Hermann Göring

Born Jan. 12, 1893, in Rosenheim, Bavaria; died Oct. 15, 1946, in Nuremberg. One of the main war criminals of fascist Germany.

A pilot in World War I, Goring became a member of the National Socialist (fascist) Party in 1922 and leader of the SA Storm Troops. Equipped with Hitler’s political authority from 1930 and as chairman of the Reichstag (August 1932) he played an active role in the establishment of the fascist dictatorship in 1933, after which he became imperial aviation minister and head of the Prussian government. He was commander of the air force from 1935 and from 1937 the head of one of the largest German industrial concerns—the so-called Goring concern, which grew up as a result of the looting of Hitlerite-occupied countries. Göring was one of the organizers of the fascist terror in Nazi Germany and the territories occupied by it. Appointed marshal of the Reich in 1940, he was condemned to death by the Nuremberg Tribunal, but he committed suicide before the sentence could be executed.