Photo: Topical Press Agency / Getty Images
May 9, 1893, Herman Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Chief of the Gestapo, Prime Minister of Prussia and Hitler’s designated successor is taken prisoner by the US Seventh Army in Bavaria.
Goering was an early member of the Nazi Party and was injured in the failed Munich Brewery Putsch in 1923. That injury had long-term effects; Goering became increasingly addicted to painkillers.
Not long after Hitler came to power, Goering played a decisive role in the creation of concentration camps for political enemies. Ostentatious and self-indulgent, he changed his uniform five times a day and was known to flaunt his decorations, jewelry and stolen works of art
It was Goering who ordered the purge of German Jews from the economy, following the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, initiating a policy of “Aryanization” that confiscated Jewish properties and businesses.
Goering’s failure to win the Battle of Britain and prevent the Allied bombing of Germany led to his losing stature within the Party, compounded by the low esteem in which he was always held by his fellow officers due to to his self-centeredness and position as Hitler’s right-hand man.
As the war progressed, fell into depression and battled addiction to the drugs.
When Goering fell to the US after Germany surrendered , had in his possession a large cache of pills. He was tried in Nuremberg and accused of several crimes against humanity .
Despite a vigorous attempt at self-acquittal, he was found guilty and sentenced to hang, but before he could be executed, committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide tablet that he had hidden from his guards.
Keep reading:
Video: “We planned to shoot you and hang you”, says a supposed drug trafficker to the commander of the Navy