Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (also
Goering in
English) (
January 12,
1893 –
October 15,
1946) was a
German politician and
military leader, a leading member of the
Nazi Party, second in command of the
Third Reich, and commander of the
Luftwaffe. He was tried for
war crimes and
crimes against humanity at the
Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946 and sentenced to death. However, he avoided execution by committing
suicide in his cell a few hours before the sentence was to be carried out. He was of aristocratic heritage and considered a war hero of
World War I.
[Biography of Hermann Goering from the Jewish Virtual Library]Born in the
sanatorium Marienbad, near Rosenheim, Bayern, Göring was the son of
Ernst Hermann Göring (
October 31,
1839 –
December 7,
1913) and Franziska "Fanny" Tiefenbrunn (died August
1923). The family was of mixed
Catholic-
Protestant ancestry. His father was a professional soldier who under
Otto von Bismarck rose to be the first governor of
German West Africa. Young Hermann grew up with relatives and friends and in military schools while his parents were abroad. In 1904 he was sent to boarding school at Ansbach, Franconia and then attended the cadet institutes at Karlsruhe and then to the military college at Lichterfelde. Göring was commissioned in the Prussian army on June 22, 1912 in the Prinz Wilhelm Regiment No. 112.
During the first year of
World War I Göring served with an infantry regiment in the Vosges region before he was hospitalized with rheumatoid arthritis. While recovering, his friend Bruno Loerzer convinced him to transfer to the Luftwaffe. Later that year, he flew as Loerzer's observer. He flew reconnaissance and bombing missions as an observer before training to become a
fighter pilot in June-October 1915.
On completing his pilot's training course he was posted to
Jagdstaffel 5 in October 1915. He was soon shot down and spent most of
1916 recovering from his injuries. On his return in February 1917 he joined
Jagdstaffel 26, before being given his first command Jasta 27, In May 1917. Serving with
Jastas 7, 5, 26 and 27, he claimed 21 air victories, being awarded the coveted
Pour le Mérite in June 1918. On
July 7 1918, after the death of Wilhelm Reinhard, the successor of Ritter
Manfred von Richthofen (
The Red Baron), he was made commander of
Jagdgeschwader Freiherr von Richthofen,
Jagdgeschwader 1. He finished the war with 22 kills. Incidentally, his appointment as commander had not been well received and he was the only veteran of Jagdgeschwader 1 to have never been invited to post-war reunions.
In June 1917, after a lengthy dogfight, Göring shot down a novice
Australian pilot named
Frank Slee. The battle is recounted flamboyantly in
The Rise and Fall of Hermann Goering. Göring landed and met the Australian, and presented Slee with his
Iron Cross. Years after, Slee gave Göring's
Iron Cross to a friend, who later died on the beaches of
Normandy on
D-Day.
He remained in flying after the war, worked briefly at
Fokker, tried "
barnstorming", and in
1920 he joined
Svenska Lufttrafik. He was also listed on the officer rolls of the
Reichswehr, the post-World War I peacetime army of Germany, and by
1933 had risen to the rank of
Generalmajor. He was made a
Generalleutnant in
1935 and then a General in the
Luftwaffe (German air force) upon its founding later that year.
In
Stockholm he met
Carin von Kantzow (née
Fock,
1888-
1931), whom he later married. She died in
1931, and soon after he married actress
Emmy Sonnemann.
 |
Hermann Göring as the SA Commander in 1923 |
As early as
1922, Göring joined the
Nazi Party and initially took over the
SA leadership as the
Oberste SA-Führer. After stepping down as the SA Commander, he was appointed an
SA-Gruppenführer (Lieutenant General) and held this rank on the SA rolls until 1945.
Having been a member of the
Reichstag since
1928, he became the parliament's
president from
1932 to
1933, and was one of the key figures in the process of
Gleichschaltung that established the Nazi
dictatorship. For example, in
1933 he forcibly banned all
Catholic newspapers in entire Germany, despite the support the
Centre Party (Catholic) had given to Hitler's chancellorship.
[February, 19, 1933] In its early years, he served as minister in various key positions at both the
Reich level and in
Prussia, being responsible for the economy as well as the build-up of the German military in preparation for the war. Among others, he was appointed
Reichsluftfahrtminister in 1935, head of the Luftwaffe. In
1939, he became the first Luftwaffe
Field Marshal (
Generalfeldmarschal) and by a decree on
29 June 1941,
Hitler appointed Göring his formal successor and promoted him to the rank of
Reichsmarschall, the highest military rank of the Greater German Reich. Reichsmarschall was a special rank intended for Göring and which made him senior to all Army and Air Force Field Marshals.
