichswerke Hermann Göring, a state-controlled iron and steel complex, was opened in Salzgitter, Braunschweig.

Göring also took advantage of the official anti-Jewish pogroms in November, 1938, to exclude Jews completely from the economy and to expropriate their property. His repeated trips to Eastern and Southeastern Europe and his key role in the German annexation of Austria in March, 1938, helped to increase Germany’s economic power. By 1938, Göring controlled nearly two thirds of industrial investments in Germany. After the outbreak of war in 1939, the Reichswerke Hermann Göring was used to expand Göring’s economic power in Europe.

Göring accumulated a plethora of titles between 1933 and 1940, ranging from master of the hunt and Reichs forest manager to Reich marshal, the highest military rank in Germany. Göring failed to gain the post of minister of war after he had helped to engineer the purge of both General Werner von Blomberg and General Werner von Fritsch in early 1938. Nevertheless, by 1938, Göring was at the height of power and prestige and, unlike many other Nazi leaders, he was enormously popular with the public. Though he held no major party position, Göring was named Hitler’s successor in a secret decree on December 19, 1934, an appointment that was publicly acknowledged on September 1, 1939, and again on June 29, 1941. Together with his second wife, actor Emmy Sonnemann, whom he had married on April 11, 1935, Göring hosted many of the official state ceremonies of the Third Reich. On June 2, 1938, his only child, Edda, was born.

Göring participated in the negotiations leading to the Munich Agreement in September, 1938, but he was not consulted before the German occupation of Prague in March, 1939, or later during the preparations leading to the Barbarossa Plan for the invasion of Russia. Once war erupted in September, however, Göring was named chair of the Ministerial Defense Council. He expanded his economic empire into Eastern Europe, signed orders on October 7, giving Himmler special powers in the East, and in July, 1941, delegated to Reinhard Heydrich the task of finding a “solution” to the so-called Jewish problem. For his personal enjoyment, Göring cleared the population from parts of the forest of Bialowieza to establish a personal hunting reserve and looted and purchased art treasures from all parts of Europe.

The failure of the Luftwaffe between 1940 and 1942 at Dunkirk, during the Battle of Britain , and at Stalingrad, undermined Göring’s position with Hitler. The inability of the Luftwaffe to protect German cities from massive Allied air attacks, the appalling transportation system, and the totally inadequate armament production caused Hitler to lose all confidence in Göring. Even an enemy spy organization, the Red Orchestra, was discovered operating out of the Air Ministry in late 1942. Beginning in early 1942, Hitler began to relieve Göring of control over both armament production and the transportation system and assigned these tasks to Albert Speer. No longer an intimate part of Hitler’s entourage and scolded by Hitler in August, 1944, for being lazy, the increasingly obese Göring, who consumed paracodeine pills daily, retreated to his self-indulgent private life at Karinhall and Castle Veldenstein. Before seeking refuge in Bavaria, Göring visited Hitler in Berlin for the last time on April 20, 1945. Three days later, after informing Berlin of his intentions to assume command in Germany, Göring was stripped of all of his titles and arrested by the SS. Hitler, in his last testament on April 29, expelled Göring from the Nazi Party. Arrested by the Americans in May, Göring was tried and convicted at Nuremberg for his part in the war crimes committed by the Third Reich. Although Göring reasserted some of his old confidence and mental agility during the trial, he committed suicide on October 15, 1946, and so escaped execution.

Significance

Both cunning and brutal in furthering his egotistical interests, Göring could charm people and present a good-natured, jovial image to the public. His personality was certainly influenced by the unusual family situation he experienced as a child, but his attraction to the Nazi movement was typical of many former German junior officers whose military careers had been disrupted by Germany’s defeat in 1918. Göring detested Marxism, but he was not a doctrinaire anti-Semite like Himmler. He did not hesitate to expropriate Jews, and he delegated the task of finding a solution to the Jewish problem to the dreaded Heydrich.

