The first thing to understand about Hermann Göring is that he did not wake up early. While the men around him prided themselves on discipline and sacrifice, Göring slept until ten or eleven in the morning, sometimes later, buried in silk sheets at Karinhall, his vast estate north of Berlin. The bedroom looked like a palace gallery. Ornate furniture, paintings worth millions, everything excessive, everything for show.
When he finally stirred, servants brought breakfast in bed. Not a simple meal. A feast. Eggs, sausages, pastries, several kinds of bread, jams, cheeses, fruit.
Göring weighed enormous amounts by the later war years, and his appetite was legendary. He would eat for an hour, sometimes longer, while flipping through reports and newspapers. But there was something most people did not know. Göring was a drug addict.
He had been hooked on morphine since the 1920s, after being wounded during Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch. Every morning, and often multiple times through the day, he injected himself or swallowed pills laced with opiates. The addiction clouded his judgment, made him erratic, and contributed to his eventual downfall. His staff knew.
Hitler knew. But Göring was too powerful, too close to the Führer, for anyone to intervene. After breakfast and his morning dose, he spent an absurd amount of time choosing what to wear. This was not a matter of slipping into a standard uniform.
Göring had designed dozens of elaborate uniforms for himself, each more ridiculous than the last. White uniforms with gold braid. Sky blue uniforms with medals covering every inch. Hunting outfits that looked like they belonged in a costume drama.
He loved clothes the way some men love cars or jewels. He would stand before mirrors, posing, adjusting his medals, checking every detail. He wore makeup. He painted his nails.
He used perfume. For a man who claimed to embody German military strength, he was remarkably obsessed with his appearance in ways his fellow Nazis would have considered unmanly. But no one dared mock him to his face. He was still Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, and Hitler’s designated successor.
By noon he might finally reach his office, though the word office was generous. Göring hated paperwork. He hated complicated details. He preferred grand gestures and big-picture decisions, then let others handle the boring parts.
As head of the Luftwaffe, he was responsible for one of the most powerful air forces in the world, but he was a terrible administrator. He made promises he could not keep, approved unrealistic production goals, and ignored warnings from his own generals when they contradicted what he wanted to hear. When the Luftwaffe began to fail, first in the Battle of Britain, then as Allied bombers destroyed German cities, Göring blamed everyone but himself. His pilots were cowards.
His engineers were incompetent. His intelligence officers were liars. He could not accept that his own leadership was part of the problem. What Göring truly loved was acquiring things.
Art, jewels, property, anything valuable. He used his position to loot art collections across occupied Europe, especially from Jewish families who had been murdered or driven into exile. His agents confiscated paintings, sculptures, rare books, and furniture, sending the best pieces to Karinhall and his other properties. He amassed one of the largest private art collections in Europe, worth hundreds of millions even by 1940 standards.
His afternoons were often spent examining new acquisitions. He had art dealers and experts brought to him, showing off his treasures and boasting about his taste. He saw himself as a Renaissance prince, a cultured man who appreciated beauty. The fact that most of this art was stolen from murdered people did not seem to bother him at all.
In his mind, he was rescuing masterpieces and giving them a proper home. He also loved hunting. He owned vast hunting estates and spent many afternoons shooting deer, boar, and other game. He dressed in theatrical hunting costumes he designed himself, so extravagant that even other Nazis found them embarrassing.
Göring did not care. He wanted to look like a medieval nobleman, and he had the power to make that fantasy real. Lunch was another enormous meal, often lasting two hours or more. Göring held court like a king, inviting guests to dine with him.
He was a good storyteller and could be charming when he chose. He told jokes, shared war stories from World War I when he had been a flying ace, and gossiped about other Nazi leaders. He loved being the center of attention. But beneath the charm was something monstrous.
Göring was directly responsible for some of the worst crimes of the Nazi regime. He was one of the primary architects of the Holocaust. In 1941 he signed the order authorizing the Final Solution, the systematic murder of European Jews. He knew exactly what happened in the concentration and death camps.
He approved the logistics, the resources, the personnel needed to carry out genocide on an industrial scale. He was also responsible for creating the Gestapo, the secret police that terrorized Germany and occupied territories. He established the first concentration camps, beginning with Dachau in 1933. He oversaw the brutal suppression of all opposition.
People disappeared in the night, were tortured in basements, and were sent to camps where they died by the thousands. Yet Göring compartmentalized all of it. In his mind, he was simply doing what was necessary for Germany’s greatness. He would spend his afternoons admiring stolen paintings, then casually sign orders that resulted in thousands of deaths.
The cognitive dissonance was staggering. By evening he was usually back at his estate. Dinner was another lavish affair. Multiple courses, the finest wines, servants attending to every need.
He hosted parties for foreign diplomats, artists, and even some aristocrats who had survived the Nazi rise to power. These gatherings were surreal. Champagne flowing, an orchestra playing, people dancing, while outside Germany was at war and people were dying. Göring gave tours of his art collection, told stories about his adventures, and basked in admiration.
