Hermann Göring
(aka Hermann Goering)
GÖRINGopedia
Hermann Göring (also spelt Hermann Goering) was a German WWI fighter ace, key Nazi official, military leader and convicted war criminal.
He was Hitler’s designated successor in the Nazi Party, the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, the Commander of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and Reichsmarschall, the highest military office. He established the first concentration camps, oversaw the rearmament of Germany and authorised the Final Solution.
The spelling of the family name varies across the English-language literature. For the most part, this biography uses the German spelling of ‘Göring’, except in areas with stronger associations with the English spelling of ‘Goering’, such as around the Nuremberg trials and FAQs circulating in the English-speaking world.
Basics
- Born 12 January 1893 in Rosenheim, Germany
- Died 15 October 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany
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Origins
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (AKA Hermann Goering) was born on the 12th of January 1893 at Marienbad Sanatorium in Rosenheim, Bavaria (Germany).1 He was the fourth child of Heinrich Ernst Göring (1839 – 1913) and Franziska Göring, née Tiefenbrunn (1859 – 1923). His mother was known to the family as Fanny. Her family were yeoman land holders situated between Tyrol (Austria) and Southern Bavaria (Germany). Hermann’s father came from a long line of Prussian statesmen and bureaucrats.
At the time of Hermann’s birth, Heinrich Ernst Göring was the German Consul General to Haiti. Before which, he served as a circuit judge in Germany and the Reichskommissar (Imperial Commissioner) of German South-West Africa.2
Hermann’s first name comes from his godfather Dr Hermann Epenstein (more below) and his middle name was either a tribute to Kaiser Wilhelm I or his grandfather Wilhelm Göring.
Hermann was the second youngest of a large family. He had five half-siblings through his father’s earlier marriage to Ida Remd and four full brothers and sisters, including Karl Ernst (b. 3 August 1885), Olga Sofie Therese (b. 16 January 1889), Paula Rosa Elisabeth (b. 13 May 1890) and Albert Günther Göring (b. 9 March 1895), a humanitarian and Nazi opponent.
Heinrich Ernst Göring
Source: Koloniales Bildarchiv | Date: 1906
Troubled
Hermann Göring was just six weeks old when his mother Fanny left him to be by her husband’s side in Haiti. He was placed in the care of Frau Graff, a close family friend living in the town of Fürth near Nuremberg. She acted as Hermann’s surrogate mother until the Görings returned some three years later.3
Upon the birth of Hermann’s younger brother Albert, the Göring family was invited to live in Burg Veldenstein, a Franconian castle owned by the Göring children’s godfather Dr Hermann Epenstein. The family spent their summers in Epenstein’s other castle, Burg Mauterndorf, in the Tauern mountains of Austria.
The future Reichsmarschall had a troubled school life. He first attended a local kindergarten in Fürth but was pulled out for behavioural issues. He was educated by a private tutor for the next four years and then shipped off to a boarding school in Ansbach. Hermann immediately disliked his new environment. He detested his music classes and the school’s cuisine. At one stage, he led a student protest against the school conditions. When the revolt failed, he reportedly sent his bedding ahead, sold his violin for ten marks for his train fare and absconded home to Burg Veldenstein.4
Outside of school, young Hermann was said to be a confident and athletic young boy. By the age of ten, he had scaled the cliffs of Burg Veldenstein, and by thirteen he had reached the peak of Austria’s highest mountain, the 3798m Großglockner.5
Did you know that Hermann Goering’s godfather and idol was half-Jewish?
Dr Hermann Epenstein was a wealthy physician and Austrian aristocrat with the title Ritter von Mauternburg. He inherited most of his wealth from his father, who was a physician at the court of King Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia and a real estate speculator. He was also Jewish. He converted to Catholicism when he married Epenstein Jr’s mother.6
Though born and raised Catholic, Dr Hermann Epenstein would have been deemed half-Jewish according to the Nuremberg Race Laws. This set of laws was, of course, enacted by the Nazi regime spearheaded by his godson, Hermann.
Hermann was Epenstein’s favourite godson, according to older sister Olga Rigele. The feeling was mutual. While in boarding school, Hermann wrote an essay about his hero, Epenstein. He was reprimanded by the principal and forced to write a hundred lines of: ‘I shall not write essays in praise of Jews.’ He was then bullied by his peers and forced to walk around the schoolyard with a sign attached to his neck stating: ‘My godfather is a Jew’.7
Many years later during the 1938 pogrom Kristallnacht, the Jewish victims of Hermann’s Nazi regime were forced to wear similar signs around their necks.
