Hermann Göring: Hitler’s right-hand man

Hermann Wilhelm Göring was born on 12 January 1893 in Rosenheim, Bavaria, into a family with strong ties to imperial service.

His father, Heinrich Ernst Göring, had served as Reichskommissar in German South West Africa and maintained a respected diplomatic career.

His mother, Franziska Tiefenbrunn, was Heinrich's second wife, and Hermann was the fifth of six children.

Due to frequent absences by his parents, young Hermann spent much of his childhood in the care of family friends in southern Germany, where he developed an early admiration for military discipline and tradition. 

He entered cadet school at Karlsruhe and later trained at the Lichterfelde military academy in Berlin, where he followed a strict routine that prepared him for a future as an officer.

Upon graduating in 1912, Göring joined the Prince Wilhelm Regiment of the Prussian army.

As war erupted across Europe in August 1914, he transferred from infantry service into the Luftstreitkräfte, where he trained as a pilot and began to fly reconnaissance missions before becoming a combat aviator. 

Throughout the war, he built a reputation as an aggressive and skilful fighter pilot.

He joined Jagdgeschwader 1, the fighter wing led by Manfred von Richthofen, and eventually took command of the unit following Richthofen’s death in April 1918.

After the subsequent death of Wilhelm Reinhard in July, Göring formally assumed command.

His leadership of the squadron earned him the Pour le Mérite, the highest military honour awarded in the German Empire.

By the end of the war, he had claimed 22 aerial victories and established himself as a national hero, though Germany’s defeat and the collapse of the monarchy quickly eroded the public esteem that once surrounded his name. 

In the years following the armistice, Göring found himself adrift in a defeated nation that had descended into economic turmoil and political fragmentation.

He moved to Sweden, where he married Carin von Kantzow, a member of the Swedish aristocracy, and attempted to restart his life.

However, neither his foreign residence nor his marriage gave him the influence or security he desired.

When he returned to Germany in the early 1920s, the Weimar Republic remained mired in economic collapse, notable for runaway inflation and pervasive street violence that fuelled public discontent. 

During a nationalist rally at the Munich Bürgerbräukeller in 1922, Göring heard Hitler speak for the first time and quickly became convinced that the Nazi leader’s vision of national revival offered a path back to order and power.

His wartime fame and officer’s bearing impressed Hitler, who made Göring commander of the SA, the party’s paramilitary wing.

In this role, he used violence and intimidation against socialist and communist groups across Bavaria.

His participation in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923 had left him wounded and had forced him to flee Germany to avoid arrest. 

Over the next several years, Göring lived in Austria and Italy, where he spiralled into morphine addiction, which began during treatment for injuries sustained in the Putsch.

His erratic behaviour and isolation increased after Carin’s death in 1931, yet he remained committed to Hitler’s cause and kept in contact with party officials.

When political conditions changed and Hitler resumed public activities, Göring returned and began rebuilding his position within the Nazi movement.

An amnesty issued in 1927 had allowed him to re-enter Germany without fear of prosecution. 

By 1928, Göring had been elected to the Reichstag and had won support among conservative voters and industrial backers through his name recognition and personal appeal.

He presented himself as a respectable nationalist who could act as a bridge between radical streetfighters and Germany’s elite.

After the July 1932 elections, the Nazi Party became the largest in the Reichstag, and Göring was chosen as its president on 30 August 1932. From this position, he blocked government legislation and helped bring the Weimar system to a halt. 

Following Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in January 1933, Göring took control of the Prussian police and established the Gestapo on 26 April 1933 as a secret political police force in Prussia.

Although he had initiated its creation, administrative control of the Gestapo passed to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934, who transformed it into a national institution of terror.

Göring used his initial powers to arrest and imprison thousands of political opponents, which laid the groundwork for Nazi totalitarianism.

After the Reichstag fire in February 1933, he worked with Hitler to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended key civil liberties and justified mass detentions without trial.

He also played a key role in securing support for the Enabling Act in March 1933, which gave Hitler dictatorial powers under a veneer of legality. 

As his influence expanded, Göring amassed a wide range of titles, including Minister-President of Prussia, Minister of Aviation, and Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan.

