In 1945, when the Allies captured Albert Göring, he told them he had spent years saving lives. His interrogators laughed at the idea. After all, he was Hermann Göring’s brother, the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany. The story seemed impossible, and nobody believed him.
Albert was born in 1895 in a quiet Berlin suburb, the fifth child of a former colonial official and a Bavarian farmer’s daughter. His older brother Hermann was bold, loud, and hungry for attention. Albert was quiet, bookish, and drawn to the piano. Their godfather, a wealthy Jewish physician named Dr.
Hermann von Epenstein, owned two castles and essentially raised the boys while their father was abroad. Rumors followed Albert for life that Epenstein was his real father, though the truth was never confirmed. Hermann himself once said of his brother, “He was always the antithesis of myself. He was quiet, reclusive; I like crowds and company.
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When the First World War broke out in 1914, both brothers enlisted. Hermann became a celebrated fighter ace, decorated and famous. Albert served as a communications engineer in the trenches and was wounded twice, once badly in the abdomen. He earned the Iron Cross, but unlike Hermann, he came home with no taste for glory.
After the war, Albert studied mechanical engineering in Munich and later moved to Vienna, where he worked in sales and married. He built a comfortable life in Austria and wanted nothing to do with the Nazi movement rising in Germany. In 1935, he formally applied for Austrian citizenship, a clear rejection of everything his brother represented. By 1936, he was the technical director of Austria’s largest film studio, successful and determined to stay far away from Hitler’s Reich.
But history pulled him back in. The first rescue came from an unexpected direction: Hermann himself. In 1936, the Reichsmarschall’s wife asked Albert to help Henny Porten, a famous German actress whose career had collapsed after she refused to divorce her Jewish husband. Hermann could not be seen intervening publicly, so he called Albert in Vienna.
Albert arranged a film contract for Porten and quietly moved her out of Nazi reach. That small act gave Albert a dangerous realization. His surname opened doors across the Reich. He could use it as a weapon against the regime.
The chance came quickly. On 12 March 1938, German troops crossed into Austria. The Anschluss brought Nazi rule to Vienna overnight. Within days, Jewish citizens were forced onto their hands and knees in the streets, scrubbing pavements while crowds jeered.
Albert witnessed one such scene and did something unthinkable. He took off his jacket, knelt beside the women, and began scrubbing alongside them. When an SS officer demanded his identification, the name on the card stopped everything. The officer, unwilling to risk humiliating the Reichsmarschall’s brother, sent everyone home.
Weeks later, Albert saw an elderly Jewish woman wearing a sign around her neck that read “I am a Jewish sow. ” He tore it off and led her away. He was arrested on the spot, but a single telephone call to Berlin secured his release. For the next seven years, Albert used his name again and again.
He arranged exit visas for Jewish colleagues. He helped his former boss flee Germany with his family. He provided money, travel documents, and letters of protection. One such letter, carried by a Jewish doctor, warned that anyone who harmed him would answer to the Reichsmarschall personally.
The letter worked. The doctor reached London safely. When Germany absorbed Czechoslovakia in 1939, Albert moved to the Škoda Works in Pilsen, one of Europe’s largest armaments factories, and now part of his brother’s industrial empire. Czech executives hoped that placing Hermann’s brother in a senior role might shield the company from the worst of Nazi control.
They were right, though not in the way they expected. From his first day, Albert made his loyalties clear. He openly criticized Hitler in front of Czech directors. When Nazi officials visited and raised their arms in salute, Albert simply extended his hand for a handshake.
His secretary later recalled this small act of defiance was enough to warrant execution. Albert did it anyway. His position gave him access to resources, documents, and official channels, and he used all of them. When five managers were arrested on suspicion of espionage, Albert appealed directly to Hermann, and the men walked free.
He shielded employees engaged in quiet sabotage, delaying orders and filling bomb casings with sand instead of explosives. He passed intelligence to resistance agents, including the date of the 1940 invasion of France, three weeks in advance. His most audacious scheme exploited the regime’s own bureaucracy. Škoda needed labor, and Albert had authorization to request workers from the camps.
He sent trucks to collect prisoners, then ordered the drivers to stop in isolated areas and let them go. No one questioned a requisition signed by Hermann Göring’s brother. He forged Hermann’s signature on transit documents, allowing Jews and political prisoners to cross borders. On family stationery, he wrote letters demanding that specific individuals be freed.
One such letter pulled a Jewish physician off a train bound for Dachau. The camp commandant, unwilling to risk the Reichsmarschall’s anger, let two prisoners go rather than chance making a mistake. By 1942, the Gestapo was watching him. Reports on Albert’s activities accumulated in Prague.
His conversations were noted. The file grew thicker each month, documenting what the Gestapo called “defeatism” and “anti-National Socialism. ” Albert knew the protection was eroding, but he did not stop. By the summer of 1944, he was a marked man.
Trapped in Bucharest as the Red Army advanced, he discovered that an SS commander had issued a warrant for his arrest. His travel privileges were frozen, and a death order followed, demanding his execution on sight. Hermann’s own standing with Hitler had collapsed, so he could no longer guarantee protection. He advised Albert to flee to Salzburg and disappear.
Albert survived the final months of the war in hiding. When Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, he reported voluntarily to the American Counter Intelligence Corps in Salzburg. Five days later, he was formally arrested and transferred to an interrogation center in Augsburg. There, in a converted apartment block filled with captured Nazi officials, Albert found himself imprisoned alongside the very men he had spent years opposing.
Hermann occupied a cell nearby. The two met briefly in the exercise yard and embraced. It was the last time they would see each other. Albert’s captors refused to believe him.
One major’s report dismissed his testimony as “as clever a piece of rationalization and whitewash as the Interrogation Center has ever seen. ” No one investigated his claims. Desperate, Albert sat in his cell and drafted a handwritten document. He titled it “People whose lives I saved at my own peril (three Gestapo arrest warrants).
” Below, in alphabetical order, he wrote thirty-four names: politicians, industrialists, doctors, resistance fighters, along with their professions, addresses, and the assistance he had provided. He handed the pages to his captors. They filed them away without following up. Then chance intervened.
A new major took over the case. His birth name was Paschkis, and his aunt’s name appeared at number fifteen on Albert’s pages. She had told him years earlier that Hermann Göring’s brother had helped Jewish families escape. Suddenly, the impossible story had a witness.
On 14 March 1947, after a trial in Prague where former Škoda employees and Czech resistance members testified in his defense, Albert was acquitted. He walked out of the courthouse in borrowed clothes, carrying a handful of sugar cubes instead of money. Hermann had been dead for five months. Albert returned to Germany a free man, but his surname made him a pariah.
No one would hire him. He lived on a small pension, sharing a modest Munich flat with his housekeeper. In December 1966, days before his death, he married her so she could inherit his pension. One final act of quiet generosity.
He died on 20 December 1966, forgotten. His grave is now unmarked. Decades later, researchers submitted his case to Yad Vashem for recognition as Righteous Among the Nations. The request was denied.
Officials acknowledged that Albert “had a positive attitude to Jews” and “helped some people,” but concluded there was insufficient primary source evidence. The brother of a war criminal, it seemed, could not also be a hero.