He needed constant validation, constant attention. He wanted to be loved, seen as sophisticated and powerful. As the war turned against Germany, his lifestyle became increasingly disconnected from reality. While German cities were bombed to rubble, while soldiers died by the hundreds of thousands on the Eastern Front, Göring continued to live in luxury.
He gained even more weight, became more dependent on drugs, and made increasingly poor decisions. His relationship with Hitler deteriorated. Hitler began to see him as weak, a failure who had let the Luftwaffe collapse. By 1943 and 1944, Göring was largely sidelined.
He spent more time at his estates and less in Berlin. He focused on his art collection, on hunting, on anything that would let him escape the reality that Germany was losing the war. In the final days, Göring made a fatal miscalculation. When Hitler was trapped in his bunker in Berlin, Göring sent a telegram suggesting he take over leadership of Germany since Hitler was cut off.
Hitler saw it as betrayal and stripped Göring of all his positions. It was a humiliating end to decades of loyalty. After the war, Göring was captured by American forces. At the Nuremberg trials, he was the highest-ranking Nazi to stand trial.
Unlike many co-defendants who appeared broken or tried to deny their actions, Göring remained defiant. He was charming, articulate, and utterly unrepentant. He defended the Nazi regime, argued with prosecutors, and tried to portray himself as a soldier who had simply followed orders and loved his country. He was convicted on all counts.
Crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy. He was sentenced to death by hanging. But Göring had one final act of defiance. The night before his execution, he swallowed a cyanide capsule he had somehow hidden from his guards.
He denied the Allies the satisfaction of executing him. Even in death, he needed to be in control. Karl Dönitz was a different kind of man. A creature of routine and discipline.
Unlike Göring, who lived in luxury and excess, Dönitz saw himself as a true naval officer, a man of the sea. His morning started early, usually around six. He exercised, nothing elaborate, just basic calisthenics and stretching. He despised physical weakness.
Afterward he washed, dressed in his crisp naval uniform, and sat down for a simple breakfast. Black coffee, bread, butter, perhaps some cheese or cold cuts. He ate quickly and efficiently. Food was fuel.
He had no time for long, indulgent meals. His mind was already on the war, on his submarines, on the ships they would hunt that day. By seven-thirty he was at his desk. Whether at his headquarters in occupied France, later in Berlin, or aboard his command ship, the routine never changed.
The first order of business was reports. Dozens of them. Throughout the night his U-boats had been prowling the Atlantic, hunting Allied convoys carrying supplies, troops, and weapons from America to Britain. Each submarine commander sent back coded messages about positions, targets, and kills.
Dönitz read every report personally. He did not delegate this task. He wanted to know exactly where each submarine was, what it was doing, and how successful it had been. He studied maps covered with tiny markers representing his wolf packs, groups of U-boats that hunted together like predators stalking prey.
He moved the markers, calculated distances, plotted intercept courses, and decided which submarine should attack which convoy. This was not just military strategy. This was economic warfare designed to starve Britain into submission. His U-boats did not just sink warships.
They sank cargo ships, oil tankers, and supply vessels. They sent thousands of merchant sailors to the bottom of the ocean. Many died slow, horrible deaths, freezing in the water or drowning as their ships went down. Dönitz knew this.
He understood the human cost. And he did not care. To him, it was simply war. He was deeply involved in the U-boat war.
He knew many of his captains by name. He read their reports, praised their successes, and mourned their losses. When a U-boat failed to return, which happened more and more as the war went on, he marked it as lost and moved on. But privately the losses ate at him.
He saw his submariners as his sons, his boys. Still, he kept sending them out, knowing fewer and fewer would come back. By mid-morning he held meetings with his staff officers. These sessions could last hours.
They discussed tactics, new technologies, and intelligence about Allied defenses. Dönitz was obsessed with improving his U-boats. He pushed for faster submarines, better torpedoes, and new ways to evade detection. He was a technical innovator, always looking for an edge.
One of his most significant contributions was the wolf pack tactic. Instead of submarines hunting alone, Dönitz coordinated groups to attack convoys simultaneously from multiple directions. This overwhelmed the escorts and caused devastating Allied shipping losses. He spent hours at his plotting table orchestrating these attacks like a conductor leading an orchestra of death.
He tracked weather patterns, moon phases, and convoy schedules with meticulous detail. He also personally reviewed every aspect of U-boat design and crew training. He visited shipyards to inspect new submarines under construction, demanding modifications based on feedback from his captains. He established rigorous training programs, knowing even the best technology was useless without skilled operators.
He created specialized schools where men learned to operate in the claustrophobic, dangerous world of a submarine. These vessels were essentially steel coffins. They were cramped, smelly, terrifying. One depth charge could crush the hull and kill everyone instantly.
Dönitz demanded absolute perfection from his crews. But here is where things get darker. Dönitz was not just a military professional doing his duty. He was a committed Nazi.
He believed in Hitler’s vision and supported the regime fully. In speeches to his men, he spoke about loyalty to the Führer, about fighting for the survival of the German race, about total commitment to National Socialism. He was not forced to say these things. He meant them.
