• Born: 12 January 1893
• Birthplace: Rosenheim, Bavaria, Germany
• Died: 15 October 1946 (suicide)
• Best Known As: Commander of the Nazi Luftwaffe in World War II

Hermann Göring (or Goering) commanded the German air force (Luftwaffe) during World War II and was second only to Adolf Hitler in the hierarchy of the Nazi Party. His relationship with Hitler and the National Socialists began in 1922. A decorated fighter pilot in World War I, Göring was valued by the Nazis for his organizational skills and his connections to the military and the German aristocracy. He participated in the 1923 Munich Beer-Hall Putsch and was badly wounded, but avoided arrest and fled the country. He lived in Austria, Italy and Sweden until 1927, when he was allowed to return to Germany. He was elected to the Reichstag in 1928 and helped the Nazis become Germany's ruling party. Ambitious and loyal to Hitler, Göring was entrusted with eliminating political opposition, rebuilding the air force (in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles) and putting the economy on a wartime footing. Because of his success he was promoted to the special rank of Reichsmarschall and named Hitler's successor in 1940.

Hitler's faith in Göring lagged, however, after the failure of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. When he didn't deliver on his promise to supply German troops on the Russian front, Göring's position with Hitler became even more precarious. As the Allied armies closed in on Hitler and Berlin in April of 1945, Göring made a clumsy and premature offer to take over as Germany's leader. Hitler reacted by charging Göring with treason and ordering his arrest. As it turned out, Göring surrendered to the Allies on 8 May 1945, and 17 months later he was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg and sentenced to death. Hours before he was to be hanged, Göring killed himself with a poison capsule (potassium cyanide) he had somehow smuggled into his cell.

Göring famously collected art treasures and used war spoils to line his own pockets, even as the war drew to a close and the German people were being deprived of basic necessities... An ace pilot in World War I, Göring was credited with 22 kills, and in July of 1918 he was given command of the late Manfred von Richthofen's famous fighter squadron, Jagdgeschwader 1... It is said Göring was the mastermind behind the Nazi secret police (Gestapo), and he is considered one of the architects of the concentration camp system that murdered millions of Jews.

(b. Rosenheim, 12 Jan. 1893; d. Nuremberg 15 Oct. 1946) German; head of government of Prussia 1933 – 45, Commander-in-Chief of German air force 1935 – 45, Plenipotentiary of Four-Year Plan 1936 The son of a colonial official, Göring ended the First World War as the much decorated commander of the famous Richthofen air squadron. He then worked as a show and transport flyer before starting his climb in the NSDAP. He took part in Hitler's failed Munich putsch (1923) and was elected to the German parliament in 1928. When the NSDAP became the largest party in the Reichstag in 1932 he was elected its president. Once Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, he appointed Göring Minister without Portfolio, Reich Commissar for Aviation, and Prussian Minister of the Interior. Göring ruthlessly exploited these positions in the Nazi cause. On 22 February he appointed the SA, SS, and their Stahlhelm allies police auxiliaries. He later boasted to General Halder that it was he who had set fire (27 February) to the Reichstag. This was blamed on the Communists and was made the excuse for initiating a reign of terror against the left. He set up the first concentration camps in Prussia, arresting 4,000 Communists and banning the left-wing press. From April 1933 he also served as head of the Prussian government. Acting for Hitler, he carried through the bloody purge of the SA in Berlin and north Germany on 30 June 1934. He was by then the second most important man in Germany.

As Plenipotentiary for the Four-year Plan Göring helped to prepare the economy for war in 1939, stripped the Jews of their property, and used his position to amass a personal fortune. He was best known for the part he played in building up the German air force in contravention of the Versailles Treaty. It was first used in Spain to back Franco, 1936 – 9, and subsequently became an integral part of all Nazi aggressive plans. Göring's most decisive failure was his inability to destroy the British air force in 1940. As the war continued, Germany lost air supremacy to the Allies. Göring also lost ground in the Nazi hierarchy especially to Himmler and Goebbels.

Göring's death was as dramatic as his life had been. He cheated the hangman two hours before his planned execution at Nuremberg after being sentenced to death by the International Military Court in 1946.