Göring was completely loyal to Hitler, who, in turn, valued his advice during domestic and international crises between 1932 and 1938. Never a leading party functionary, Göring totally depended on Hitler for his state powers in the Third Reich. He was neither a conservative nor a moderating influence on Hitler. Indeed, his military and economic policies threatened the influence of both private industry and traditional military elites in Germany.

Göring shared Hitler’s goal of world power, even if he was apprehensive when war broke out in 1939. The failure of the Luftwaffe and armament production after 1939 was a result of Göring’s ineffective leadership. Like Hitler, he disliked a routine work schedule, and he never committed himself to details. Overwhelmed by his numerous offices, Göring delegated responsibility for the implementation of general plans to subordinates who were either weak or unqualified. For both public and private reasons, Hitler allowed Göring to remain his appointed successor until April 23, 1945, when the bond between the two was finally severed.

Bibliography

Davidson, Eugene. The Trial of the Germans. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Chapter 3 is devoted to Göring’s role in the Third Reich, his complicity in the Nazi crimes, and his behavior and defense at Nuremberg.

Gilbert, G. M. “Hermann Goering, Amiable Psychopath.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 43 (April, 1948): 211-229. The author relies on his experiences as prison psychologist at Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946. He reviews Göring’s personal history and concludes that by the time Göring reached his early adolescence he was a psychopath with “infantile ego-drives.”

Gritzbach, Erich. Hermann Goering: The Man and His Work. Translated by Gerald Griffin. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1939. The official biography of Göring, written by his personal chief of staff. Well illustrated, each chapter is devoted to one specific aspect or activity of Göring’s life.

Irvin, David. Göring: A Biography. New York: William Morrow, 1989. The author of several popular biographies of leaders and soldiers of the Third Reich, Irvin blames Göring’s godfather, Epenstein, for the weaknesses of Göring’s character. The book offers a wealth of information about Göring’s personal life, but the conclusion that he was unaware of the mass murder of Jews is rejected by scholars.

Lee, Asher. Göring: Air Leader. London: Duckworth, 1972. This is a short but well-illustrated book by a former Royal Air Force intelligence officer. Although the author praises Göring’s understanding of tactical air power, he argues that Göring failed to understand strategic air power.

Mosley, Leonard. The Reich Marshal: A Biography of Herman Goering. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974. The author of this wordy biography, which is aimed at the general reader, was a British correspondent in Berlin in 1938. This is not a political biography but rather an attempt to discover Göring’s “true identity” by emphasizing personal details of Göring’s life and his entourage.

Overy, Richard, J. Goering: The “Iron Man.” London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. This is the best and most reliable scholarly work in English on Göring’s role in the Third Reich. The notes, bibliography, and illustrations are immensely valuable.

“The Reichsmarschall’s Revelations.” World War II 21, no. 5 (September, 2006): 26-33. An interview with Göring, conducted when he was imprisoned during World War II, in which he discusses the strategic military options the Nazis considered early in the war. He also explains how he urged Adolf Hitler to reconsider plans to wage war against the United States because of economic resources and technical advantages.

Steinhoff, Johannes. The Last Chance: The Pilots’ Plot Against Göring, 1944-1945. Translated by J. A. Underwood. London: Hutchinson, 1977. Steinhoff was a highly decorated German fighter pilot in World War II. He describes his experiences as a pilot and a wounded prisoner of war between October, 1944, and September, 1945. Most interesting is his discussion of the unsuccessful attempt of some fighter pilots to have Göring removed as leader of the German air force in late 1944.

Swearingen, Ben E. The Mystery of Hermann Goering’s Suicide. San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. The author refutes the official findings of October, 1946, which concluded that Göring had hidden poison in the toilet in his prison cell. Swearingen argues that the American lieutenant Jack Wheelis was so charmed by Göring that he allowed him to go to the baggage room and retrieve a vial of poison from his personal luggage.