He knew about and supported the Holocaust. He did not personally operate the camps, but he was fully aware of what was happening. He never spoke out. He never questioned it.
He actively worked to remove Jewish sailors and personnel from the Navy. He issued orders aligned with Nazi racial policies and enforced them without hesitation. This was not a man merely following orders. He was a true believer.
Lunch was around noon, quick and functional. He might eat at his desk while continuing to work, or join senior officers in a small dining room. The meals were simple, typical German military fare. Potatoes, vegetables, meat, bread.
He did not drink alcohol during the day. He needed to stay focused. His mind was always on the war, always on the next operation. In the afternoons, Dönitz often traveled.
He visited submarine bases along the French coast, places like Lorient, Brest, and Saint-Nazaire. These bases were heavily fortified with massive concrete bunkers that protected the U-boats from Allied bombing. When he arrived, it was a major event. He inspected the submarines, talked to the crews, gave speeches.
His speeches were powerful. He spoke with conviction and passion. He told his young submariners they were Germany’s elite warriors, that the fate of the nation rested on their shoulders. He praised their courage and sacrifice.
He told them they were fighting for their families, their homeland, their future. And then he sent them out to die. Many men who served under him genuinely loved him. He had a talent for making each sailor feel important, for remembering names and details about their lives.
When a crew returned from a successful patrol, he was often there personally to greet them, shaking hands, handing out medals, posing for photographs. He cultivated this image of the caring commander. But it was a calculated performance. He needed these young men to trust him completely, to follow orders without question, even when those orders meant sailing toward almost certain death.
The psychological toll on U-boat crews was immense. They spent weeks at a time submerged in darkness, breathing recycled air, never knowing if the next moment would bring a depth charge that would crush them. They could not shower. They could not escape the constant noise of engines and creaking hulls.
Some men broke down completely. Others became numb. Dönitz was aware of all this, but he saw it as the price of victory. He believed German willpower could overcome any obstacle, even the mathematics and technology that proved the campaign was becoming unsustainable.
By 1943 and 1944, that is exactly what was happening. The Allies had cracked German naval codes. They knew where the U-boats were. They developed better sonar, faster escort ships, and long-range aircraft that hunted submarines from the sky.
The Atlantic was becoming a graveyard for German submariners. Of roughly forty thousand men who served in the U-boat force during the war, about thirty thousand died. A seventy-five percent death rate, the highest of any military branch in the entire war. Dönitz knew the odds.
He saw casualty reports every single day. He kept sending them out. When his own son served on a U-boat and was killed in action, Dönitz grieved privately, but publicly called it an honor. He used his son’s death as propaganda, proof of his commitment to the cause.
By evening he returned to his quarters. He lived modestly compared to other Nazi leaders. No grand palaces, no lavish estates. Just functional military housing.
He had dinner, again simple, then spent the late evening reading reports, writing orders, and planning the next day. He also wrote in his diary and composed reports for Hitler. Dönitz had a complicated relationship with the Führer. He respected Hitler’s authority but often disagreed with his naval strategy.
Unlike some Nazi leaders who feared Hitler, Dönitz could speak relatively frankly. Hitler respected him because he delivered results and was loyal without being a sycophant. That loyalty led to one of history’s strangest moments. In April 1945, as the regime collapsed and Hitler prepared to die in his bunker, he chose Karl Dönitz to succeed him as leader of Germany.
Not Goebbels. Not Himmler. Not Göring. Dönitz, a naval officer, became the last Führer of Nazi Germany.
For twenty-three days, Dönitz led what remained of the Third Reich. He operated from northern Germany, trying to negotiate surrender terms and maintain some form of government. It was futile. Germany was defeated.
On May 23, 1945, British forces arrested Dönitz and his government. Unlike many top Nazis who committed suicide or went into hiding, he faced trial at Nuremberg. He was convicted of war crimes and crimes against peace. He served ten years in Spandau Prison.
Throughout his imprisonment and for the rest of his life, Dönitz never truly accepted responsibility. He maintained he was simply a naval officer doing his duty. He denied being a committed Nazi despite all evidence. He expressed no real remorse.
After his release in 1956, he lived quietly in northern Germany until his death in 1980. He wrote memoirs portraying himself as a professional sailor caught up in events beyond his control. Many former submariners remained loyal, seeing him as a father figure. But the historical record tells a different story.
Even decades after the war, Dönitz attended reunions of former U-boat crews. Old men who had served under him still called him Grand Admiral and treated him with reverence. He signed autographs, posed for pictures, and basked in their admiration. He never apologized for the war crimes committed under his command.
He never acknowledged the moral bankruptcy of the cause he served. He spoke about duty, honor, and military professionalism, as if those concepts existed in a vacuum, separate from the evil regime he had faithfully served. In private conversations recorded by historians and journalists, he continued to defend Hitler’s early policies and only criticized his later military decisions. He claimed he had known nothing about the Holocaust, despite mountains of evidence.
He maintained this fiction until his death. His funeral was attended by hundreds of former navy personnel, some of whom gave the Nazi salute at his grave. A final testament to the ideology he had never truly abandoned.
