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 Hermann W. Goering HERMANN WILHELM GOERING, 1893-1946), German Nazi political leader and chief of the air force. Behind a facade of liberality, geniality, and flamboyant behavior, he concealed considerable brutality and cunning. His World War I fame and his social connections, as well as his intelligence and energy, seemed to open great opportunities for him in the Nazi state. His erratic and capricious style of life and work eventually frustrated most of his efforts, however. Goering (or Goring) was born at Rosenheim, Bavaria, on Jan. 12, 1893, the son of a high colonial official. He entered the army, became one of Germany's World War I flying aces, and won the Pour le Merite, Germany's highest award for valor, as leader of the famous Richthofen squadron in 1918. After the war he led a vagrant life as a pilot and as an aviation agent. While in Sweden he married Karin von Kantzow. They settled in Munich in 1922, and Goering soon joined HITLER, who appointed him commander of the SA (Storm Troopers). In the Nazi Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Goering was wounded and escaped to Austria. He became addicted to drugs while recovering but was cured after his return to Sweden in 1925. In 1926 an amnesty permitted him to return to Germany. He again joined Hitler and acted as a liaison with aristocratic, business, and military circles. Elected to the Reichstag in 1928, Goering became its president in 1932. Roles in Nazi Germany After Hitler's accession to power in 1933, Goering tried to remedy his main political weakness, the lack of a secure position within the party organization. He nazified Prussia while its prime minister and made an essential contribution to the establishment of Hitler's absolute rule. Hitler, however, eliminated the autonomy of the states, thereby frustrating Goering's attempt to build up the Prussian secret police, the Gestapo, as his personal force. To secure the support needed to defeat his rival, Ernst Roehm, chief of the SA, Goering handed over the Gestapo to Heinrich HIMMLER in 1934. Goering was more successful in developing the air force into the showpiece of Nazi rearmament following his appointment as aviation minister and head of the embryonic air force in May 1933. He added to his power in 1936, when he became commissioner of the four-year plan, which made him the nominal, and for a time the actual, economic dictator of Germany. Although the extent of his political power varied, his position permitted Goering to live in luxury and to indulge in his numerous and costly hobbies. Widowed in 1931, he married the actress Emmy Sonnemann in 1935. At the outbreak of WORLD WAR II in 1939, Hitler named Goering his official successor and after the victory over France in 1940 rewarded him with the new title of "Reichsmarschall. But the air force's defeat in the BATTLE OF BRITAIN later in 1940 and its inability to defend Germany against air raids discredited Goering. He slipped into inactivity, became ill, and again resorted to drugs. In April 1945 he tried to succeed Hitler in the apparently sincere belief that Hitler was incapacitated in Berlin. Goering was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials but committed suicide in Nuremberg on Oct. 15, 1946, the day before his scheduled execution.
Wolfgang Sauer
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