He was Hitler’s most loyal paladin, a decorated war hero turned political enforcer, the man who built the Gestapo, commanded the Luftwaffe, and was officially named the Führer’s successor. By the end of the war, however, the second most powerful man in the Reich had fallen so far that he died a prisoner, stripped of every title, clutching a cyanide capsule he had hidden for months. The story of his rise and ruin is one of ambition, luxury, addiction, and betrayal, and it ended in a cell at Nuremberg just hours before he was to be hanged. Hermann Wilhelm Göring was born on January 12, 1893, in Rosenheim, Bavaria.
His father, Heinrich Ernst Göring, was a senior colonial official who had served as the first Reich Commissioner of German Southwest Africa. His mother, Franziska Tiefenbrunn, came from a Bavarian peasant family. The contrast between his parents’ backgrounds shaped the household. Heinrich was distant and often absent, and Franziska, overwhelmed by five children, sent young Hermann to live with a family friend in Fürth shortly after his birth.
He did not return to his parents for three years. The family’s fortunes changed through Hermann von Epenstein, a wealthy physician and his father’s close friend. Epenstein provided the Görings with two of his properties: Burg Veldenstein, a medieval castle near Nuremberg, and Burg Mauterndorf in Austria. The arrangement was unusual, as Epenstein lived openly with Göring’s mother at Veldenstein while Heinrich occupied a separate floor.
The children were aware of the situation, but it was never openly discussed. These estates gave the young Göring a taste of aristocratic life, complete with hunting grounds, servants, and grand halls. He later recalled this period as formative, developing a love for military pageantry and medieval imagery that never left him. The castle’s armory, the suits of armor lining the corridors, and the rituals of the hunt all fed a romantic self-image that would later manifest in his extravagant lifestyle and obsessive collecting.
Göring was educated at boarding schools and eventually entered the Karlsruhe Military Academy, followed by the prestigious Lichterfelde Cadet School in Berlin. He graduated with distinction in 1912 and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Prince Wilhelm Regiment, an infantry unit stationed in Alsace. When World War I broke out in August 1914, Göring was among the first to see combat. He served initially as an infantry officer on the Western Front, but recurring bouts of rheumatic fever led to hospitalization.
During his recovery, a friend who flew reconnaissance missions persuaded him to transfer to the air service. It was a decision that transformed his life. Göring proved to be a natural pilot, aggressive and fearless. He flew first as an observer, photographing enemy positions from open cockpits while under fire, then trained as a fighter pilot, joining Jagdstaffel 27 in late 1916.
His aerial combat record grew steadily. He developed a reputation for closing to dangerously short range before firing, a tactic that was effective but reckless. On several occasions, his aircraft was badly damaged, and he survived at least one forced landing behind friendly lines after his engine was shot out. By mid-1918, he had been credited with 22 confirmed kills, earning the Pour le Mérite, Imperial Germany’s highest military decoration.
In July 1918, he received the command that would define his public identity for years to come. He was appointed leader of Jagdgeschwader 1, the legendary fighter wing previously led by Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. Although Göring led the unit for only the war’s final months, the association with Richthofen’s squadron gave him a lasting aura of heroism that he would exploit for the rest of his political career. The armistice of November 1918 hit Göring hard.
He was openly bitter about the surrender and reportedly ordered his pilots to destroy their aircraft rather than hand them over to the Allies. When he returned home, he found a country he barely recognized. The Kaiser had abdicated, revolutionary councils had briefly seized power in Berlin and Munich, and the proud military establishment he had served was being dismantled under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Like many returning veterans, he struggled to find his place in the Weimar Republic.
The new democratic government was, in his eyes, illegitimate, and the officers who had fought and bled for the empire were treated as relics of a discredited age. He briefly worked as a commercial pilot in Denmark and Sweden, performing stunt flights and transport runs. It was during this period in early 1920 that he met Carin von Kantzow, a Swedish baroness married to an army officer. Their affair led to her divorce, and the two married in Munich in February 1923.