The
Reichstag Fire, according to the
Nuremberg testimony of General
Franz Halder, was the handiwork of Göring, not of '
Communist instigators.' "At a luncheon on the birthday of Hitler in 1942..." Halder testifies, "[Göring said]...The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!" "With that," said Halder, "he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand." Göring in his own Nuremberg testimony denied this story. It is likely that Göring took credit for the fire.
The famous quotation, "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my
Browning" is frequently attributed to Göring during the inter-war period. Whether or not he actually used this phrase, it did not originate with him. The line comes from German
playwright Hanns Johst's play
Schlageter, "Wenn ich
Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning," "Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). Nor was Göring the only Nazi official to use this phrase:
Rudolf Hess used it as well.
After
Hjalmar Schacht was removed as minister for the Economy, Göring effectively took over, becoming Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan in 1936 to better facilitate German rearmament; the vast steel plant
Die Reichwerk Hermann Göring was named after him. This gave him great influence with Hitler (who placed a high value on rearmament), but he never seemed to accept the
Hitler Myth quite as much as
Goebbels and
Himmler did, but remained loyal nevertheless.
Göring was known for his extravagant tastes and garish clothing. As the only major Nazi with a prominent
World War I record, he was a key connection between the former corporal Hitler and the traditional military elite. Göring, married to a
Swedish baroness, built a vast
Prussian estate, Karinhall, named after her. To avoid it falling into enemy hands, Göring had Karinhall blown up on April 20, 1945, immediately before attending Hitler's last birthday party. He exulted in
aristocratic trappings, and after the Nazis conquered much of Europe, collected
artworks looted from numerous museums, even some within Germany itself. Handsome and athletic in his youth, Göring sustained a painful injury during the
Beer Hall Putsch, leaving him dependent on
narcotic painkillers, particularly
morphine. This addiction contributed to his later
obesity. He would finally be cured of his addiction toward the end of his life during his imprisonment at Nuremberg.
Göring was skeptical and averse to the path of war. He believed Germany was not prepared to embark on a new conflict and, in particular, he believed that Germany's air force, the
Luftwaffe, whose leadership was entrusted to his own hands, wasn't yet prepared to beat the
RAF. However, once
World War II started, Göring was determined to win at any cost. Initially, decisive victories followed quickly one after the other, Göring's modern Luftwaffe destroyed the Polish Air Force within two days and after the invasion of France, Hitler awarded Göring the
Grand Cross of the Iron Cross for his successful leadership. Göring's political and military careers were at their peak.
The Luftwaffe's failure to gain control of the skies during the
Battle of Britain marked Hitler's first defeat and put a stain on Göring's reputation. After that campaign he lost much of his influence in the Nazi hierarchy and faded briefly from the military scene, enjoying the pleasures of life as a wealthy and powerful man. His reputation for extravagance made him particularly unpopular as ordinary Germans began to suffer deprivations.
If Göring was skeptical about war on the western front, he was absolutely certain that a new campaign against Russia was doomed to be disastrous. After trying, completely in vain, to convince Hitler to give up
operation Barbarossa, he embraced the campaign against Russia as a chance to redeem credit from the disastrous British attack. As he had foreseen, the war against the Soviet Union turned out to be Germany's most ignominious defeat. Göring's contribution, as the head of the Luftwaffe, did not match his outlandish promises, and, as a result, decisively exacerbated his relationship with Hitler.
Göring also sponsored a ground combat unit, the eponymous
Hermann Göring Division, an elite unit which fought on various fronts with success. His other units on the eastern front were not so successful. At the Oder front, he had 2
Fallschirmjäger (airborne) divisions, which were partially composed of Luftwaffe's officers without any ground combat experience. He's known to have said in one of the Hassleben's planning meetings: "When my both airborne divisions attack, the entire Red Army can be thrown to hell". To no one's surprise, when the Red Army attacked, Göring's beloved
German 9th Parachute Division collapsed first.
He was also
Commander-in-Chief of
Forschungsamt ("
FA"), the Nazi underground monitoring services for telephone and radio communications. This was connected to
SS,
SD and
Abwehr intelligence services.
