The Fate of Göring's Wife After the Fall of Nazi Germany

[00:00:00]A two-room cottage in the German countryside. No running water, no electricity.

[00:00:05]The woman inside owned two dresses.

[00:00:08]Three authorities made predictions about what would happen to the wife of the Reichsmarschall after the fall of Nazi Germany.

[00:00:15]Allied prosecutors at Nuremberg calculated that Emmy Göring had been the most visible woman in the Third Reich.

[00:00:22]The hostess at state dinners, >> [music] >> the actress who had traded her stage career for 10 years as the unofficial first lady of the regime. They expected a full account, a public reckoning.

[00:00:35]German denazification courts calculated that the law would handle her the same way it handled everyone else who had stood in proximity to the inner circle.

[00:00:44]Questionnaires, a hearing, a classification.

[00:00:48]Emmy Göring calculated in the forward of a memoir she published in 1967 that she owed no justification and no apology to anyone.

[00:00:59]She published the memoir. She defended her husband. She lived in Munich until June 8th, 1973.

[00:01:07]What the memoir did not address was a man named Albert. He carried the same surname. He used it differently. He died the year before the memoir was published in West Germany without a job, without recognition, without a biography.

[00:01:22]No company would hire anyone named Göring.

[00:01:25]His story took decades to surface.

[00:01:28]Hers was published while he was still alive.

[00:01:31]Emmy Sonnemann was born March 24th, 1893 in Hamburg. Her father was a salesman from the city's comfortable merchant class. She trained as an actress under Leopold Jessner beginning in 1910, >> [music] >> then moved through the standard progression of German provincial theater, Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, Stuttgart, Weimar.

[00:01:53]>> [music] >> She became an established stage actress at the National Theater in Weimar.

[00:01:58]>> [music] >> She married a fellow actor, Karl Köstlin, in 1916.

[00:02:03]They divorced [music] in 1926.

[00:02:05]She met Hermann Göring in 1932.

[00:02:09]He had been widowed the year before. His first wife, Karin, had died of tuberculosis, and Göring had named his enormous estate in the Schorfheide Forest after her.

[00:02:20]He was, by the time he met Emmy, already one of the most powerful men in Germany.

[00:02:24]>> [music] >> Minister President of Prussia, founder of the Gestapo, rising toward command of the Luftwaffe.

[00:02:31]He used his [music] position to advance her career immediately.

[00:02:35]In autumn 1934, he granted her the title of Prussian State Actress and secured her an engagement at the Berlin State Theater.

[00:02:43]>> [music] >> She performed there until she married him and retired from the stage entirely.

[00:02:49]The wedding took [music] place April 10th, 1935, at the Berlin Cathedral.

[00:02:55]Adolf Hitler stood as a witness. He is visible in the official photograph standing directly behind the couple.

[00:03:02]Emmy was 41 years old.

[00:03:04]>> [music] >> She had spent 30 years in provincial theater. She would spend the next 10 as the closest thing the Reich had to a first lady.

[00:03:12]But here is what Emmy Göring's memoir, published [music] 22 years after the fall of the regime, did not address.

[00:03:20]Because Hitler was unmarried, Emmy filled the representational role his private life could not.

[00:03:26]She hosted foreign heads of state at Karin Hall.

[00:03:29]She appeared alongside diplomats and allied leaders at state functions.

[00:03:33][music] She hosted the Duke and Duchess of Windsor when they toured Germany in 1937.

[00:03:39]Her gowns required multiple closets.

[00:03:42]The estate had its own power station.

[00:03:44]She was also, by documented account, openly hostile to Eva Braun, snubbing her at official events until Hitler issued personal instructions to Göring demanding Emmy treat her with respect.

[00:03:57]The consequence was direct. Emmy was subsequently disinvited from the Berghof.

[00:04:02]Their daughter Edda was born June 2nd, 1938.

[00:04:06]Emmy was 45 years old. The birth was orchestrated as a public propaganda occasion.