Carin’s family wealth and social connections helped sustain Göring during these unstable years, and her influence on him was considerable. She shared his romantic nationalism and became deeply involved in his political activities, hosting gatherings for Nazi sympathizers in their Munich apartment. He later named his grand hunting estate northeast of Berlin, Carinhall, in her memory after her death from tuberculosis in 1931. It was in Munich in late 1922 that Göring first encountered Adolf Hitler.
He attended a rally where Hitler spoke about the betrayal of Germany and the need for national renewal. Göring was immediately drawn in. For Hitler, Göring was a prize recruit: a decorated war hero with social standing and public name recognition. Hitler quickly appointed him commander of the Sturmabteilung, the SA, the party’s paramilitary wing.
Göring brought military discipline to what had been a disorganized group of street fighters, reorganizing units and enforcing a command structure. This role placed him at the center of the party’s physical force apparatus. On November 9, 1923, Göring marched alongside Hitler in the Beer Hall Putsch, the failed attempt to seize power in Munich. The plan had been to march on the Bavarian Defense Ministry and seize key government buildings.
But when the column of roughly 2,000 marchers reached the narrow Residenzstrasse leading to the Feldherrnhalle, they found their path blocked by a cordon of state police. Shots were fired. The exchange lasted less than a minute, but left 16 Nazis and four policemen dead. Göring was struck by a bullet in the groin and upper thigh.
The wound was severe. He was carried to safety by SA men and smuggled across the Austrian border by party sympathizers. In Austrian and later Swedish hospitals, doctors treated his injury with morphine. The pain was intense and prolonged, and what began as medical treatment became a dependency that haunted him for decades.
His morphine addiction grew severe during his years of exile. In Sweden, Carin’s family watched his condition deteriorate. By 1925, his behavior had become erratic enough that he was briefly committed to Långbro Asylum in Stockholm, where medical staff documented his dependency and noted violent mood swings. One attending physician described him as a sentimentalist who wept openly one moment and flew into rages the next.
He was treated and eventually released, though the addiction never fully left him. It would resurface throughout his life, later compounded by paracodine and other opioid-based medications. Despite his condition, Göring returned to Germany in 1927, benefiting from a political amnesty. He rejoined the Nazi Party and quickly reasserted himself.
Hitler valued him not only for his war record, but for his ability to move in upper-class circles, connecting the party with industrialists, aristocrats, and military officers who might otherwise dismiss the Nazis as a fringe movement. Göring cultivated relationships with figures like Fritz Thyssen, the steel magnate, and Hjalmar Schacht, the influential banker, funneling crucial financial support to the party during its years of growth. In the 1928 Reichstag elections, Göring won a seat as one of 12 Nazi deputies. It was a small foothold, but it gave the party a voice in the national parliament.
As the Nazi Party surged in the early 1930s, Göring’s role expanded dramatically. After the July 1932 elections made the Nazis the largest party in the Reichstag, Göring was elected president of the Reichstag, a position of significant procedural power. He used it ruthlessly, manipulating parliamentary rules to obstruct opponents and to advance Nazi legislation. When Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933, Göring became one of the most powerful men in the new government overnight.
Hitler entrusted him with two critical portfolios. As minister without portfolio in the Reich cabinet and Prussian minister of the interior, Göring controlled the police forces of Germany’s largest state. He moved immediately. Within weeks, he purged the Prussian police of officers deemed politically unreliable, replacing them with Nazi loyalists and SA men.
He authorized police to use firearms against political opponents and issued orders that effectively legalized violence against communists and social democrats. Those police changes consolidated Nazi control. The Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, provided a pivotal opportunity. Whether the fire was set by the lone Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe acting alone or aided by Nazi agents remains debated, but Göring seized the moment without hesitation.
That same night, he ordered mass arrests of Communist Party officials and leftist organizers across Prussia. The following day, the Reichstag Fire Decree suspended civil liberties, including freedom of speech, assembly, and the press. It became the legal foundation for the Nazi police state, and Göring was its most aggressive enforcer from the first hours. In April 1933, he established the Geheime Staatspolizei, the Gestapo, the secret state police, as a dedicated political police force operating outside normal legal constraints.
