NUREMBERG, March 18, 1946 — Hermann Göring, the fallen Reichsmarschall of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, mounted the witness stand at the International Military Tribunal and delivered a defiant performance that stunned prosecutors and judges alike, insisting he would be remembered not as a criminal but as a great German leader. Under relentless questioning that stretched across six days, Göring alternately boasted of his power, denied knowledge of the Holocaust, and declared his unwavering loyalty to the Führer.
The former commander of the Luftwaffe, once the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany, told the tribunal with chilling conviction that history would vindicate him. “Yes, I will be hanged, I am prepared,” Göring declared, “but I am determined to go down in German history as a great man. If I cannot convince the tribunal in the end, I will convince the German people that everything I did was for the great German Reich.
In 50 or 60 years there will be statues of Hermann Göring all over Germany.”
The proceedings, which began March 13, 1946, and continued through March 18, revealed Göring’s complex psychological state as described by the prisoners’ psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas Kelly. Kelly characterized the former Reichsmarschall as the most physically fit man in Germany, docile and accepting of his misfortune with dignity, yet utterly consumed with preserving the prestige of his authority.
Göring never considered himself a criminal, viewing his imprisonment and trial as an unfortunate twist of fate rather than just punishment for crimes against humanity.
His testimony began with the required oath, sworn before the high court, and proceeded through the biographical details of a man whose life had become inseparable from the rise and fall of National Socialism. Born on January 12, 1893, in Rosenheim, Bavaria, Göring was the son of a colonial governor with connections to Cecil Rhodes and Bismarck. His youth was divided between Germany and Austria, and he felt an early attachment to both nations.
When the Great War broke out in 1914, he served as a lieutenant in an infantry regiment before transferring to the air service.
The wartime service that would define his identity emerged through his testimony. Göring recounted his progression from altitude adjuster to pilot, first flying reconnaissance aircraft, then bombers, and finally becoming a fighter pilot in the autumn of 1915. He was severely wounded in an air battle but recovered to command a fighter squadron.
After the death of the legendary Manfred von Richthofen, Göring assumed command of the famous Richthofen Squadron. His decorations included the Iron Cross second and first class, the Zähringen Lion with Swords, the Order of Karl Friedrich with Swords, and the Pour le Mérite, the highest military honor then available.
The collapse of the Reich following the First World War set the stage for Göring’s fateful encounter with the man who would lead him to the gallows. Göring testified that he refused to serve in the Reichswehr because he had been an opponent of the Republic from its inception, calling service to the revolutionary government contrary to his convictions. He went abroad, returned, and enrolled at the University of Munich to study history and political science.
It was in late October or early November 1922 that a chance attendance at a protest meeting changed everything. Adolf Hitler was invited to speak but initially refused, delivering instead what Göring called a devastating critique of empty protests without real support.
“Empty protests like Sunday’s were pointless,” Göring recalled Hitler saying. “They only distracted from the real agenda, from the fact that a protest is only valid when it has real support. As long as Germany is not strong, such protests are aimless.”
Göring testified that this conviction coincided word for word with his own position. Days later, he visited the headquarters of the NSDAP, a party about whose program he knew nothing. Hitler accepted him immediately, declaring their meeting “a sign of faith.”
There was no shortage of dramatic detail in Göring’s account of joining the Nazi movement. He described Hitler’s insistence that only by attracting the masses of German workers could the restoration of a strong national will succeed. The concept of national socialism, Göring explained, was an amalgamation of nationalism and socialism that should have convinced true nationalists that socialism is also nationalism.
Hitler had created the SA, the party’s paramilitary force, but its leaders were too young. The Führer had long wished to find a decorated pilot or submariner to lead it. Göring, the last commander of the Richthofen Squadron, was such a prize.
Initially reluctant to assume immediate leadership, Göring agreed to remain in the shadows for a month or two before taking command.
The Beer Hall Putsch of November 9, 1923, emerged in Göring’s telling as a necessary response to Bavarian machinations. Tensions between Bavaria and the Reich had reached a breaking point when the Bavarian government, under Governor General von Kahr, was released from its oath to the Reich Constitution. Göring described the parade where the Bavarian Crown Prince appeared instead of von Kahr as extremely disconcerting.