Göring was also placed in charge of exploiting the vast industrial resources captured during the war, particularly in the Soviet Union. This proved to be an almost total disaster and little of the available potential was effectively harnessed for the service of the German military machine. However, Göring was notorious for his role as one of the
Nazi plunderers of
art and other valuables from occupied Europe.
Göring was the highest figure in the Nazi Hierarchy who had authorized
on paper the '
final solution of the Jewish Question', when he issued a memo to
SS Obergruppenführer
Reinhard Heydrich to organize the practical details, (which culminated in the
Wannsee Conference). He wrote, "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question." It is almost certain however that Hitler issued a verbal order to Göring in the fall of
1941 to this effect.
Near the end of the war, as the
Red Army closed in around the German capital on
April 23 1945, Göring sent a telegram from
Berchtesgaden to Berlin in which he proposed to assume leadership of the
Reich as Hitler's designated successor. Hitler considered this disloyalty and high treason, especially because Göring mentioned a time limit after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated. Hitler had Göring placed under arrest by
Bernhard Frank on
April 25 and in his
political testament Hitler dismissed Göring from all his sundry offices and expelled him from the party.
|
Göring (first row, far left) at the Nuremberg Trials. |
Göring surrendered on
May 8,
1945 in
Austria. He was the second highest ranking Nazi official brought before the
Nuremberg Trials, behind Reich President (former Admiral)
Karl Dönitz. Göring's last days were spent with
Gustave Gilbert, a Jewish German-speaking intelligence officer and
psychologist who was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail. Gilbert classified Göring as having an
IQ of 138, the same as he ascribed to
Karl Dönitz. He kept a journal of his observations of the proceedings and his conversations with the prisoners, which he later published in the book
Nuremberg Diary. The following quotation was a part of a conversation Gilbert held with a dejected Göring in his cell on the evening of
18 April 1946, as the trials were halted for a three-day
Easter recess.
"Sweating in his cell in the evening, Göring was defensive and deflated and not very happy over the turn the trial was taking. He said that he had no control over the actions or the defense of the others, and that he had never been anti-Semitic himself, had not believed these atrocities, and that several Jews had offered to testify in his behalf."
Despite claims that he was not
anti-Semitic, while in the prison yard at Nuremberg, after hearing a remark about Jewish survivors in Hungary,
Albert Speer reported overhearing Göring say, "So, there are still some there? I thought we had knocked off all of them. Somebody slipped up again."
[Speer, Albert: Inside the Third Reich, The Macmillan Company, 1970, p. 605. ISBN 0684829495] |
Göring in his cell after committing suicide by cyanide |
Though he defended himself vigorously, he was sentenced to death by hanging; the judgment stated that "his guilt is unique in its enormity". One of his last acts was to ask his brother
Albert Göring to look after his wife and daughter. Göring said he would accept the court's death penalty if they allowed him to be shot as a soldier instead of hung as a common criminal, but the court members refused to allow him this honor. Defying the sentence imposed by his captors, he committed
suicide with a
potassium cyanide capsule the night before he was supposed to be
hanged. Where Göring obtained the cyanide, and how he had managed to hide it during his entire imprisonment at Nuremberg, remains unknown. In the
1950s,
Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski claimed that he had given Göring the cyanide shortly before Göring's death. However, this claim is usually dismissed. Later theories speculate that Göring befriended a U.S. Army Lieutenant stationed at the Nuremberg Trials who helped Göring obtain cyanide which had likely been hidden among Göring's personal effects when they were confiscated by the Army. In
2005, former Army private
Herbert Lee Stivers claimed he gave Göring "medicine" hidden inside a gift fountain pen from a German woman the private had met and flirted with. Stivers served in the
U.S. 1st Infantry Division's 26th Regiment, who formed the honour guard for the Nuremberg Trials. Stivers claims to have been unaware of what the "medicine" he delivered actually was until after Göring's death. After his suicide, Hermann Göring was
cremated and his ashes were scattered in the
Conwentzbach in Munich, which runs into the
Isar river.