He appointed Rudolf Diels, a career civil servant with intelligence experience, as its first director. Under Göring’s authority, the Gestapo conducted sweeping arrests, operated early concentration camps like Columbia House in Berlin, and built networks of informants across Prussian society. The Gestapo became the regime’s primary tool for crushing political opposition in its earliest and most vulnerable months. Though Göring created it, he would lose control of it within a year as Heinrich Himmler maneuvered to absorb it into the SS empire.
By April 1934, Göring transferred authority over the Gestapo to Himmler, a decision he later regretted but one that reflected the shifting power dynamics within the regime. The Night of the Long Knives in late June 1934 further cemented Göring’s position in the inner circle. Hitler had decided to eliminate the SA leadership under Ernst Röhm, whose growing independence and calls for a second revolution threatened the regime’s alliance with the army and conservative elites. Göring, along with Himmler, played a central role in planning and executing the purge.
In Berlin, Göring personally oversaw the arrest and execution of SA leaders and other perceived enemies, including individuals who had nothing to do with Röhm but whom Göring or other senior Nazis wanted removed. Among those killed was General Kurt von Schleicher, the former chancellor, and his wife. Göring later publicly justified the killings before the Reichstag, framing them as necessary to prevent a coup against the state. With the SA neutralized, Göring turned his attention to his expanding empire.
In March 1935, Hitler announced the creation of the Luftwaffe, the new German air force, in open defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. Göring was named its commander-in-chief. For a former fighter ace, it was the perfect role. He threw himself into building the force from the ground up, drawing on secret rearmament programs that had been underway since the early 1930s.
Under his direction, the Luftwaffe expanded rapidly, developing bomber fleets, fighter squadrons, and anti-aircraft networks. The Spanish Civil War, which erupted in 1936, provided its first operational test. Göring dispatched the Condor Legion, a volunteer force of Luftwaffe pilots, bombers, and support personnel, to fight alongside Franco’s nationalists. The unit tested new aircraft, refined dive bombing techniques, and gained invaluable combat experience.
The bombing of Guernica in April 1937, carried out largely by Condor Legion aircraft, drew international condemnation but confirmed the Luftwaffe’s destructive capability. By 1939, it was one of the most formidable air forces in the world, at least on paper. The early campaigns in Poland and France seemed to validate his leadership. Luftwaffe dive bombers and fighter wings played decisive roles in the Blitzkrieg victories, and Göring’s prestige soared.
But Göring was accumulating power far beyond the military. In 1936, Hitler appointed him head of the Four Year Plan, a sweeping economic program designed to prepare Germany for war within four years. This gave Göring authority over industrial production, raw materials, labor allocation, and foreign trade. He effectively became the economic dictator of the Reich, overriding the Economics Ministry and inserting himself into virtually every sector of the German economy.
His approach was blunt and interventionist. When Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht protested that Göring’s policies were economically reckless, Göring simply marginalized him. Schacht resigned in 1937, and Göring’s grip tightened further. He pushed aggressively for autarky, the idea that Germany must become self-sufficient in critical resources like rubber, fuel, and metals.
Massive programs for synthetic fuel production and materials consumed enormous capital. He established the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, a massive state-owned industrial conglomerate that exploited iron ore deposits deemed unprofitable by private industry. Private industrialists like the Ruhr steel barons objected, arguing the ore was too low-grade to be worth mining, but Göring overruled them by fiat. As the Reich expanded through annexation and conquest, the Reichswerke grew into one of the largest corporations in Europe, absorbing factories and resources across occupied territories.
His personal enrichment was staggering. Carinhall, his sprawling estate in the Schorfheide Forest northeast of Berlin, became a monument to excess. He expanded it repeatedly, adding wings, galleries, a private cinema, a model railway, and hunting grounds stocked with rare game. Visitors described a palace of grotesque opulence: Renaissance tapestries, crystal chandeliers, marble floors, and a gymnasium-sized hall where he displayed his treasures.