The suspicion arose that Bavaria, by following a path of secession, might break away from the Reich entirely. “Nothing could be further from our plans,” Göring insisted. “We wanted a strong Reich, a united Reich.”
The famous meeting at the Bürgerbräukeller presented the moment to thwart these designs and take steps toward a greater Germany. Göring admitted he was prepared to take part in any revolution against the so-called November Republic, no matter who initiated it, with the exception of left-wing actions. He was seriously wounded and hospitalized in Austria while Hitler faced trial as the main defendant.
Following a general amnesty, Göring returned to Germany and reconnected with Hitler in 1927.
The years between 1928 and the seizure of power found Göring serving as a member of the Reichstag and, eventually, its president. He described himself as a party representative traveling from town to town, attempting to expand the party and attract communist and Marxist supporters to the National Socialist cause. It was not until the end of 1931 that Hitler asked him to serve as a personal representative independent of the party apparatus, empowered to negotiate with all parties from the Communist to the extreme right.
Göring’s testimony regarding Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor painted a picture of political maneuvering amid national crisis, with eight million unemployed and every program failing.
“The party came to power in a perfectly legal way,” Göring insisted, “because the party was called by the Reich President in accordance with the Constitution.” The Reich President, von Hindenburg, had demanded certain restrictions. Göring testified that Franz von Papen was to become Vice Chancellor, the Foreign Office was to remain in the hands of von Neurath, the post of Prussian Prime Minister was to go to von Papen’s man, and General von Blomberg was to serve as Minister of Defense.
Despite these concessions, Göring maintained that the National Socialists had been significantly underrepresented in the government relative to their strength.
Once in power, Göring acknowledged, the goal was to retain it at all costs. He listed his positions with obvious pride: President of the Reichstag, Minister and Reichskommissar of Aviation, Minister of the Interior in Prussia, and on April 28, 1933, Prime Minister of Prussia. It was in his capacity overseeing the Prussian police that Göring acknowledged creating the Gestapo and the first concentration camps.
He sought to justify these actions as responses to the threat of communist revolution. The Communist Party, he claimed, had approximately six million voters and a Red Front organization that could be used as an instrument of revolution.
“Concentration camps, when necessity demanded, first of all the creation of order and the elimination of the most dangerous elements of disorder directed against us,” Göring testified. He described arresting communist officials and leaders, then expanding arrests to include members of the Red Front. Preventive detention was the mechanism, a measure Göring claimed was not new and had been used against National Socialists themselves.
He admitted that camps were necessary because prisons were unsuitable and the number of detainees uncertain. “Of course there were excesses at the beginning,” Göring conceded. “Of course here and there innocent people suffered.
Of course here and there there were beatings, acts of brutality. But compared with all that had happened in the past, with the grandeur of the events, the German Revolution was bloodless and the most disciplined of all the revolutions in history.”
The most dramatic exchanges came when the Allied prosecutors confronted Göring with the horrors of the Holocaust. Göring insisted he knew nothing of the systematic extermination of millions of Jews and other victims. When the Soviet prosecutor, General Rudenko, pressed him on the testimony of witnesses who placed the death toll at four million in Auschwitz alone, Göring responded with characteristic defiance.
“It is a statement I have heard here, but I see no way of confirming it,” he said. Rudenko pressed further, citing the written testimony of Höttl, Deputy Head of the Foreign Department Security Division, who reported approximately four million Jews murdered in concentration camps with two million more dying by other means. Even accounting for fifty percent of those figures, Rudenko asked, how could a minister with Göring’s authority claim ignorance?
“I maintain that for this reason such things were kept secret from me,” Göring answered. “I should add that in my opinion not even the Führer knew to what extent this was going on.” This claim, met with visible skepticism in the courtroom, would become a defining element of Göring’s defense.
He admitted knowing that workers were brought into Germany not always voluntarily, acknowledging that a large number of workers were forced into the Reich. But when asked about the murder of millions, about forty-five wagon loads of furs, about twenty-nine thousand kilograms of gold wedding rings, about mattresses stuffed with human hair, Göring maintained his ignorance.