Cadet
After a series of altercations in boarding school, Epenstein stepped in and enrolled Hermann in a military academy in Karlsruhe.
Hermann flourished in his new environment. In March 1911, he attained a ‘quite good’ in Latin, English and French, a ‘good’ in cartography and comprehension, a ‘very good’ in history, maths and physics and an ‘excellent’ in geography. His report card read: ‘Goering has been an exemplary pupil and he has developed a quality that should take him far: he is not afraid to take a risk.’8 With such a report card, Hermann was offered a place at the renowned cadet college in Lichterfelde, near Berlin. This was the breeding ground for Germany’s future officers.
In December 1913, Hermann was awarded the title of officer after achieving magna cum laude in each subject. A month later, he was assigned a commission in the Prinz Wilhelm Regiment No. 112 in Mülhausen (now Mulhouse), located then in the south-west of Germany, on the French/German border.9
Cadet Hermann Göring
Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R25668 | Date: 1907
Oberleutnant Göring
Author: Nicola Perscheid | Date: 1918
Fighter Ace
At the outbreak of WWI, Hermann Göring’s Prinz Wilhelm Regiment No. 112 was initially held back on the other side of the Rhine. Once the signal for attack was finally granted, he saw action over only a few skirmishes before being invalided with an acute case of rheumatoid arthritis.
In a sanatorium in Freiburg, Hermann met Bruno Lörzer, a young air force aspirant. Lörzer invited him on board his plane as an observer. During one reconnaissance flight over Verdun, he took vivid and invaluable pictures of the French battery at Côte de Talon. These crucial photos won him the Iron Cross First Class on the 25th of March 1915 and the chance to train as a pilot.10
In 1916, Hermann’s plane was shot down, consigning him to a year of idleness. In February 1917, he was able to join the Jagdstaffel (fighter squadron). By June 1918 he had notched up twenty-one hits. For this, he was awarded the Pour le Mérite.11
Hermann all of a sudden burst into the realm of German celebrity. His face was all over the front pages of newspapers and on magazine covers. His portrait was passed between the sticky fingers of children trading World War I fighter ace cards.
Did you know that Hermann took over the Red Baron’s squadron?
On the 21st of April 1918, the hitherto untouchable Red Baron was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Richthofen was succeeded by Hauptmann Wilhelm Reinhard, but he would not lead the squadron for long. While flight-testing a new Zeppelin-Lindau D.I on 3 July 1918, he plunged to his death after a strut connected to the upper wing broke. It was the same plane that Hermann had tested only minutes before.
And so another twist of fate saw the appointment of ‘No. 178.654, 8. 7. 18 Oberlt. Hermann Göring’ as the commander of the Red Baron squadron on 8 July 1918.12 He led the squadron until the end of the war.
Vagabond
After the war, there came a period of political and social unrest in Germany. The streets were flooded with disenfranchised war veterans like Hermann. In Berlin, Hermann joined the ranks of the Freikorps, a group of paramilitary units formed in the wake of WWI. Here, he took an active role as a leader, marking his first step into politics. However, his political aspirations fizzled out along with the Freikorps’ failed 1920 Kapp Putsch.
After working as a consultant with Anthony Fokker for a stint, Hermann formed a flying circus in the summer of 1920 with four of his old fighter-pilot comrades. Together, they entertained the crowds of Scandinavia with aerobatic stunts.
He later found work at the Swedish airline Svenska Lufttrafik in Stockholm as a pilot. While transporting a wealthy passenger, Count Eric von Rosen, to Rockelstad Slott, he met Carin von Kantzow.13 Love struck, Carin divorced her officer husband Nils von Kantzow in December 1922. Hermann and Carin married on 3 February 1923 in Stockholm before moving to Munich.14
In November 1922, Hermann heard Adolf Hitler speak for the first time in a beer hall in Munich. Hitler struck a chord with Hermann when he denounced the Treaty of Versailles and spoke of restoring German pride. Hermann soon joined the Nazi Party and within a year, he was commanding the party paramilitary group, the Sturmabteilung (SA). At this stage, Hitler and his party were not taken seriously by the military, the industrialists and the established order in Germany. Hermann’s big name and clout provided the party the legitimacy that Hitler craved.
