Goering BiographyBODY {margin-left:0; margin-right:0; margin-top:0;} .Arial-16px800040b {font:bold 16px Arial, sans-serif; color:#800040} .Arial-48pxFF0000b {font:bold 48px Arial, sans-serif; color:#FF0000} .Arial-32pxFF0000b {font:bold 32px Arial, sans-serif; color:#FF0000} .Arial-24pxFF0000b {font:bold 24px Arial, sans-serif; color:#FF0000} .Times-New-Roman-11pxFF0000b {font:bold 11px Times New Roman, serif; color:#FF0000} .Times-New-Roman-16pxFF0000b {font:bold 16px Times New Roman, serif; color:#FF0000} .Arial-18pxFFFFFFb {font:bold 18px Arial, sans-serif; color:#FFFFFF} .Arial-16pxFFFFFFn {font:normal 16px Arial, sans-serif; color:#FFFFFF} .Arial-13pxFFFFFFb {font:bold 13px Arial, sans-serif; color:#FFFFFF} .Arial-11pxFFFFFFn {font:normal 11px Arial, sans-serif; color:#FFFFFF} .Book-Antiqua-18pxFFFFFFb {font:bold 18px Book Antiqua, sans-serif; color:#FFFFFF} .Arial-18pxFFFFFFn {font:normal 18px Arial, sans-serif; color:#FFFFFF} .Times-New-Roman-18pxFFFFFFb {font:bold 18px Times New Roman, serif; color:#FFFFFF} .Times-New-Roman-18pxFFFFFFn {font:normal 18px Times New Roman, serif; color:#FFFFFF} .Times-New-Roman-16pxFFFFFFb {font:bold 16px Times New Roman, serif; color:#FFFFFF} .Arial-16pxFFFFFFb {font:bold 16px Arial, sans-serif; color:#FFFFFF} .Arial-11px000000b {font:bold 11px Arial, sans-serif; color:#000000} .Arial-16px0000FFb {font:bold 16px Arial, sans-serif; color:#0000FF} .Arial-16pxb {font:bold 16px Arial, sans-serif} .Arial-16pxn {font:normal 16px Arial, sans-serif} .Arial-18pxb {font:bold 18px Arial, sans-serif} .Arial-16px004080b {font:bold 16px Arial, sans-serif; color:#004080} .Arial-16px004080n {font:normal 16px Arial, sans-serif; color:#004080} .Arial-16pxC0C0C0b {font:bold 16px Arial, sans-serif; color:#C0C0C0} .Arial-18pxC0C0C0b {font:bold 18px Arial, sans-serif; color:#C0C0C0} .Times-New-Roman-18pxC0C0C0b {font:bold 18px Times New Roman, serif; color:#C0C0C0} .Arial-16pxC0C0C0n {font:normal 16px Arial, sans-serif; color:#C0C0C0} .Book-Antiqua-32pxC0C0C0b {font:bold 32px Book Antiqua, sans-serif; color:#C0C0C0} .Times-New-Roman-32pxC0C0C0b {font:bold 32px Times New Roman, serif; color:#C0C0C0}Day of Arrest Hermann Goering was born in Rosenheim on 12 January 1893.The son of ajudge who had been sent by Bismarck to South-West Africa as the first ResidentMinister Plenipotentiary, Goering entered the army in 1914 as an Infantry Lieutenant,before being transferred to the air force as a combat pilot. WW I - Richthofen SquadronThe last Commander in 1918 of the Richthofen Fighter Squadron, Goering distinguishedhimself as an air ace, credited with shooting down twenty-two Allied aircraft.Awarded the Pour le Merite and the Iron Cross (First Class), he ended the warwith the romantic aura of a much decorated pilot and war hero. After World WarI he was employed as a showflier and pilot in Denmark and Sweden, where he methis first wife, Baroness Karin von Fock- Kantzow, whom he married in Munichin February 1922. Joins the Nazi PartyGoering's aristocratic background and his prestige as a war hero made him a prizerecruit to the infant Nazi Party and Hitler appointed him to command the SA Brownshirtsin December 1922. Nazism offered the swashbuckling Goering the promiseof action, adventure, comradeship and an outlet for his unreflective, elementalhunger for power.In 1923 he took part in the Munich Beer-Hall putsch,in which he was seriously wounded and forced to flee from Germany for fouryears until a general amnesty was declared. He escaped to Austria, Italy andthen Sweden, was admitted to a mental hospital and, in September 1925, to an asylumfor dangerous inmates, becoming a morphine addict in the course of his extendedrecovery. Returning to Germany in 1927, he rejoined the NSDAPand was elected as one of its first deputies to the Reichstag a year later. Duringthe next five years Goering played a major part in smoothing Hitler's roadto power, using his contacts with conservative circles, big business and armyofficers to reconcile them to the Nazi Party and orchestrating the electoral triumphof 31 July 1932 which brought him