He greeted diplomatic guests in outlandish costumes, sometimes in a toga-like garment with jeweled sandals, other times in elaborate hunting dress with a medieval spear. The estate housed one of the largest private art collections in Europe, assembled through a systematic campaign of confiscation and forced purchases from occupied territories. Göring’s agents scoured galleries, private collections, and Jewish-owned holdings across France, the Netherlands, and Eastern Europe. The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the regime’s primary art looting organization, funneled thousands of works through his hands.
He selected paintings by Cranach, Rubens, and other old masters for his personal collection while works deemed unsuitable were sold or traded for pieces he preferred. Postwar investigators documented over 1,500 artworks in his possession, many of which had been stolen from Jewish families. On September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began, Göring stood at the peak of his power. He held the unique rank of Reichsmarschall, created specifically for him, placing him above all other military officers in the Reich.
He was commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, head of the Four Year Plan, President of the Reichstag, Minister of Aviation, and Prime Minister of Prussia. Hitler formally designated him as his successor, and by a decree read before the Reichstag, Göring was to assume full authority over the state should Hitler die or become incapacitated. No one in the Reich held more titles, more offices, or more formal authority. But this peak was deceptive.
Beneath the accumulation of titles lay a man increasingly consumed by luxury, addiction, and detachment from the operational realities of the war he was supposed to help direct. His morphine use, never fully conquered, had been replaced by a growing dependence on paracodine, a milder opioid he consumed in large quantities. US military physicians who examined him after capture in 1945 found he was taking the equivalent of roughly 40 pills per day. His weight had ballooned.
He appeared at military conferences in elaborately tailored uniforms adorned with medals and jeweled accessories, a contrast to the increasingly grim conditions facing German forces. Albert Speer later described him during this period as living in a fantasy world disconnected from strategic reality. The first major blow to his reputation came during the Battle of Britain in the summer and autumn of 1940. Göring had assured Hitler that the Luftwaffe could achieve air superiority over southern England, destroy the Royal Air Force, and pave the way for a possible invasion.
He personally directed the air campaign’s strategic shifts, most critically the decision to switch from attacking RAF airfields to bombing London and other cities. This change, prompted in part by a retaliatory British raid on Berlin that enraged Hitler, relieved pressure on Britain’s battered fighter defenses at a moment when they were near breaking point and allowed them to recover. The campaign failed. Germany never achieved air superiority, and Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of Britain, was postponed indefinitely.
Hitler never publicly blamed Göring, but the Luftwaffe’s aura of invincibility had been shattered. Inside the regime, confidence in Göring’s military judgment began to erode. The damage deepened with the disaster at Stalingrad. In November 1942, when the Soviet Sixth Army encircled Friedrich Paulus’s forces, Göring assured Hitler that the Luftwaffe could supply the trapped army by air.
The logistics were impossible. The encircled force needed roughly 700 tons of supplies daily. The Luftwaffe managed at best around 100 tons on its best days and often far less. Harsh winter conditions, Soviet anti-aircraft fire, and a shortage of transport aircraft made the airlift a catastrophe.
Hundreds of irreplaceable transport planes and their experienced crews were lost in the operation, losses that crippled the Luftwaffe’s airlift capacity for the remainder of the war. By February 1943, the Sixth Army had surrendered. The failure at Stalingrad was not Göring’s alone, but his personal guarantee had made it partly his. Hitler’s trust in him visibly declined from this point forward.
Göring began retreating more frequently to Carinhall. He was absent from key military conferences and increasingly replaced in the Führer’s inner circle by younger, more aggressive figures like Albert Speer, who took over war production, and Martin Bormann, who controlled access to Hitler. The Allied strategic bombing campaign further exposed Göring’s failure. Beginning in earnest in 1943 and escalating through 1944, British and American bombers systematically destroyed German cities, factories, and infrastructure.
The Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command struck by night using area bombing tactics that leveled entire city centers. The United States Eighth Air Force attacked by day, targeting ball-bearing plants, synthetic fuel facilities, and aircraft factories. The combined offensive overwhelmed German defenses. Göring’s fighter controllers struggled to deploy interceptors fast enough, and the introduction of long-range escort fighters like the P-51 Mustang in early 1944 stripped the Luftwaffe of its last defensive advantage over the Reich.