Carin Göring
Source: Henry B. Goodwin | Date: December 1927
Hermann & Hitler
Source: National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized | Date: 1929
Outlaw
Exactly one year on from their first meeting, the budding partnership between Hermann Göring and Hitler nearly came to a fatal end after the failed Beer Hall Putsch on 9 November 1923. In a clash with the Bavarian state police, Hermann was shot in the groin.15 With a warrant out for his arrest, Hermann fled to Austria and ultimately Sweden. The morphine that he was given for the pain led to an addiction that he would maintain right up until his arrest after WWII. Swinging between comatose and lunatic rage, he was admitted to multiple Swedish mental institutions.16 His only saviour was his loyal wife Carin.
The Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler’s subsequent trial for treason elevated the small Bavarian Nazi party onto the national stage. Hitler served only nine months in jail before his release in December 1924. Hermann returned to Germany in 1927 after receiving amnesty. The following year in the German Federal Election, Hermann won a seat in the Reichstag, alongside eleven other party colleagues.17
In the July 1932 federal election in Germany, the Nazi party capitalised on the turmoil of the Great Depression to win 230 seats. This made them the largest party in the Reichstag.18 It also allowed Hermann to be elected the President of the Reichstag. It was bitter-sweet for Hermann as a year before he had lost his dear wife Carin. Having long suffered from a chronic heart condition, she died in Stockholm at 4:00am on 17 October 1931.19
The Nazi party won less seats (196) in the following federal election in November 1932.21 But after months of political manoeuvring, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933.
Did you know that Hermann was not initially impressed with Hitler?
While awaiting trial in Nuremberg, Hermann Goering described his first encounters with Hitler to the American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn:
‘I was against the Versailles Treaty and I was against the democratic state, which failed to solve the problem of unemployment and which instead of making Germany a powerful nation was turning it into a small, minor state. I am a German nationalist and have high ideals for Germany. … I met Hitler in 1922 at a meeting and was not too impressed with him at first. Like myself, he said very little at this first meeting. A few days afterward I heard Hitler give an address in a Munich beer hall where he spoke about a greater Germany, the abolition of the Versailles Treaty, arms for Germany, and a future glory of the German people. So I joined forces with him and became a member of the National Socialist Party.’20
Heir apparent
In July 1937, Hermann established the Reichswerke Hermann Göring industrial conglomerate. With a nominal capital of 2.4 billion Reichsmarks and a labour force of 500 million, it would become the largest company in Europe between 1941 and 1945.24On his way to becoming the second most powerful man in the Third Reich, Hermann found love again in the actress Emmy Sonnemann. The pair married on 10 April 1935 in Berlin.25 Three years later, their daughter Edda Carin Wilhelmine Göring was born on 2 June 1938.
President of the Reichstag
Source: La BnF | Date: 1937
Blitzkrieger
On 12 March 1938, Austria was annexed by Germany in what was known as the Anschluss. On 26 March 1938, Hermann triumphantly rolled into Vienna to deliver a bellicose speech before heading to his hometown of Mauterndorf where he was warmly greeted by the townsfolk.
At the outbreak of WWII on 1 September 1939, Hermann’s Luftwaffe (air force) played a crucial role in Germany’s blitzkrieg and battlefield success. The major cities of Poland were bombed and the Polish Air Force was decimated within a week.26 The Luftwaffe achieved similar success in the subsequent invasions of Norway (8 April – 10 June 1940), the Netherlands (10–17 May 1940), Belgium (10–28 May 1940 and France (10 May – 25 June 1940).
In the Field Marshal Ceremony of 19 July 1940, Hitler awarded Hermann the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross and promoted him to the highest military office with the title of Reichsmarschall.27 Meanwhile, Hermann began to amass a collection of artwork and treasures that were commandeered in each vanquished country.
Hermann and the Luftwaffe could not repeat their feats against the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Battle of Britain. The strategic bombing campaign and the terror bombing over London failed to pressure Britain into peace negotiations or facilitate the planned land invasion Operation Sea Lion.
Cracks began to appear in Hermann’s political standing in the Nazi Party.
Did you know that Hermann Goering had an anti-Nazi brother?