When Göring had been promoted to the unique rank of "Reichsmarschall" on
July 19 1940, he at once decided to choose a personal standard for himself. The design in the centre of the left side displayed a German eagle embroidered in gold-yellow thread and clutching in its talons a gold swastika standing on its point. Set behind the swastika was a pair of crossed marshal's batons. The right side displayed in the centre a large black Iron Cross. It was the so called "Großkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes" that was only bestowed on him by Hitler. Set in each of the four sections of the field was a gold-yellow Luftwaffe eagle and swastika. The basic field was light blue on both sides, which indicated that he was also the Commander-In-Chief of the German Air Force. In February 1941 he made up his mind to modify the whole design in order to look more "fashionable". The standard was used for all purposes and was carried by a personal standard-bearer.
Image:Hermann Göring1 (Vorderseite).jpg|1. pattern (right side)Image:Hermann Göring1 (Rückseite).jpg|1. pattern (left side)Image:Hermann Göring2 (Vorderseite).jpg|2. pattern (right side)Image:Hermann Göring2 (Rückseite).jpg|2. pattern (left side)Image:Musee-de-lArmee-IMG 1056.jpg|Standard, on display at the Musée de la Guerre in the InvalidesGoering spoke about war and extreme nationalism during the Nuremberg trials in an interview with Gustave Gilbert, a Jewish German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist who was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail:
"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Just after World War II started, Goering said "If a single enemy aircraft ever appears over Berlin, you can call me Meier!" ("Meier" was a common German surname, analogous to the English "Smith"). By the end of the war, Berlin's air raid sirens were bitterly known to the city's residents as "Meier's trumpets", or "Meier's hunting horns."
*He has been portrayed by:
**
Jan Werich -
1949,
Padeniye Berlina (both parts)
**
Hein Reiss -
1969,
Battle of Britain.
**
Glenn Shadix - 1969,
The Empty Mirror.
**
Volker Spengler -
1996,
The Ogre, directed by
Volker Schlöndorff, also starring
John Malkovich.
**
Brian Cox -
2000,
Nuremberg (
television movie), also starring
Alec Baldwin and
Jill Hennessy.
**
Chris Larkin -
2003,
Hitler: The Rise of Evil (television movie).
**
Mathias Gnädinger -
2004,
Der Untergang.
There has been a lot of talk about making a Goring
biopic over the years, but there has been no major production, casting, scriptwriting, etc.
Warren Beatty was interested in doing a Goring movie for years, but he signed on to play
Dick Tracy. Many rumors suggest that
Martin Scorsese and
Robert De Niro planned for several years to do a film with De Niro in the titular role with Scorsese directing, but nothing concrete came out of those planning years.
Footage of Göring has been included in many films, notably in the
1935 Triumph des Willens by
Leni Riefenstahl. See his page at
IMDB [
1].
In
Philip José Farmer's
Riverworld, a
reincarnated Göring becomes a
missionary for the Church of the Second Chance, which was a pacifist religion.
Philip K. Dick's 1962
science-fiction alternate history novel
The Man in the High Castle mentions Göring, who, by 1962 is aging, morbidly obese, and the subject of much
rumor and speculation regarding his indulgent lifestyle (which is seen by some as akin to that of a corrupt
Roman emperor). He resides in his large estate within the
Alps.
Göring, along with
Adolf Hitler, was an early foe of
Captain America.
Göring is represented by the character
Emmanuel Giri in
The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui by
Bertolt Brecht. The play is a parody of the rise of Hitler, largely written in exile (1941), with various scenes added afterwards. It has been translated into English by
Ralph Manheim and published by
Methuen modern plays.
More humorously, the character of "General Herring" stands in for Göring in
Charlie Chaplin's
1940 film
The Great Dictator.
In the
BBC sci-fi comedy
Red Dwarf, Göring is denounced on multiple occations.
Dave Lister, a central character in the show, once said on the subject of the ship's computer bringing back his bunkmate in holographic form; 'Hermann Göring would have been better than
Rimmer. Ok, so he was a drug crazed Nazi transvestite, but at least we could have gone dancing!' The accuracy of this accusation is dubious.
*
Excerpt from Germany Reborn, by Hermann Göring, 1934*
*
Fest, Joachim:
Inside Hitler's Bunker, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002 ISBN 0374135770
*
Gilbert, Gustave: "
Nuremberg Diary", originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1947, p. 278-279. ISBN 0306806614
*Norman Franks, Frank Bailey, Russell Guest: "Above the Lines- A complete record of the fighter aces of the German Air service 1914-18", page 117.
*
A survivor and Nuremberg journalist recalls a surreal meeting with Goering By Ernest W. Michel for the
JTA November 21, 2005
*
TRIAL : Göring trial
