Origin
Hermann Göring was born on January 12th, 1893 in Rosenheim, Bavaria, the son of a wealthy diplomat and a peasant woman. he was commissioned in the Prussian Army on June 22nd, 1912 when he was 19 years old. He was injured in his first year in fighting in World War One, and tried to transfer to the German Luftstreitkrafte at the behest of a friend he met in the hospital. He was denied, joined the Luftstreitkrafte anyways, and was sentenced to three weeks' confinement, though this was never carried out. Instead, he and his friend flew as a team in Feldfliegerabteilung 25 as part of the Crown Prince's Army, doing reconnaissance and bombing runs. He and his friend both earned an Iron Cross, first class. He was also awarded several other military awards and commendations. He had 22 confirmed kills. When Germany lost he was, according to himself, genuinely surprised and angered. When ordered to surrender he deliberately destroyed his plane to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.
After the war he became a member of the German peacetime army and flew as a commercial pilot for Swedish and Danish airlines. He also married his first wife, Carin von Kantzow, in 1923.
Character Evolution
Göring became a member of the Nazi Party in 1922, and became the commander of the Sturmabteilung (SA). He later stepped down from this post, becoming Lieutenant General, a rank which he held until 1945. He marched with Hitler during the Beer Hall Putsch and was wounded by a shot to the groin. He escaped imprisonment by fleeing to Austria, and was treated for his wound in an Innsbruck hospital. It was here that he developed an addiction to Morphine that would last until his trial at Nuremburg. He was certified a dangerous drug addict and placed in an asylum in 1925. His wife died in 1931. He is alleged to have set the fire at the Reichstag in 1933, but this has never been conclusively proven. He married his second wife, Emmy Sonnemann in 1935.
He was named to the German cabinet, one of only two Nazis at the time, under chancellor Adolf Hitler in 1933. He was named as Interior Minister of Prussia at this time, a role which gave him control of the state police and allowed him to fill the upper echelons of law enforcement with Nazi supporters. He eventually separated this Nazi element of the police, and they became the Gestapo, a secret police force under his command. He was instrumental in the process of Gleichschaltung ("forcible coordination"), which was itself instrumental in creating the Nazi dictatorship. He served as minister in a number of positions throughout the early years of the Reich. In 1936 he was named plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, essentially putting him in charge of Reich finances. He was also very important to Anschluss, the annexation of Austria. He was named as the first Field Marshal of the Luftwaffe in 1938. He was designated as Hitler's successor in 1939, on the first day of the Second World War. In 1940 he was appointed as Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich, making him the most senior German army officer
He acquired a great deal of wealth from the confiscation of Jewish properties throughout the war. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Nazism, and utterly loyal to Hitler, even if he did not seem to follow the Hitler Myth as closely as Goebbels or Himmler. He was complicit in the Holocaust despite his claims to the contrary, directly issuing memos detailing logistical aspects of the Final Solution. He attempted to take the reigns of the Nazi government as the war drew to a close but was outmaneuvered by Martin Bormann.
Göring surrendered to the invading American Army on May 9th, 1945 in Bavaria. He was put on trial at Nuremburg as the third-highest-ranking member of the Nazi party, behind Karl Donitz and Rudolf Hess. He claimed that he was not an anti-Semite, but he was found guilty and sentenced to be executed by hanging. He committed suicide by ingesting potassium cyanide pills the night before his execution.
In Comics
During the second World War, D.C. Thomson & Co featured many comic strips to help promote propaganda and keep the spirits of the British kids up. One of these strips was Addie and Hermy - The Nasty Nazis from The Dandy which featured Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring. Named Addie and Hermy for the strip, the bumbling duo would always get themselves into trouble with their idiotic scams and schemes.
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