Experienced German pilots were being killed faster than they could be replaced, and fuel shortages grounded increasing numbers of aircraft. Göring had once famously boasted that no enemy bombs would fall on the Reich. He reportedly said people could call him Meyer if that ever happened. As cities burned nightly, the remark became a bitter public joke.
Germans whispered it in bomb shelters. His standing with the population collapsed alongside the buildings the Luftwaffe could not protect. By 1944, Göring was a marginalized figure. He spent long stretches at Carinhall or his other residences, surrounded by art, servants, and his second wife, the actress Emmy Sonnemann, whom he had married in 1935 in an elaborate state ceremony attended by Hitler.
Their daughter Edda, born in 1938, was one of the few bright spots in his increasingly isolated existence. He appeared at the Berghof and at military briefings sporadically, often clashing with other leaders. His relationship with Hitler deteriorated further after the July 20 plot in 1944. Though Göring was not a target of the conspirators, the atmosphere of suspicion that followed tightened around everyone, and Bormann used the chaos to further sideline him.
The final rupture came in April 1945. As Soviet forces closed on Berlin and Hitler retreated into the Führerbunker, the question of succession became urgent. Göring, who had withdrawn to Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, interpreted reports suggesting Hitler was no longer able to govern freely as activating his 1939 succession decree. On April 23, he sent a carefully worded telegram to the bunker.
He stated that if he received no reply by a set hour, he would assume that the conditions of the decree had been met and would take over leadership of the Reich. The telegram was measured in tone, acknowledging Hitler’s authority and expressing loyalty. But it reached Hitler through Martin Bormann, who framed it as an ultimatum, an act of treason and a power grab. Hitler erupted.
He ordered Göring’s immediate arrest. SS troops at Berchtesgaden placed Göring under armed guard within hours. On April 23, Hitler signed a decree stripping Göring of all his offices, ranks, and the succession designation. In his political testament dictated on April 29, one day before his suicide, Hitler formally expelled Göring from the party and condemned his actions as a betrayal.
Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz was named as the new successor. The man who had stood beside Hitler since 1922, who had marched in the putsch, built the Gestapo, and commanded the Luftwaffe, was cast out in the Reich’s final hours. Before his departure from Berchtesgaden, Göring ordered the destruction of Carinhall. Demolition charges brought down the estate, though not before much of his art collection had been packed onto trucks and dispersed.
The ruins of his palace mirrored the ruins of his career. After Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945, Göring made his way to American lines. On May 9, he surrendered to elements of the US 36th Infantry Division near Radstadt, Austria. He arrived in a convoy of vehicles with his wife, daughter, servants, and a significant quantity of personal luggage, including monogrammed suitcases, a red leather hatbox, and 16,000 paracodine pills.
He reportedly expected to be treated as a fellow officer and negotiating partner, perhaps even welcomed. He told Brigadier General Robert Stack that he hoped to discuss the future of Europe with General Eisenhower as one military leader to another. Instead, he was quickly classified as a high-value prisoner and transferred through several detention centers. The press photographed his capture widely, and images of the overweight, medaled Reichsmarschall being led away by GIs became emblematic of the regime’s grotesque end.
During processing at an Allied interrogation facility, US military doctors discovered the extent of his drug addiction. They found a large supply of paracodine pills in his luggage and on his person. Over the following weeks, he was gradually weaned off the medication. Interrogators noted that as his dependency diminished, his mental clarity improved markedly.
The Nuremberg tribunal convened in November 1945, and Göring took his place as defendant number one in the dock. He was the highest-ranking Nazi official to stand trial, and both prosecutors and fellow defendants recognized his central position. Psychological evaluations conducted during his imprisonment revealed a complex picture. Intelligence testing placed him at 138, among the highest of the defendants.
The prison psychologist Gustav Gilbert described him as amiable and charming in private conversation, but domineering and manipulative in group settings, working constantly to influence how the other defendants would conduct their defenses. By the time the trial began, months of detoxification had transformed him physically. He had lost considerable weight. His mind was sharp, and he approached the proceedings with a combative energy that surprised the courtroom.
