Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (also Goering in English) (January 12, 1893 – October 15, 1946) was an early member of the Nazi party, founder of the Gestapo, and one of the main leaders of Nazi Germany. He was tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946 and sentenced to death, but he avoided execution by committing suicide in his cell, a few hours before the sentence was to be carried out.
Early life
Göring was born in Rosenheim, Bavaria to Heinrich Ernst Göring, a lawyer and colonial bureaucrat, and Franziska. Often apart from his parents, he was tutored at home before attending cadet schools at Karlsruhe and Lichterfelde.
In World War I he was commissioned in the infantry, then became a pilot. He flew reconnaissance and bombing missions before becoming a fighter pilot. By the end of the war he was a highly decorated "ace" and commanded the famed Jasta 11.
In mid-1915 Göring began his pilot training at Freiburg, and on completing the course he was posted to Jagdstaffel 5. He was soon shot down and spent most of 1916 recovering from his injuries. On his return in November 1916 he joined Jagdstaffel 26, before being given his first command. In 1917 he was awarded the Pour le Mérite. On July 7, 1918, after the death of Baron Manfred von Richthofen (The Red Baron), he was made commander of Jagdgeschwader Freiherr von Richthofen (Jasta 11). He finished the war as an "ace," with 22 confirmed kills. Incidentally, his appointed as commander had not been well received and he was the only veteran of Jasta 11 to have never been invited to the squadron's 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 with 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 Karin von Kantzow (née Fock, 1888-1931), whom he later married. She died in 1931, and soon after he married actress Emmy Sonnemann.
Political career
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.
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.
The famous quotation, "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning" is frequently attributed to Göring. 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.
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. 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.
World War II
Once World War II started, Göring became the driving force behind the failed attempt to force Britain's surrender (or at least acquiescence) by air battle in the Battle of Britain. After that campaign he lost much of his influence in the Nazi hierarchy, exacerbated by the Luftwaffe's failings in Russia and against the Allied bomber raids. His reputation for extravagance made him particularly unpopular as ordinary Germans began to suffer deprivations.
Göring was the only WWII recipient of the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross, awarded to him by Hitler for his leadership of the Luftwaffe during the conquest of France and the Low Countries. He avidly pursued additional decorations, in marked contrast to Hitler, who wore only what he earned in WWI.
Göring also sponsored a ground combat unit, the eponymous Hermann Göring Division, which fought on various fronts with mixed success.
He was also Commander-in-Chief of Forschungsamt ("FA"), the German Nazi underground monitoring services for telephone and radio comunications. 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 became notorious among the Nazi elite for pilfering 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). It is almost certain however that Hitler issued a verbal order to Göring in the fall of 1941 to this effect.
In his political testament just before his own suicide, Hitler expelled Göring and Heinrich Himmler from the party and from all offices of State for disloyalty to him, for negotiating with the enemy without his knowledge and against his wishes, and for illegally attempting to seize power in the State for themselves. This referred to a telegram which Göring sent from Berchtesgaden to Hitler in Berlin on April 23, 1945, in which he offered to take command of the Reich as Hitler's designated successor. Hitler accused Göring of high treason, stripped him of all his offices, and had him placed under arrest by Bernhard Frank on April 25.
Capture, trial and death
Göring surrendered on May 8, 1945 in Austria. He was the highest ranking Nazi official brought before the Nuremberg Trials. Though he defended himself vigorously, he was sentenced to death; the judgement 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. 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 would claim that he had given Göring the cyanide shortly before Göring's death; however, this claim is most often dismissed. Modern day theories speculate that Göring had befriended a U.S. Army Lieutenant, stationed at the Nuremberg Trials, who had aided Göring in obtaining cyanide which had most likely been hidden in Göring's personal effects confiscated by the Army. In 2005, a retired Army private, Herbert Lee Stivers, claimed that he delivered "medicine" hidden inside a fountain pen to Göring from a German woman he had met and flirted with. Stivers served in the US 1st Infantry Division's 26th Regiment, who formed the honor 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 into the Conwentzbach in Munich, which runs into the Isar river.
Göring's last days
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 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."
However, in the prison yard at Nuremberg, after a remark was made 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." However, this will be an account disputed by many because of Albert Speer's involvement in the Third Reich and his anti-semitism.[1]
In fiction
In Philip José Farmer's Riverworld, a reincarnated Göring becomes a missionary for the Church of the Second Chance, 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 was an early foe of Captain America, along with Adolf Hitler.
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.
In film
- 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.
Footage of Göring has been included in many films, notably in the 1935 Triumph des Willens by Leni Riefenstahl.
Books about Göring
- Frischauer, Willi: The Rise and Fall of Hermann Goering (Ballantine Books 1951)
- Overy, Richard J.: Goering: The Iron Man (Routledge 1984)
- Maser, Werner: Hitlers janusköpfiger Paladin:die politische Biographie, (German) (Berlin 2000) ISBN 38-6124-509-4
- excerpt from Hermann Göring book "Germany Reborn"
Quotes
"Guns will make us strong, butter will only make us fat."
Reference
- ^ Speer, Albert: Inside the Third Reich, The Macmillan Company, 1970, p. 605. ISBN 0684829495
External links
- A survivor and Nuremberg journalist recalls a surreal meeting with Goering By Ernest W. Michel for the JTA November 21, 2005
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