the Presidency of the Reichstag. Hitler's Second in CommandFollowing Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, Goering was madePrussian Minister of the Interior, Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian Police andGestapo and Commissioner for Aviation. As the creator of the secret police,Goering, together with Himmler (q.v.) and Heydrich (q.v.), set up the early concentrationcamps for political opponents, showing formidable energy in terrorizingand crushing all resistance.Under the pretext of a threatened communistcoup, Prussia was 'cleansed' and hundreds of officers and thousands ofordinary policemen were purged, being replaced from the great reservoir of SAand SS men who took over the policing of Berlin. Goering exploited the Reichstagfire - which many suspected that he had engineered - to implement a series ofemergency decrees that destroyed the last remnants of civil rights in Germany,to imprison communists and Social Democrats and ban the left- wing press. He directedoperations during the Blood Purge, which eliminated his rival Ernst Rohmand other SA leaders on 30 June 1934. Reins of PowerOn 1 March 1935 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force and, with Udetand Milch, was responsible for organizing the rapid build-up of the aircraftindustry and training of pilots. In 1936 his powers were further extended by hisappointment as Plenipotentiary for the implementation of the Four Year Plan,which gave him virtually dictatorial controls to direct the German economy. Thecreation of the state-owned Hermann Goering Works in 1937, a gigantic industrialnexus which employed 700,000 workers and amassed a capital of 400 million marks,enabled him to accumulate a huge fortune. Ostentatious LifestyleGoering used his position to indulge in ostentatious luxury, living in a palace inBerlin and building a hunting mansion named after his first wife Karin (she haddied of tuberculosis in 1931) where he organized feasts, state hunts, showedoff his stolen art treasures and uninhibitedly pursued his extravagant tastes.Changing uniforms and suits five times a day, affecting an archaic Germanic styleof hunting dress (replete with green leather jackets, medieval peasant hatsand boar spears), flouting his medals and jewellery, Goering's transparent enjoymentof the trappings of power, his debauches and bribe-taking, gradually corruptedhis judgement. The 'Iron Knight', a curious mixture of condottiere and sybarite,'the last Renaissance man' as he liked to style himself with characteristicegomania, increasingly confused theatrical effect with real power. Nevertheless,he remained genuinely popular with the German masses who regarded him asmanly, honest and more accessible than the Fuhrer, mistaking his extrovert blusterand vitality for human warmth. The Jewish QuestionGoering's cunning, brutality and ambition were displayed in the cabal he engineeredagainst the two leading army Generals, von Fritsch and von Blomberg, whom hehelped to bring down in February 1938, in the misplaced hope that he would stepinto their shoes. Following the Crystal Night pogrom of 9 November 1938, it wasGoering who fined the German Jewish community a billion marks and ordered theelimination of Jews from the German economy, the 'Aryanization' of their propertyand businesses, and their exclusion from schools, resorts, parks, forests,etc. On 12 November 1938 he warned of a 'final reckoning with the Jews' shouldGermany come into conflict with a foreign power. It was also Goering who instructedHeydrich on 31 July 1941 to 'carry out all preparations with regard to .. . a general solution [Gesamtlosung] of the Jewish question in those territoriesof Europe which are under German influence.. . .' Luftwaffe Commander and the BattleofBritainGoering identified with Hitler's territorial aspirations, playing a key role in bringingabout the Anschluss in 1938 and the bludgeoning of the Czechs into submission,though he preferred to dictate a new order in Europe by 'diplomatic' meansrather than through a general European war. Appointed Reich Council Chairmanfor