Hermann Göring, a top Nazi leader and close associate of Adolf Hitler, was captured by U.S. forces in May 1945, tried at Nuremberg, sentenced to death, and ultimately died by suicide with cyanide on the eve of his execution.

Quick Scoop: What Happened to Hermann Göring?

Rise and role in the Nazi regime

  • Göring was one of Hitler’s earliest and most powerful supporters, holding senior posts in the Nazi state, including command of the Luftwaffe and major control over the German economy.
  • He played a central role in anti‑Jewish policy, especially after Kristallnacht in 1938, overseeing measures that stripped Jews of property and rights and helped pave the way for the Holocaust.

Fall from power at the end of WWII

  • As the war turned against Germany, Göring’s influence declined, and by April 1945 Hitler formally removed him as successor and expelled him from the Nazi Party.
  • After Germany’s surrender in May 1945, U.S. troops arrested Göring in Austria and placed him in Allied custody.

Nuremberg Trial and sentence

  • Göring was one of the main defendants at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, charged with conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
  • On 1 October 1946, the tribunal found him guilty on all counts and sentenced him to death by hanging, despite his request to be shot by firing squad.

How did he die?

  • Göring never reached the gallows: on the night of 15 October 1946, just hours before his scheduled execution, he killed himself by swallowing a cyanide capsule in his cell.
  • His body, like those of the executed Nazi leaders, was later cremated and the ashes scattered in a river to prevent any grave from becoming a site of neo‑Nazi veneration.

Legacy and why people still ask “what happened?”

  • Today, questions like “what happened to Hermann Göring” often come up in discussions of war crimes, the Holocaust, and how leading Nazis tried to shape their own endings after defeat.
  • His cyanide suicide remains a point of historical debate and documentary interest, because it undercut the public, judicial execution that the Allies had planned as a symbolic act of postwar justice.

TL;DR: Hermann Göring went from Hitler’s powerful lieutenant to a captured war criminal at Nuremberg; sentenced to hang, he avoided the gallows by committing suicide with cyanide in his cell on 15 October 1946.

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