It is little known that Hermann had a younger brother who fought against the Nazi regime. Albert Göring (1895-1966) was a German-Austrian engineer, businessman, prominent Nazi opponent and humanitarian. Prior and throughout the war, he either aided, protected or saved Jews, members of the Czech Resistance and other victims of his brother’s regime.
There are many cases documented where Hermann intervened at the request of a family member and wielded his power to assist the very people his regime persecuted. The first case involved a request by his wife Emmy Sonnemann to help a fellow actress Henny Porten whose husband was Jewish. Through the petitioning of Albert and sometimes their older sister Olga, Hermann provided assistance to other prominent individuals, including Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria, Austrian Chancellor Dr Kurt von Schuschnigg and the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár.
Hermann also came to the aid of his brother on numerous occasions when he fell in trouble with the Gestapo. This protection enabled Albert to continue his work in helping victims of Nazi persecution.28
Call me Meyer
Hermann Göring once famously declared: “No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Göring. You can call me Meyer.”29 Meyer was a very common surname in Germany. With this reference, Hermann seemed to suggest that he would reduce himself to a commoner should an Ally bomb land on the Ruhr – the industrial hub of Germany at the time.
As History shows, the Allies‘ bombs not only reigned over the Ruhr but all of Germany. By the end of the war, the RAF estimated that 19 German cities were ‘virtually destroyed’, including Hamburg, Cologne and Hannover, as well as 19 ‘seriously damaged’, including Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich.30
As further failures in the East built up, Göring and the General Staff of the Luftwaffe placed all their hopes on the development of Wunderwaffe (wonder weapons) to sway the war in their favour. Despite the deployment of the V-1 and V-2 ballistic missiles, jet-engine aircraft and some other projects, the wonder weapons could not be produced in scale and time to deliver the decisive blow.31
By the end of the war, Hermann’s status in the Third Reich was at rock bottom.
Meyer or Hermann Göring?
Source: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe | Date: September 1940
Goering, Hermann - wanted
Source: U.S. Air Force | Date: 11 May 1945
Downfall
On 20th of April 1945, Hermann attended Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday at the Führerbunker with other top Nazi officials. He then hurried down south to his residence in Berchtesgaden.
Three days later, with Berlin about to fall to the Red Army, he sent a telegram to Hitler’s bunker. He requested permission to implement the Führer’s succession decree of the 29th of June 1941. This decree stated that Hermann Göring would succeed the leadership of the Third Reich if Hitler was to be ever incapacitated. He ended the telegram with a final condition: if he did not receive a reply by ten o’clock that evening, he would assume that Hitler was in fact incapacitated and would therefore actualise the edict.
Hitler decried it as a treasonous act, calling Hermann a ‘morphine addict’ before weeping ‘like a child’. He then authorised a radio broadcast composed by Martin Bormann, his private secretary. It accused Hermann of high treason, an act warranting the death penalty. Though in Hermann’s case, it would be downgraded to a dismissal of all offices.32 On 29 April 1945, Hitler expelled Hermann from the party.
On 7 May 1945, Hermann surrendered to the US Brigadier General Robert Stack of the 36th Infantry Division outside the Austrian town of Radstadt.33
Charge sheet and role in Nazi crimes against humanity
March 1933: As the Interior Minister of Prussia, Hermann Göring oversaw the formation of the first concentration camps in Germany in response to The Reichstag Fire Decree and the mass arrests of Communist party members.34
26 April 1933: Hermann created the Gestapo before transferring control to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934, along with the management of the concentration camps.35
15 September 1935: On the day the Nuremberg Laws were enacted, Hermann declared to the Reichstag: “God has created the races. He did not want equality and therefore we energetically reject any attempt to falsify the concept of race purity by making it equivalent with racial equality. … This equality does not exist. We have never accepted such an idea and therefore we must reject it in our laws likewise and must accept that purity of race which nature and providence have destined for us.”36
26 March 1938: In a speech in annexed Vienna, Hermann announced: “Today Vienna cannot rightly claim to be a German City. One cannot speak of a German City in which 300,000 Jews live. This city has an important German mission in the field of culture as well as in economics. For neither of these can we make use of the Jews.”37
12 November 1938: After the November Pogroms known as Kristallnacht, Hermann Göring ordered the Jewish community to pay one billion Reichsmarks as compensation to the German people, despite the majority of the damage having occurred a Jewish-owned premises.38