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(1893-1946) a leading figure of Nazi Germany, born in Rosenheim, Bavaria. Goering was one of the earliest and most loyal supporters of Adolf Hitler. He served as president of the Reichstag (1932), established the Gestapo (1933), and acted as head of the Luftwaffe. After the Luftwaffe's failure in the Battle of Britain (1940), Goering largely retired into private life. He surrendered to the Americans after Hitler's suicide. Goering was condemned as a war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg and sentenced to hanging but took poison before his execution was carried out.

After being severely wounded during the abortive Munich Putsch (1923), Goering became addicted to morphine. He had to undergo treatments for drug addiction periodically for the remainder of his life.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The German politician and air force commander Hermann Wilhelm Göring (1893-1946) was second in command to Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

Hermann Göring was born in Rosenheim, Bavaria, on Jan. 12, 1893, son of the consul general of the German Empire in Haiti. He was educated in the Kadettenkorps (military school), where he performed outstandingly and earned a commission in the army in 1912.

After the outbreak of World War I, Göring moved to the newly created air force and in October 1915 became a fighter pilot. The daring young flier quickly distinguished himself and by 1918 had been shot down once and had won all the important military distinctions, including the highest award of the German army. After the famous Manfred von Richthofen ("Red Baron") was killed in the spring of 1918, Göring was chosen to succeed him in his former command.

After the German defeat the young captain left the Republican Army in disgust and went to Denmark to fly as a private pilot. In 1922 he returned to Germany, where he met Hitler. He immediately offered his services to the Nazi party and in short order became commander of the Nazi storm troopers (SA) in Munich. In the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch by the Nazis in November 1923, he received a painful injury which brought on his first drug addiction. He had to flee Germany and once again took up work abroad as a pilot and airplane demonstrator.

In 1927 Göring returned to Germany and in 1928 successfully ran for the Reichstag (lower house of the legislature) as a National Socialist. He was reelected in July 1932 and became president of the Reichstag. With the election of Hitler to the chancellorship in January 1933, Göring joined the Cabinet as minister without portfolio and, more importantly, became minister of interior in Prussia. In the latter position he quickly brought the Prussian police under his control by co-opting SA troops and created the Nazi secret police, which he later turned over to the command of Heinrich Himmler for use in the Roehm purge of 1934.

In the fall of 1933 Göring became prime minister of Prussia and minister of air travel in the central government - an office he used for the illicit creation of a new air force whose commander in chief he officially became in 1935. From 1936 on he also directed the economic Four-Year Plan, which was above all a plan for stepped-up rearmament. In this position he acquired considerable power in the economic life of Germany, especially in the steel industry. He ordered extensive economic reprisals against Jews from 1938 on and engaged in considerable plunder for personal profit in occupied areas during the war years.

As commander in chief of the air force and, after the outbreak of World War II, as chairman of the War Cabinet, Göring played a vital role in promoting the policy of senseless aggression and destruction pursued by Hitler. After the initial victories in Poland and on the western front, he received the additional title of marshal of the Reich. As the war wore on, however, he proved increasingly wasteful in the use of the air force and incapable of maintaining its strength in spite of the massive and ruthless use of foreign slave workers in the air industry. His exaggerated promises of air strength caused frequent miscalculations which had serious consequences for the German war effort.

In the critical days at the end of the war Göring made several attempts to negotiate with the Allies and on April 23, 1945 - as officially designated successor to the Führer - suggested to Hitler that he (Göring) assume the leadership of the Nazi state immediately. Hitler reacted with Göring's dismissal from all of his offices and expulsion from the party. Arrested on May 21, 1945, by the Americans, he was tried and sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials but committed suicide on Oct. 15, 1946, the night before his scheduled execution.

Further Reading

The best, most carefully balanced biography of Göring in English is Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Goering (1962). The other recent biography, by Charles H. Bewley, the fiercely anti-Communist former Irish minister in Berlin, is a favorable account based on family records, Hermann Göring and the Third Reich (1962). Other studies are H. W. Blood-Ryan, Göring: The Iron Man of Germany (1938), portraying Göring as a formidable yet thoroughly sincere and personally loyal German nationalist; Erich Gritzbach, Hermann Göring: The Man and His Work (trans. 1939); Kurt Singer, Goering: Germany's Most Dangerous Man (1940), a bitterly accusing war-time biography; Ewan Butler and Gordon Young, Marshall without Glory (1951), a more popularized, somewhat sensational account; and Willi Frischauer's interesting The Rise and Fall of Hermann Goering (1951).