[00:04:13]She did not set policy. [music] She was the visible domestic face of a regime run by men who believed that was exactly what a woman should be.

[00:04:22]What those men were deciding was documented at Nuremberg.

[00:04:26]As Allied forces closed in during the spring of 1945, Göring attempted to negotiate his own surrender position, sending a message suggesting he was prepared to lead Germany in Hitler's place.

[00:04:39]The response was to declare him a traitor and place him under SS arrest.

[00:04:44]Emmy and 7-year-old Edda fled south toward Austria and were arrested by American forces.

[00:04:50]Hermann surrendered separately and was transported [music] to Nuremberg. The tribunal heard evidence of the Luftwaffe's bombing campaigns, the establishment of the Gestapo, the administration of forced labor, and the signed order Göring had transmitted in July 1941, instructing the SS to make all necessary preparations for a complete solution of the Jewish question in Europe.

[00:05:14]He was convicted on all four counts, conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

[00:05:22]He was sentenced to death.

[00:05:25]>> [music] >> On October 15th, 1946, the night before the execution was scheduled to be carried out, Hermann Göring died in his cell at Nuremberg prison.

[00:05:36]How exactly he died has been the subject of historical debate. He was found dead before dawn. The execution did not take place. Emmy was not with him.

[00:05:47]The German denazification court reviewed her case in 1948 and convicted her of being a Nazi. One year in jail, 30% of her remaining property confiscated, banned from the stage for five years.

[00:06:01]By the time of Hermann's death, she and Edda had already been reduced to that two-room cottage in the countryside. No running water, no electricity.

[00:06:11]The woman who had required multiple closets for her gowns owned two dresses.

[00:06:16]This is documented in multiple biographical sources and confirmed by people who saw the conditions directly.

[00:06:23]She had hosted the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at Carinhall.

[00:06:28]She had been disinvited from Hitler's private mountain retreat for being rude to the wrong woman.

[00:06:33]She had lived inside the most gilded domestic environment the Third Reich constructed for anyone not in direct command. And then she lived in a cottage without running water and owned two dresses.

[00:06:46]Hermann Göring's name appeared at the top of every document that helped build the machinery of the systematic persecution of European Jews.

[00:06:54]That same name appeared on something else entirely. On forged documents, camp release orders, and bribe payments used to save Jewish lives.

[00:07:04]And the man writing those documents was Hermann's brother.

[00:07:07]Albert Göring was born March 9th, 1895, two years after Hermann.

[00:07:13]They were physically and temperamentally different men.

[00:07:17]Hermann was heavy, loud, and by the war years deeply addicted to morphine.

[00:07:23]Albert was tall, musically inclined, and four times married.

[00:07:28]He refused to join the Nazi Party. He refused to allow Heil Hitler to be spoken [music] in his presence.

[00:07:36]The Gestapo opened a file on him.

[00:07:38]When German forces annexed Austria in [music] March 1938, Albert was in Vienna.

[00:07:45]In one documented incident, SS officers had organized a group of Jews to scrub the pavements on their hands and knees.

[00:07:53]Albert walked to the front [music] of the crowd and knelt down beside them.

[00:07:56]When the SS officer demanded identification and saw the name Göring, [music] he ordered everyone to disperse.

[00:08:03]He was not going to be held responsible for [music] humiliating a Göring. Albert understood exactly what his name could do. He used it accordingly. He wrote letters on Göring stationery [music] demanding the release of political prisoners from the camps.

[00:08:19]On one documented occasion, [music] a letter to the commandant at Dachau demanding the release of a doctor resulted in the accidental release of two men with the same surname. Albert had not specified which one, so both were freed. He provided false documents, [music] exit permits, and financial transfers for Jewish families attempting to flee Germany. He did this across multiple countries across multiple years of the regime. The Gestapo knew.

[00:08:46]>> [music] >> They confronted Hermann.