31 July 1941: Hermann authorised Reinhard Heydrich to initiate the Final Solution by submitting ‘an overall plan that shows the preliminary organizational, practical and material measures requisite for the implementation of the projected final solution of the Jewish question [Endlösung der Judenfrage].’39
1942-1945: Hermann’s industrial conglomerate Reichswerke Hermann Göring employed slave labour in a collection of industrial plants, including forced ammunition plant workers from concentration camps in Drütte (from 1942), Watenstedt/Leinde (from 1944) and Salzgitter-Bad (from 1944).40
Criminal
After being temporarily interred in Augsburg (Bavaria), ‘Prisoner Number One: Hermann Goering’ was flown to Camp Ashcan in Luxembourg and held with other Nazi prisoners of war. He lost around 80 pounds (36kg) after being weaned off his morphine addiction and receiving a strict diet.41 He was tested to have an IQ of 138.42
On paper, Hermann was the second highest-ranking Nazi official to be tried during the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. But that was only on account of Hitler’s last minute decree to make Admiral Karl Dönitz the Reich President. Hermann was indicted on four counts: (1.) Common Plan or Conspiracy, (2.) Crimes against Peace – ‘waging of a war of aggression’, (3.) War Crimes and (4.) Crimes against Humanity – the ‘murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population’. In regards to the latter, Chief United States Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson stated at the time: ‘Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators.’43
In a trial lasting 218 days, Hermann’s cross-examination and defence lasted over two weeks. Hermann pleaded not guilty and remained defiant during his famous court battle with Robert H. Jackson. Hermann Göring was found guilty on all four counts and was sentenced to death by hanging on 30 September 1946.44
Prisoner Number One: Hermann Goering
Source: U.S. Army | Date: 8 March 1946
Cheating the hangman
On the 15th of October 1946, Hermann was found dead in his Nuremberg cell after taking potassium cyanide. It was the morning of his scheduled execution. When Hermann was sentenced to death, he requested a soldier’s death by firing squad. This was denied. Faced with a common criminal’s hanging, he chose to cheat the hangman.
Speculation continues to this day as to how the capsule was smuggled into his jail cell. Initially, it was thought that he had hidden it himself in a jar of skin cream.
Herbert Lee Stivers, a former US Army who served as a guard during the trials, came forward in 2005. He claimed that he was approached by a young German woman and unwittingly passed on what he thought was medicine to Goering. It was alleged to be hidden inside a fountain pen.45
Hermann’s body, one eye open in a frozen wink, was taken to the execution hall and displayed in front of witnesses. Just after midnight, Hermann’s corpse was dispatched, along with the corpses of his ten former Nazi colleagues, to a US crematorium in Munich. His ashes were tossed later that day into the barely three-metre-wide Wentzbach creek.46 There is no gravestone or official marking for Hermann Wilhelm Göring.
Hermann Goering Q&A
Who was Hermann Goering?
Hermann Göring (AKA Hermann Goering) was a German WWI fighter ace, politician, military leader, convicted war criminal and Hitler’s designated successor in the Nazi Party. He was the most important Nazi official to be tried and sentenced to death at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. On the night before his execution, he committed suicide by cyanide poisoning.
What did Hermann Goering do?
Hermann Goering was the second most powerful figure in the Nazi regime. He held numerous civil and military positions in the Third Reich, including the President of the Reichstag, the Interior Minister of Prussia, the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, the Commander of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and Reichsmarschall, the highest military office. He established the first concentration camps, oversaw the rearmament of Germany and authorised the Final Solution.
How did Hermann Goering die?
On the night before he was to be hanged on 15 October 1946, Hermann Goering committed suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule. To this day, speculation continues as to how the capsule was smuggled into his jail cell. Initially, it was thought that he had hidden it himself in a jar of skin cream or that a young woman had passed him the capsule. Herbert Lee Stivers, a former US Army who served a guard during the trials, came forward in 2005. He claimed that he was approached by a young German woman and unwittingly passed on what he thought was medicine to Goering. It was alleged to be hidden inside a fountain.
Where is Hermann Goering buried?
Hermann Goering was not buried in a cemetery. His corpse was cremated, along with ten other condemned Nazi colleagues, in a US crematorium in Munich. His ashes were tossed later that day into the barely three-metre-wide Conwentzbach creek in Munich. There is no gravestone or physical marking for Hermann Göring and his Nazi co-conspirators.
What was Hermann Goering charged with?
Hermann Goering was indicted on four counts: (1.) Common Plan or Conspiracy, (2.) Crimes against Peace – ‘waging of a war of aggression’, (3.) War Crimes and (4.) Crimes against Humanity – the ‘murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population’. In regards to the latter, Chief United States Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson stated at the time: ‘Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators.’47
Notes
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 21.
- Singer, K. (1940) Göring: Germany’s most dangerous man, (Melbourne, Australia: Hutchinson & C0. LTD), p. 17.
- Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.4.
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 22-24.
- Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.9.
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 22-24.
- Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), pp 6-8.
- Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.9.
- Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.10.
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 28-29.
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 31-32.
- Frischauer, W. (1951) Ein Marschallstab Zerbrach: eine Göring-Biographie, (Ulm: Münster Verlag), p. 28.
- Frischauer, W. (1951) Ein Marschallstab Zerbrach: eine Göring-Biographie, (Ulm: Münster Verlag), pp. 36-37.
- Dungern, O. (1936) ‘Uhnentafel des Ministerpräsisdenten und Reichsluftfahrtministers Generalobersten Hermann Göring’ IN: Ahnentafeln berühmter Deutscher: Herausgegeben von der Zentralstelle für Deutsche Personen und Familiengeschichte, (Leipzig: Zentralstelle für Deutsche Personen und Familiengeschichte).
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 56.
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 60-61.
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 66.
- Evans, R. J. (2003) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 297.
- Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.166.
- Goldensohn, L. (2004) The Nuremberg Interviews. Ed. R. Gellately, 19th ed., (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), p. 132.
- Gonschior.de
- Evans, R. J. (2005) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 11.
- Evans, R. J. (2005) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 29.
- Neumann, K. (2000) Shifting memories: the Nazi past in the new Germany, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), pp. 20-21; Overy, R. J. (1994) War and economy in the Third Reich, (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 159.
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 139.
- Hooton, E. (1999) Phoenix Triumphant: The Rise and Rise of the Luftwaffe, (London : Brockhampton Press), p. 179.
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 245.
- Burke, W. H. (2009) Thirty Four, (London: Wolfgeist Ltd.).
- Fleming, N. (1979), August 1939: The Last Days of Peace, (London: Peter Davies), p. 171.
- Frankland, N. (1951) The Planning of the Bombing Offensive and its Contribution to German Collapse, UK Air Ministry: Air Historical Branch. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
- Neufeld, M. (2020) The Myth of the German “Wonder-Weapons”, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
- Fest, J. (2002) Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches; Eine historische Skizze, (Berlin: Alexander Fest Verlag), p. 102.
- Brigadier General Robert I. Stack (Assistant Division Commander) Eyewitness Account, Capture of Goering, The 36th Infantry Division Association Library. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 108-109.
- Evans, R. J. (2005) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 29.
- United States Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality United States, Department of State, United States War Department and the International Military Tribunal (1946) Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol VI, (Washington: United States Government Printing Office), pp. 158-159. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
- Hermann Göring speech in Vienna, 26th March 1938, Hermann Wilhelm Goering, The Jewish Virtual Library. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
- German Jews are Fined, The Jewish Virtual Library. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
- Authorisation letter of Goering to Heydrich, July 31, 1941, House of the Wannsee Conference: Memorial and Educational Site. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
- The Memorial Place KZ Drütte, Gedenk- und Dokumentationsstätte KZ Drütte. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
- Kelley D. M. (1961) 22 Cells in Nuremberg: A Psychiatrist Examines the Nazi Criminals, (New York: MacFadden Publications), p. 44.
- Gilbert, G. (1961) Nuremberg Diary, (New York: the New American Library), p. 34.
- First Day, Reading of the Indictment, 20 November 1945, Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Volume 2, pp. 29 – 94. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
- Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 337.
- Borger, J. (2005), US guard tells how Nazi girlfriend duped him into helping Goering evade hangman, The Guardian. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
- Maser, W. (2000) Hermann Göring: Hitlers janusköpfiger Paladin; die politische Biographie, (Berlin: Quintessenz Verlags-GmbH), pp. 466-467.
- First Day, Reading of the Indictment, 20 November 1945, Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Volume 2, pp. 29 – 94. [Accessed 24 October 2023]