The Soviet prosecutor also extracted a significant admission regarding the planning of Operation Barbarossa. Göring acknowledged that in November 1940, more than six months before the German attack on the Soviet Union, plans for the assault had been drawn up with his participation as commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe. He qualified the admission by insisting that Hitler believed Soviet Russia was taking a dangerous attitude and that no attack was discussed at the beginning.
When Rudenko pressed him on whether the goals of the war included seizing Soviet territories up to the Urals and annexing the Baltic states, Crimea, the Caucasus and other regions, Göring flatly denied it. He dismissed the minutes of the July 16, 1941 meeting, which he attended, as “infinitely exaggerated” and drawn up by Martin Bormann.
Göring’s relationship with Hitler emerged as a central theme. He acknowledged that until late 1941 or early 1942, his influence over the Führer was paramount. “The main influence on the Führer, at least until late 1941 or early 1942, if we are talking about influence, was my own,” he testified.
From 1943 onward, his influence diminished rapidly. He named Joseph Goebbels as influential in certain areas, Heinrich Himmler’s influence growing over the years, and Martin Bormann’s devastatingly strong influence from 1942 onward. Bormann, Göring said, deceived Hitler about his will.
The British prosecutor, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, proved a formidable adversary. He confronted Göring with his claimed ignorance of concentration camps, given that he was the second man in the Reich. He reminded Göring of his statement that the main influence on Hitler had been his own.
When Sir David pressed him on whether he continued to justify and exalt Hitler even after the Führer ordered the murder of fifty young officers who escaped from Stalag Luft III, Göring responded with a striking declaration of loyalty. “I am not here justifying or praising Führer Adolf Hitler,” he said. “I am only emphasizing my loyalty to him because I am convinced that if an oath is not kept in good times, it is much more difficult to keep it in difficult times.”
Perhaps the most telling exchange came when Göring was asked directly whether he considered himself responsible for the organized, state-sponsored murders of millions of innocent people. His answer was unequivocal: “No, because I knew nothing about them and did not order them to be carried out.” When the prosecutor asked whether, even independently of his knowledge of these facts, he was responsible, Göring replied, “If I don’t really know them, I can’t be responsible for them.”
Sir David pressed: was it not his duty to know these facts? Göring turned the question aside. “Millions of Germans did not know this,” he insisted.
“This statement is not supported by anything.”
The testimony also laid bare Göring’s theory of responsibility. He distinguished between formal responsibility and actual responsibility. Formally, he was responsible for what happened in his departments, though he claimed he could not see or know in advance what was adopted or discussed in them.
Actual responsibility attached only to those cases where he personally gave orders or signed directives. This narrow construction of accountability stood in stark contrast to the monumental crimes with which he was charged.
As the cross-examination drew to a close, the French prosecutor concluded that the arguments put forward by Göring’s defense had not in the slightest succeeded in undermining the evidence. The Soviet prosecutor pressed his final questions, confronting Göring with the criminal orders regarding Soviet prisoners of war and the directives that political commissars were to be destroyed. Göring denied knowledge of these orders entirely, insisting they were never sent through official channels.
The court heard final arguments about whether Göring had been given too much latitude in his testimony. The tribunal’s president warned that Göring was making speeches rather than answering questions. When Göring attempted to summarize his views on Hitler and responsibility, he was cut short.
The court had heard enough.
Before leaving the stand, Göring made a final statement on responsibility. “The Führer Adolf Hitler is dead,” he said. “I was considered his successor in the German Reich.
Accordingly I declare that as far as my responsibility is concerned, my aim was to carry out the preparations for the seizure of power and to establish a firm authority, to make Germany free and great. I did everything possible to prevent war, but once it began it was my duty to do everything possible for victory.”
The court silenced him. The testimony had concluded.
Göring’s appearance at Nuremberg marked one of the most extraordinary confrontations between a defeated leader and the forces of international justice in modern history. Whatever the tribunal’s verdict, Göring had used his time on the stand to craft the defense that would define his legacy: loyalty to his Führer, ignorance of genocide, and an unshakeable belief in the grandeur of his cause. The judges of the International Military Tribunal will now begin their deliberations on whether the man who stood second only to Hitler bears responsibility for the darkest chapters of the Nazi regime.
Göring, for his part, has already delivered his verdict on history. He expects statues. The world expects justice.