[00:08:48]Hermann, by Albert's own later account to Allied interrogators, intervened repeatedly to protect his brother from arrest.

[00:08:57]Albert told them, "As far as he could, Hermann helped me in those things."

[00:09:02]When it came to family, Hermann had a warm heart.

[00:09:06]Allied interrogators at Nuremberg dismissed his account as suspicious. He was a Göring. An interrogation report described his testimony as "as clever a piece of rationalization and [music] whitewash as we have ever seen."

[00:09:21]He was eventually cleared and released.

[00:09:24]He had done nothing criminal. He had spent the war doing the opposite of criminal. No West German company would hire him. His name was Göring.

[00:09:33]Albert Göring died December 20th, 1966 in Nuremberg, West Germany.

[00:09:39]>> [music] >> He was 71 years old. He died in poverty.

[00:09:43]He had refused to allow friends in the film and publishing industries to tell his story while he was alive. He considered it too self-promotional.

[00:09:53]He was buried in the Göring family plot in Munich. He died without a biography, without recognition, without a job.

[00:10:02]Emmy published her memoir in 1967.

[00:10:05]She wrote that she did not want to justify or apologize.

[00:10:09]She described life at Carinhall, the diplomats, the state dinners, the husband she defended until her death.

[00:10:17]Albert Göring had died the year before, alone, unable to find work. His story was not published in Germany until decades after his death.

[00:10:27]The memoir was titled An Der Seite Meines Mannes, [music] at my husband's side.

[00:10:33]An English translation appeared in 1972 as My Life with Göring.

[00:10:39]It covered the years 1932 through 1946.

[00:10:42]Carinhall, Mussolini, the Windsor visit, Eva Braun, Nuremberg, the forest cottage.

[00:10:50]She defended Hermann throughout. She said in the forward she owed no apology.

[00:10:56]Emmy Göring died June 8th, 1973, in Munich. She was 80 years old, buried at the Munich Waldfriedhof.

[00:11:05]Her daughter, Edda, outlived her.

[00:11:07]Edda has made public arguments throughout her life that her father's role in the regime has been exaggerated.

[00:11:14]She pursued legal claims to artworks from the Carinhall collection, >> [music] >> art assembled through the looting of occupied Europe, arguing it constitutes family inheritance.

[00:11:24]She has never [music] publicly renounced her father.

[00:11:27]In Israel, an ongoing campaign to recognize Albert Göring as righteous among the nations, the highest honor Yad Vashem bestows on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jewish lives, >> [music] >> has been debated for years.

[00:11:42]Australian author William Hastings Burke wrote a biography of Albert, naming it 34, after the number of Jews he is documented to have saved.

[00:11:53]The formal recognition had not been awarded as of the most recent documented accounts.

[00:11:58]The historical record of the Göring name contains two stories it has never fully reconciled.

[00:12:04]One story is in Emmy's memoir. It is about a man who built the Gestapo, commanded the Luftwaffe, and signed the order that set the administrative machinery of the Holocaust in motion.

[00:12:16]Emmy's story says he was also a husband, a father, a man with a warm heart toward his family. The other story is in a biography that took decades to appear.

[00:12:27]It is about a man who used the same name, >> [music] >> the name on every Gestapo document, the name on the Nuremberg indictment, to forge documents, free [music] prisoners, and move Jewish families across borders.

[00:12:41]Albert Göring used the most feared name in the German security apparatus as a weapon against it.

[00:12:47]>> [music] >> He died without recognition, without employment, without a memoir. His brother's wife published hers one year after he died.

[00:12:56]She said she did not want to apologize.

[00:12:58]The Göring name is still in living hands.

[00:13:01]Edda Göring is still defending the version of it the world already knows.

[00:13:06]The version that took decades to surface is in the Göring family burial plot in Munich.

[00:13:11]Albert Göring, 1966, >> [music] >> the same name, two completely different directions. The archive holds both of them now.