Goering, Hermann

(1893–1946)

   The decorated World War I fighter pilot became involved with the Nazi Party in its formative years. A veteran of the failed Munich beer hall putsch in 1923, when Adolf Hitler attempted to overthrow the government of Bavaria, Goering went on to become the second-most powerful political figure in the Third Reich. Goering was instrumental, along with Heinrich Himmler, in the organization of the first concentration camps in 1933. In 1934, he played a major role in the purge of the Sturmabteilung (SA), and shortly thereafter, Hitler appointed him commander-in-chief of the German air force. In January 1935, he was promoted to the position of Reichsmarschall, and in 1936 he was appointed head of Germany’s Four-Year Plan, which gave him almost dictatorial control over the entire economy. In 1937, as head of the German economy, he established the Hermann Goering Works, which employed about 700,000 workers.

   Following the pogrom of 9–10 November 1938, which Goering derisively referred to as Kristallnacht (crystal night), Goering fined the Jewish community a billion reichsmarks and ordered the elimination of the Jews from the German economy. In September 1939, Hitler appointed him as his successor, as well as placing him in charge of the Jewish question. Not as fanatical as Hitler, Goering nevertheless was an anti-Semite who, after the invasion of Poland, was responsible for the expulsion of the Jews from the western part of Poland. During the same year, he set up the Main Trusteeship Office East, which administered confiscated Jewish property. In May 1941, Goering banned the emigration of Jews from all German-occupied territories, and in July 1941 he authorized the implementation of the Final Solution. Following the war, he was one of the 22 major Nazi war criminals who were tried in Nuremberg in 1945–1946. Goering committed suicide rather than allow himself to be executed by the Allies.

   See also Nuremberg Trials.