Hermann Wilhelm Göring, b. Jan. 12, 1893, d. Oct. 19, 1946, was second only to Adolf Hitler in the German National Socialist regime and the one man in Hitler's inner circle with a distinguished social and military background. The son of the first German imperial commissioner of Southwest Africa, Göring was a highly decorated World War I flyer, having succeeded Manfred von Richthofen in command of the latter's famous air squadron.
Göring became a National Socialist in 1922 and took part in the abortive MUNICH PUTSCH of 1923. Elected to the Reichstag in 1928, he became its presiding officer in 1932, the year before Hitler came to power. During the 1930s he accrued enormous power as Prussian minister-president and minister of the interior; chief of the Gestapo (secret police--with his ally Heinrich Himmler in operational control); minister of aviation and, with the rank of field marshal, commander in chief of the Air Force; and economic dictator of the Third Reich in his capacity as plenipotentiary for the four-year plan (for economic mobilization).
Göring was ferociously efficient in his earlier years, but his personal vitality was later sapped by morphine addiction. During World War II his influence with Hitler was undermined by the failure of the Air Force (Luftwaffe), first against the British and then against the Russians. Captured by the Allies in 1945, he was tried as a major war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg . He was condemned to execution but cheated the hangman by taking poison.
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