Hermann Goering (12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was the President of the Reichstag from 30 August 1932 to 23 April 1945, succeeding Paul Lobe, and Reichsminister of Aviation from 27 April 1933 to 23 April 1945, preceding Robert Ritter von Greim.
Biography[]
Goering in 1918
Hermann Goering was born on 12 January 1893 in Rosenheim, Bavaria. Goering was a World War I figher ace and, after spells working in Denmark and Sweden, he joined the Nazi Party in 1923. He helped plan the Munich Beer Hall Putsch the same year, was wounded in the fighting, and fled to Austria, where he remained in exile until granted amnesty in 1926. Goering rejoined the party and won a seat in the Reichstag in 1928 and became its president in 1932. He became minister without portfolio and Prussia's minister of the interior in Adolf Hitler's first cabinet the following year. Goering's experience in the Imperial German Air Force led to his appointment as Reichsminister of Aviation on 27 April 1933 (giving him command over the new Luftwaffe air force of Nazi Germany in 1935), and in 1937 he was made the Minister of the Economy after Hjalmar Schacht was disgraced from the party; in 1938, Walther Funk replaced him as Minister of the Economy.
World War II[]
Hitler and Goering in 1935
In 1939-1940, Goering rose to fame due to the Luftwaffe's excellent performance in the invasion of Poland, France, and the Low Countries, but its failure at the Battle of Dunkirk (where it failed to prevent the Anglo-French evacuation) and the Battle of Britain marked the beginning of his fall from power. When British bombers struck at Nazi Germany and even the capital of Berlin, Goering's assurances to Hitler that this would never happen were swept away. He retreated to his vast estates and continued the morphine addiction that he had developed in the 1920s. In 1945, Goering was stripped of all positions after he suggested that he could assume power if Hitler was incapacitated, and he was among the Nazis tried at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II's end. He took cyanide shortly before his planned execution by hanging.
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