Unlike many of the other defendants who distanced themselves from the regime, Göring mounted an aggressive defense. He sought to dominate the dock, coaching and cajoling his co-defendants behind the scenes, urging them to present a united front and avoid turning on one another. Several defendants, including Albert Speer and Hjalmar Schacht, resisted his influence, but others, particularly the military men, looked to him for direction. Guards and even some prosecutors noted that he behaved as though he was still in command, holding court during lunch breaks and dispensing opinions on the proceedings with theatrical confidence.
He did not deny the broad facts of Nazi policy. Instead, he argued that his actions were those of a loyal government official serving his nation in wartime, no different in principle from leaders of the Allied powers. He insisted that the Luftwaffe was a legitimate military force and that his economic role was standard wartime administration. He denied direct knowledge of the extermination programs, claiming he had been deceived by Himmler and others.
Under cross-examination by American chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, Göring proved a formidable witness. Jackson’s initial approach, confrontational and sweeping, allowed Göring to deliver lengthy speeches and reframe questions to his advantage. Legal historians have noted that the early cross-examination sessions were widely regarded as victories for the defense.
Göring parried accusations with detailed recollections and challenged the prosecution’s framing at every turn. It was only when British prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe took over that the defense was more effectively dismantled. Maxwell-Fyfe employed a precise, document-driven method, presenting specific orders, memos, and correspondence that contradicted Göring’s claims of ignorance. Most damaging was evidence linking him to the persecution of Jewish communities, including a directive he signed in July 1941, tasking Reinhard Heydrich with preparing a comprehensive plan for the so-called Final Solution to the Jewish question.
Göring attempted to argue that the document concerned immigration rather than extermination, but the prosecution presented corroborating records that undermined this interpretation. The prosecution further documented his role in the systematic plundering of occupied Europe, both for the state and for his personal collection. Evidence showed his direct involvement in ordering the confiscation of Jewish-owned property, businesses, and artworks. The scale of his personal enrichment, detailed through inventories of Carinhall and testimony from art recovery officers, painted a portrait of corruption that extended well beyond what could be defended as standard wartime requisitioning.
On October 1, 1946, the tribunal delivered its verdict. Göring was found guilty on all four counts: conspiracy to wage aggressive war, planning and waging aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to death by hanging. Göring immediately petitioned to be executed by firing squad, arguing that as a soldier and officer, he deserved a military death.
The tribunal denied his request. The execution was scheduled for October 15, 1946. On the night before, guards conducted their routine checks. At approximately 10:45 p.
m. , Göring was found dead in his cell. He had bitten into a potassium cyanide capsule. The discovery triggered an immediate investigation.
How the capsule had reached him inside one of the most heavily guarded prisons in the world remains one of the enduring mysteries of the Nuremberg proceedings. Multiple theories have been advanced. Some investigators believed it had been hidden in his personal effects, which had been returned to him before the verdict. Others pointed to possible assistance from a sympathetic guard.
A 2005 account attributed to former United States Army Private Herbert Lee Stivers claimed he had unknowingly smuggled the capsule in a fountain pen given to him by a German woman. Though this account has been questioned, no definitive conclusion was ever reached. Göring left behind three letters: one to his wife Emmy, one to the Allied Control Council, and one to the prison chaplain. In his letter to the council, he stated he had always kept the capsule hidden from the guards and that no one had helped him obtain it.
Whether this was true or a final act of misdirection remains unknown. His body was photographed, then transported along with those of the executed defendants to a crematorium in Munich. The ashes were scattered into the Isar River, the same method used for all the condemned men to prevent any burial site from becoming a shrine. Hermann Göring’s legacy is one of towering ambition consumed by moral collapse.
He helped build the machinery of a criminal state, enriched himself on an industrial scale from the suffering of millions, and commanded a military force whose failures cost countless lives on all sides. His trial at Nuremberg remains one of the most studied episodes in legal history, both for the precedents it set and for the spectacle of a man who even at the end refused to show remorse.