National Defence on 30 August 1939 and officially designated as Hitler'ssuccessor on 1 September, Goering directed the Luftwaffe campaigns against Polandand France, and on 19 June 1940 was promoted to Reich Marshal.In August 1940 he confidently threw himself into the great offensive against GreatBritain, Operation Eagle, convinced that he would drive the RAF from the skiesand secure the surrender of the British by means of the Luftwaffe alone. Goering,however, lost control of the Battle of Britain and made a fatal, tacticalerror when he switched to massive night bombings of London on 7 September 1940just when British fighter defences were reeling from losses in the air and on theground. This move saved the RAF sector control stations from destruction andgave the British fighter defences precious time to recover. The failure of theLuftwaffe (which Hitler never forgave) caused the abandonment of Operation SeaLion, the planned invasion of England, and began the political eclipse of Goering.Further failures of the Luftwaffe on the Russian front and its inability todefend Germany itself from Allied bombing attacks underlined Goering's incompetenceas its supreme commander . Technical research was run down completely, notsurprisingly with a Commander-in-Chief who prized personal heroism above scientificknow- how and whose idea of dignified combat was ramming enemy aircraft. Fall from GraceGoering rapidly sank into lethargy and a world of illusions, expressly forbiddingGeneral Galland to report that enemy fighters were accompanying bomber squadronsdeeper and deeper into German territory in 1943. By this time Goering had becomea bloated shadow of his former self, discredited, isolated and increasinglydespised by Hitler who blamed him for Germany's defeats. Undermined by Bormann'sintrigues, overtaken in influence by Himmler, Goebbels and Speer, mentallyhumiliated by his servile dependence on the Fuhrer, Goering's personality beganto disintegrate. When Hitler declared that he would remain in the Berlin bunkerto the end, Goering, who had already left for Bavaria, misinterpreted this asan abdication and requested that he be allowed to take over at once; he was ignominiouslydismissed from all his posts, expelled from the Party and arrested.Shortly afterwards, on 9 May 1945, Goering was captured by forces of the AmericanSeventh Army and, to his great surprise, put on trial at Nuremberg in 1946. Nuremberg TrialDuring his trial Goering, who had slimmed in captivity and had been taken off drugs,defended himself with aggressive vigour and skill, frequently outwitting theprosecuting counsel. With Hitler dead, he stood out among the defendants as thedominating personality, dictating attitudes to other prisoners in the dock andadopting a pose of self-conscious heroism motivated by the belief that he wouldbe immortalized as a German martyr. Nevertheless, Goering failed to convincethe judges, who found him guilty on all four counts: of conspiracy to wage war,crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. No mitigatingcircumstances were found and Goering was sentenced to death by hanging. On 15 October1946, two hours before his execution was due to take place, Goering committedsuicide in his Nuremberg cell, taking a capsule of poison that he had succeededin hiding from his guards during his captivity.   Hermann Goering 1893 to 1946 Commander-in-Chief of theLuftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, PrimeMinister of Prussia and Hitler's designatedsuccessor. Third Reich Roundtable TM Home Page The Nazi Party / The German Dictatorship / The War Years / Resistance to Hitler / The Holocaust / The Nuremberg TrialsOriginal Publisher of textWorld War I Joins the Nazi PartyAssumption of PowerReins of PowerOstentatious LifestyleThe Jewish QuestionLuftwaffe Commander & Battle of BritainFall from GraceNuremberg Trial080201010204 Complete text of Goering's Nuremberg Trial Testimony  www.thirdreich.net  Earlier Days    In the DockFinal Days Biographies of Goering are available from: |
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