[JANUARY 12, 1893–OCTOBER 15, 1946]

German commander of the Luftwaffe, Hitler associate

After brilliant service as a fighter pilot and squadron commander during World War I, Hermann Göring was one of the early supporters of Adolf Hitler and rose through the ranks of the Nazi Party to become one of the Führer's closest associates and partners in the murderous campaign against European Jews. Of aristocratic birth, Göring was highly intelligent, utterly egocentric, and cynical, and his decisive weakness proved ultimately to be his sybaritic lifestyle and self-aggrandizing approach to policy and administration. Placed in charge of the Luftwaffe in 1935, he took on the challenge of the German economy the next year as commissioner of the Four Year Plan. Spearheading the confiscation of Jewish property, Göring had nominal oversight of the Jewish question as a whole at the time of the Kristallnacht riots against the Jews in...