He led the rearmament programme and focused on the construction of the Luftwaffe, which Germany formally unveiled in March 1935.

Through the economic controls of the Four Year Plan, initiated in October 1936, he gained control over steel, coal, and synthetic fuel production, allowing him to control entire industries.

He became known for his showy style, elaborate uniforms and personal collections of art and valuables looted from across Europe.

By the late 1930s, his "Reichswerke Hermann Göring" had become one of the largest industrial conglomerates in Europe. 

When World War II began in September 1939, Göring held the rank of Reichsmarschall and led the Luftwaffe.

In the early stages of the war, he remained the second-most powerful figure in Nazi Germany, but his influence began to decline after 1943 as other leaders like Himmler and Bormann gained greater favour with Hitler.

His promises of rapid air superiority soon failed. During the Battle of Britain from 10 July to 31 October 1940, he assured Hitler that the Royal Air Force could be destroyed through sustained bombing campaigns, but British radar systems, decentralised command, and the determination of Fighter Command undermined his strategy. 

Instead of concentrating attacks on airfields and radar stations, Göring ordered the Luftwaffe to bomb London and other cities in an effort to break British morale.

This decision allowed British air defences to regroup and launch effective counterattacks.

The failure to win air superiority over Britain directly contributed to the cancellation of Operation Sea Lion, Germany’s planned invasion of the British Isles. 

In subsequent campaigns, Göring’s decisions continued to disappoint. His assurances that the Luftwaffe could supply the encircled Sixth Army at Stalingrad during the winter of 1942 to 1943 proved seriously wrong.

He had claimed that air transport could deliver 500 tonnes of supplies per day, yet most days saw less than a third of that amount arrive.

The failure of the Stalingrad airlift contributed to one of the most devastating defeats in German military history and showed that Göring's competence had declined and that he had become distant from operational realities. 

Throughout the war, Göring used his official positions to enrich himself through the seizure of Jewish property and the exploitation of conquered territories.

As early as 1938, he authorised the creation of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, which coordinated the expropriation of wealth from Jewish communities under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich.

On 31 July 1941, Göring signed the order instructing Heydrich to prepare the administrative plans for the “Final Solution”, which authorised the deportation and mass murder of European Jews. 

He directed the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), an organisation tasked with the theft of cultural property, which looted museums, libraries, and private homes across occupied Europe.

Göring selected over 1,000 stolen artworks for his private collection at Carinhall, his vast estate northeast of Berlin near Groß Dölln in Brandenburg, and arranged for the transport of thousands of pieces of art to Germany.

His greed and self-indulgence became infamous among other Nazi leaders. When Allied forces advanced in 1945, he ordered Carinhall destroyed to prevent its capture. 

His leadership of the Four Year Plan brought millions of foreign labourers into German industries under harsh and brutal conditions.

Many were forced to work in mines, munitions factories, and aircraft plants under constant threat of violence, starvation, or execution.

These labour policies, combined with his role in Nazi racial planning, tied Göring directly to crimes against humanity under international law. 

As Nazi Germany collapsed in the spring of 1945, Göring attempted to assert control based on a secret directive signed by Hitler in 1939 that named him as successor in the event of the Führer’s incapacitation.

On 23 April, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden in which he suggested that he take over leadership, but Hitler viewed the message as a betrayal and had Göring stripped of all titles and arrested by the SS. 

American forces captured Göring on 6 May near the Austrian border and later transferred him to the U.S. Army’s interrogation centre at Mondorf-les-Bains in Luxembourg.

He appeared at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946, where he faced charges including conspiracy to wage aggressive war, planning and initiating invasions, committing war crimes, and orchestrating crimes against humanity. 

During the trial, Göring attempted to manipulate the proceedings, presented himself as the intellectual architect of Nazi Germany and defended the regime’s actions as necessary for national survival.

His conduct in the courtroom, however, did little to counter the overwhelming evidence of his guilt.

He was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to death by hanging. Hours before his execution on 15 October 1946, he ingested a cyanide capsule smuggled into his cell, possibly hidden in a jar of skin medication or a lipstick case, thereby avoiding the public justice that many of his victims had demanded.

His suicide prompted an immediate investigation into security breaches at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg.