Göring Was 265 Pounds When Captured. He Lost 75 in Prison. Then He Beat the Hangman.

He was Hitler's designated successor — the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany.

He built the Gestapo, commanded the Luftwaffe, and signed the authorization that

set the Holocaust in motion. He looted an entire continent's art and housed it in

a palace built in a dead woman's name. He stood trial at Nuremberg — and beat the

hangman anyway.

This is the complete story of Hermann Wilhelm Göring, Reichsmarschall of the

Third Reich. From a medieval castle in Bavaria to the highest offices of Nazi

Germany. From the cockpit of a WWI fighter pilot — wounded in the Beer Hall

Putsch and addicted to morphine ever after — to the dock at the Nuremberg Trials.

From the Pour le Mérite to a cyanide capsule in a prison cell, two hours before

his scheduled execution.

When Göring was captured by American forces in May 1945, he weighed 265 pounds

and was taking 40 pills of paracodeine a day. Eighteen months later — thinner by

75 pounds, clean of morphine, and condemned to hang — he took his own life in a

way that stunned the Allied prosecution. How he obtained the cyanide capsule

inside a maximum-security American prison remains contested to this day.

If you watched our documentary on the Nuremberg psychiatrist Douglas Kelley —

this is the man Kelley spent eleven months trying to understand. This is what

he found.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 — Opening: Nuremberg, October 1946

04:04 — The Boy in the Castle (1893–1914)

07:14 — The Ace (1914–1918)

10:05 — The Exile (1918–1927)

13:17 — The Putsch and the Morphine (1923)

16:24 — The Rise (1928–1933)

22:43 — The Night of the Long Knives (1934)

28:24 — The Reichsmarschall (1935–1940)

29:34 — The Battle of Britain (1940)

34:01 — The Authorization (July 1941)

35:57 — Stalingrad (1942–1943)

40:47 — The Long Decline (1943–1945)

46:14 — Camp Ashcan → Nuremberg → The Last Night

If this is the kind of history you're looking for — SUBSCRIBE.

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For the full cinematic experience — with historical photographs and archival footage — watch this episode on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheWW2Grognard

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RESEARCH SOURCES

Primary:

Hermann Göring — testimony before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, March 1946.

International Military Tribunal — Trial of the Major War Criminals, Vol. IX (Nuremberg, 1947).

https://amzn.to/3QwC4Y0

Douglas M. Kelley — 22 Cells in Nuremberg (Greenberg, 1947).

https://amzn.to/3OjTA16

Gustave M. Gilbert — Nuremberg Diary (Farrar, Straus, 1947).

https://amzn.to/4d3zu4s

Leon Goldensohn — The Nuremberg Interviews, ed. Robert Gellately (Knopf, 2004). U.S.

https://amzn.to/4mT9i00

Holocaust Memorial Museum — Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg documentation (encyclopedia.ushmm.org).

Secondary:

Richard J. Evans — The Third Reich in Power (Penguin, 2005) |

https://amzn.to/4mT9mNi

Richard J. Evans — The Third Reich at War (Penguin, 2008)

https://amzn.to/3QuRiN9

Ian Kershaw — Hitler: 1889–1936 Hubris (Norton, 1998)

https://amzn.to/48jsqOw

Ian Kershaw — Hitler: 1936–1945 Nemesis (Norton, 2000)

https://amzn.to/4epyaKD

Roger Manvell & Heinrich Fraenkel — Göring (Simon & Schuster, 1962)

https://amzn.to/3OZ6sd5

Jack El-Hai — The Nazi and the Psychiatrist (PublicAffairs, 2013) → [Amazon link]

https://amzn.to/3QrNM6g

Wikipedia — Hermann Göring, Battle of Britain, Stalingrad, Night of the Long Knives, Carinhall, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg

History.com | USHMM Encyclopedia | Britannica | National WWII Museum | nuremberg.media.

Note: This video covers historical events of the period 1893–1946 and does not address current events.

MUSIC

Almost in F — Tranquillity by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1500002

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

No.4 Piano Journey by Esther Abrami

Free to use — YouTube Audio Library

Artist: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOFrldzxeKGG8fTpN5_d75Q

PRODUCTION TRANSPARENCY

Script & Research: Human-authored | Narration: AI-generated (ElevenLabs) | Images: Bundesarchiv, U.S. National Archives, Wikimedia Commons — public domain

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