Hermann Göring

Hermann Göring authorised the Holocaust. The 31 July 1941 letter from Göring to Heydrich, instructing Heydrich to make all necessary preparations for an overall solution to the Jewish question across all German-influenced territory, was the formal cabinet-level commission of the killing programme. Göring was, throughout the period, the second figure of the regime, Hitler’s designated successor, head of the Luftwaffe, head of the Four Year Plan, and effectively the senior civilian Reich official. He used these positions to authorise, organise, and profit from the persecution and murder of European Jewry over twelve years.

The Aryanisation programme

From 1937 Göring ran the Four Year Plan, which gave him control over much of the German wartime economy. The programme included the Aryanisation of Jewish-owned businesses across Germany and Austria, the forced sale of Jewish property to non-Jewish German buyers at confiscatory prices. Göring chaired the meetings at which the Aryanisation policy was set out and personally signed the implementing decrees. After Kristallnacht of November 1938 he chaired the meeting at the Reich Aviation Ministry on 12 November 1938 at which the wider response to the pogrom was decided. The minutes, which survive, record him imposing a one billion Reichsmark fine on the German Jewish community as collective punishment for the death of Ernst vom Rath, ordering the cleanup of the broken glass to be paid for by the Jewish community itself, and excluding Jews from public life across the Reich. The minutes show Göring laughing at his own jokes about the Jewish situation. The 12 November meeting was the moment after which any pretence of restrained policy disappeared.

The 31 July 1941 letter

The single most damning document for Göring is the letter he signed on 31 July 1941. The text, drafted by Heydrich and presented to him for signature, instructed Heydrich to prepare for an overall solution to the Jewish question across all German-occupied territory. The letter was the formal cabinet-level authorisation of the Holocaust. Göring did not sign it carelessly. He was, at that moment, the senior official in the Reich responsible for economic planning, and he understood that what he was authorising was a project of European scale. He did not amend the language. He did not raise objections. He authorised what he had been asked to authorise.

The letter survived the war in Heydrich’s files and was used at Göring’s trial at Nuremberg. He attempted in court to argue that the phrase Gesamtlösung referred only to forced emigration. The argument was untenable on the documentary record: the letter was dated to a moment when the killings in the occupied Soviet territories were already underway, and the operational record of the months that followed makes clear what the letter had authorised.

The looted art

Göring profited personally from the persecution. He used his position to assemble one of the largest private art collections in Europe, much of it looted from Jewish collectors across occupied Europe. His personal art-acquisition staff under Walter Andreas Hofer travelled across the occupied countries identifying works to be confiscated and shipped to his country estate at Carinhall. By 1945 the collection contained around 1,500 pieces. Substantial parts were recovered after the war and progressively returned to the families of the original owners. The continuing process of restitution is part of the post-war record. Göring did not steal accidentally; he had a salaried staff dedicated to the work.

The Luftwaffe and slave labour

Göring as head of the Luftwaffe authorised the use of concentration camp prisoners as slave labour in aircraft production. The major Luftwaffe contractors, Messerschmitt, Heinkel, Junkers, BMW for engines, used prisoner labour at large scale across the camp system. Göring’s personal corporation, the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, was one of the largest industrial conglomerates in occupied Europe and operated forced-labour camps directly. The corporation profited from confiscated Jewish industrial property across Czechoslovakia, Austria and the German-occupied territories.

What he knew

Göring was kept informed throughout. He attended the major Reich cabinet meetings. He met regularly with Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich. He received reports from his own ministry on the deportations and the slave labour programme. He visited his country estate Carinhall in the period when looted art was arriving from across occupied Europe. He continued to authorise the deportations and the killings throughout. By 1944, with Germany clearly losing the war and his standing with Hitler diminished, he had been progressively sidelined within the regime, but he never spoke against the killing programme. He never resigned. He never recorded any objection.

The Nuremberg trial

Göring was the senior surviving Nazi at Nuremberg and the lead defendant. The trial opened on 20 November 1945. He conducted his own defence with considerable rhetorical skill and dominated the dock. He acknowledged some responsibility but denied detailed knowledge of the killing programme. The prosecution’s documentary case, including the 31 July 1941 letter and the minutes of the 12 November 1938 meeting, made the position untenable. He was found guilty on all four counts on 1 October 1946 and sentenced to death by hanging.

He requested execution by firing squad as a soldier rather than hanging as a criminal. The request was refused. On the night of 15 October 1946, two hours before he was due to be hanged, he committed suicide in his cell with a cyanide capsule he had concealed during his fifteen months in custody. The route by which the capsule reached him has never been finally established; the most likely source was an American guard he had befriended. He was 53.

What he was

Göring was the senior establishment Nazi: a war hero, a man of cultivated tastes, a serious morphine addict, and a man who profited spectacularly from the regime he had helped to install. He was also the official who put his signature to the formal authorisation of the killing of European Jewry. The personal vanity, the looted art, the country estate full of stolen paintings, all coexisted with the man who signed the 31 July 1941 letter. The two halves of him were not, in his own self-image, in contradiction. He could have both because he had simply accepted that the killing of Europe’s Jews was within the legitimate scope of state policy.

See also

Sources

  • Richard Overy, Goering: The Iron Man, Routledge, 1984
  • Göring authorisation letter to Heydrich, 31 July 1941
  • Minutes of the 12 November 1938 Reich Aviation Ministry meeting
  • Nuremberg trial transcripts, particularly the Göring cross-examination by Robert H. Jackson
  • USHMM: Hermann Göring