Additional Sources

Butler, Ewan, The life and death of Hermann Göring, Newton Abbot, Devon: David & Charles Publishers; New York, NY: Distributed in the United States by Sterling Pub. Co., 1989.

Irving, David John Cawdell, Göring: a biography, New York: Morrow, 1989.

Overy, R. J., Göring, the "iron man", London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.

For more information on Hermann Göring, visit Britannica.com.

Göring, Hermann (Rosenheim, 1893-1946, Nuremberg), was a fighter ace of the 1914-18 War and afterwards turned to civil aviation. He entered the NSDAP in 1922, and was wounded in the attempted Hitlerputsch of 1923. After 1928 he was Hitler's right-hand man, and after 1933 in the various offices he held—chief of secret police (see Gestapo), Minister-President of Prussia, and Air Minister—he continued to prosecute Hitler's policy of unification of power and liquidation of opponents. At the outbreak of war in 1939 he was nominated by Hitler as his eventual successor, and was given the title Reichsmarschall des Großdeutschen Reiches. After the failure of the German Air Force to break British resistance Göring began to lose influence, and in 1945 was denounced by Hitler. He was captured in 1945 and condemned to death at Nuremberg, but took poison in his cell on the morning appointed for execution. (See also Anti- Semitism.) He is a background figure in Zuckmayer's play Des Teufels General.

Göring, Hermann Wilhelm (both: hĕr'män vĭl'hĕlm gö'rĭng) , 1893–1946, German National Socialist leader. In World War I he was a hero of the German air force. An early member of the Nazi party, he participated (1923) with Hitler in the Munich “beer-hall putsch” and after its failure escaped eventually to Sweden, where he stayed until 1927. On his return he reestablished contact with Hitler and was elected (1928) to the Reichstag, of which he became president in 1932. When Hitler came to power (1933) he made Goering air minister of Germany and prime minister and interior minister of Prussia. Until 1936 Goering headed the Gestapo (secret police), which he had founded. He became director of Hitler's four-year economic plan in 1936, supplanted Hjalmar Schacht as minister of economy in 1937, and was virtual dictator over the German economy until 1943. Goering was responsible for the German rearmament program and especially for the creation of the German air force. In 1939 Hitler designated Goering as his successor and in 1940 made him marshal of the empire, a unique rank. Goering was notorious for his love of high-sounding titles, of extraordinary uniforms, of pageantry, and of voluntary or enforced gifts. In later years he spent more and more time at his palatial estate and was addicted to narcotics. Behind his facade of good humor he hid a vindictive temperament. In World War II he was responsible for the total air war waged by Germany; his immense popularity in Germany declined after the Allied air forces, contrary to Goering's emphatic predictions, began to lay Germany to waste. From 1943 on, Hitler deprived him of all formal authority and finally dismissed him shortly before the end of the war, when Goering attempted to claim his right of succession. He surrendered (May, 1945) to American troops and was the chief defendant at the Nuremberg trial for war crimes (1945–46). He defended himself with brilliant cynicism but was convicted and sentenced to death. Two hours before his scheduled hanging, he committed suicide by swallowing a poison capsule.

Bibliography

See biographies by C. H. Bewley (1962), R. Manvell, and H. Fraenkel (1962, repr. 1972), A. Lee (1972), and L. Mosley (1974).

(hair-mahn geu-ring)

A German political leader and general of the twentieth century. Goering, a close friend of Adolf Hitler, held several high positions in the Nazi government, including leadership of the air force, the Luftwaffe; until the Battle of Britain, his aerial warfare methods were enormously successful (see blitzkrieg). At the Nuremberg trials for war criminals after the German defeat, Goering was sentenced to death, but he committed suicide before he could be executed.

Quotes:

"Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis -- German National Socialism."

"Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat."

"Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver."