Hermann Göring | |
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Historical Figure | |
Nationality: | Germany (born in Kingdom of Bavaria) |
Year of Birth: | 1893 |
Year of Death: | 1946 |
Cause of Death: | Suicide by cyanide |
Religion: | Protestantism, later irreligious |
Occupation: | Pilot, Nobility, Politician |
Spouse: | Carin von Kantznow (d. 1931) Emmy Sonnemann (1935–1946) |
Children: | Four |
Military Branch: | Luftstreitkräfte (World War I), Luftwaffe (World War II) |
Political Party: | NSDAP |
Political Office(s): | Prime Minister of Prussia |
Fictional Appearances: |
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; 12 January 1893– 15 October 1946) was a German political and military leader and a convicted war criminal. Göring was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party during its rule from 1933 to 1945.
A veteran World War I fighter pilot ace, Göring was an early member of the Nazi Party and loyalist to Adolf Hitler. After being injured in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Göring developed an addiction to morphine while he recovered, an addiction that persisted until the last year of his life. After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Göring was named as Minister Without Portfolio in the new government. One of his first acts as a cabinet minister was to oversee the creation of the Gestapo, which he ceded to Heinrich Himmler in 1934.
Following the establishment of the Nazi state, Göring amassed power and political capital to become the second most powerful man in Germany. He was appointed commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe (air force), a position he held until the final days of the regime. Upon being named Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan in 1936, Göring was entrusted with the task of mobilizing all sectors of the economy for war, an assignment which brought numerous government agencies under his control and helped him become one of the wealthiest men in the country. In September 1939, as World War II began, Hitler designated him as his successor and deputy in all his offices. After the Fall of France in 1940, he was bestowed the specially created rank of Reichsmarschall, which gave him seniority over all officers in Germany's armed forces.
By 1941, Göring was at the peak of his power and influence. As the Second World War progressed, Göring's standing with Hitler and with the German public declined after the Luftwaffe proved incapable of preventing the Allied bombing of Germany's cities and resupplying surrounded Axis forces during the Battle of Stalingrad. Around that time, Göring increasingly withdrew from military and political affairs to devote his attention to collecting property and artwork, much of which was stolen from Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Informed on 22 April 1945 that Hitler intended to commit suicide, Göring sent a telegram to Hitler requesting his permission to assume leadership of the Reich. Considering his request an act of treason, Hitler removed Göring from all his positions, expelled him from the party, and ordered his arrest. After the war, Göring was convicted of conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. He was sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide by ingesting cyanide hours before the sentence was to be carried out.
Hermann Göring in The Man With the Iron Heart[]
The Man With the Iron Heart POD: May 29, 1942; Relevant POD: May, 1945 | |
Type of Appearance: | Direct |
Hermann Göring was one of several German officials who was captured by the Allies at the end of World War II.[1] The Allies sought to try Goering and the other men for war crimes. These plans were stopped twice by the German Freedom Front, first in November 1945 when the GFF destroyed the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg[2] and second in 1946, when the GFF destroyed the American residency zone in Frankfurt with a radium bomb.[3]
In 1947, the Soviets decided to try the officials in their zone. The GFF prevented this by crashing a plane into the courthouse, killing all the lawyers and judges, but leaving Göring and his fellow accused unharmed.
Hermann Göring in Worldwar[]
Worldwar POD: May 30, 1942 | |
Appearance(s): | Second Contact; Down to Earth |
Type of Appearance: | Posthumous references |
Date of Death: | c. 1960 |
Cause of Death: | Natural causes |
Military Branch: | Luftwaffe (WWII, Race Invasion of Tosev 3) |
Hermann Göring (1893-c. 1960) commanded the German Luftwaffe during World War II and the war against the Race's Conquest Fleet. At one point, he was Adolf Hitler's presumed successor as Führer and Chancellor, but he had disgraced himself publicly, and Heinrich Himmler succeeded Hitler instead.[4] Although something of a joke after his death,[5] Göring was still sufficiently esteemed in the Reich that the Reich Rocket Force named its first atomic-powered spaceship the Hermann Göring in the Reichsmarschall's honor.[6] That ship was destroyed in the Race-German War of 1965.
Hermann Göring in In the Presence of Mine Enemies[]
In the Presence of Mine Enemies POD: c. 1940 | |
Type of Appearance: | Posthumous references |
Date of Death: | c. 1961 |
Cause of Death: | Natural causes (presumably) |
Hermann Göring (1893 - c. 1961) was the only person to hold the title Reichsmarschall of the Greater German Reich. However, his role in the early Reich was so dominant that the headquarters of the Air and Space Ministry was still known as the Reichsmarschall's Office in 2010, almost 50 years after his death. The roof of the Ministry was covered in elaborate gardens and grass, as a venue for his notorious orgies.[7]
Göring had been Adolf Hitler's hand-picked successor. However, Göring died before Hitler, and so Heinrich Himmler became the second Führer of the German Reich.[8]
Rolf Stolle, the Gauleiter of Berlin, had developed a reputation for debauchery that nearly matched Göring's own.[9]
Hermann Göring in The War That Came Early[]
The War That Came Early POD: July 20, 1936; Relevant POD: September 29, 1938 | |
Appearance(s): | Contemporary references throughout |
Type of Appearance: | Direct (Hitler's War, West and East) |
Hermann Göring was a prominent member of Nazi Germany's government before and during the Second World War.
Göring was present for the Munich Conference in September 1938. While Göring was loyal to Adolf Hitler, he did express some doubts about Hitler's decision to attack Czechoslovakia in response to the assassination of Konrad Henlein.[10] Nonetheless, his Luftwaffe received its trial by fire over the next months.
Despite the trials of the war, Göring publicly carried on as if the situation on the continent was normal. He attended a performance of Tannhäuser at the Staatsoper in 1939, for example.[11] He also made sure his own creature comforts and voracious appetites were not adversely affected by the inevitable shortages the war produced.[12]
Göring held his position until 1944. After Hitler declared war on the United States in March 1944, the Committee for the Salvation of the German Nation decided the war was unwinnable and took action.[13] When Hitler gave a broadcast speech in Münster about the anti-Nazi insurrection taking place there, he was killed by a bomb planted by the Committee. Committee leader Heinz Guderian immediately announced Hitler's death and that the Committee was taking over. He also announced the imminent arrest of Göring, along with other members of the Nazi Party.[14] Göring vanished during the subsequent civil war, and remained unaccounted for into the summer of 1944.[15] Some rumors had it that he had been killed, others insisted he was still at large.
Literary comment[]
Göring's fate remains unresolved at series' end.
Hermann Göring in Joe Steele[]
Joe Steele POD: 1878; Relevant POD: July, 1932 | |
Novel or Story?: | Novel |
Type of Appearance: | Contemporary reference |
After the Spanish Civil War served as a testing ground for the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring bloodily showed the world what the air force could do, as his planes overran Poland, the Low Countries, and northern France at the start of World War II.[16]
See also[]
- References to Historical Figures in Turtledove's Work, for additional references.
- Hermann Goering at the Riverworld wiki
References[]
- ↑ The Man With the Iron Heart, pg. 108.
- ↑ Ibid., pg. 112-113.
- ↑ Ibid., pg. 261-262.
- ↑ Second Contact, pg. 562.
- ↑ Down to Earth, pg. 338
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ In the Presence of Mine Enemies, pg. 4.
- ↑ Ibid., pg 5. "The Reichsmarschall was almost fifty years dead" in 2010.
- ↑ Ibid., pg. 277.
- ↑ Hitler's War, pg. 17
- ↑ West and East. pg. 102
- ↑ See, e.g., The Big Switch, pg. 273.
- ↑ Last Orders, pgs. 300, 311, HC.
- ↑ Ibid, pgs. 299-300.
- ↑ Ibid, pg. 326.
- ↑ Joe Steele, p. 222.
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