Commanderin-chief of the Luftwaffer, Germany’s air force.

Hitler’s anointed successor, [Applause] Herman Guring, was a larger than-l life drug addict and poser.

He had been at Hitler’s side for over 20 years.

He was at the center of every decision that was made.

He was the man who had secretly built up the Fura’s armed forces, enabling his unprovoked wars against peaceful nations.

Guring’s Luftvafa flattened the way into Europe for Hitler’s conquering armies.

And Guring also first suggested the idea of a final solution, the extermination of the Jews.

This made him utterly complicit in the crimes of the Third Reich.

At the end of the war, Guring was the only top Nazi left alive.

[Music] The Allies were desperate to put him in the dock.

They needed someone who could embody the evils of the regime.

And so at the trial of the century in Nuremberg, he became the star exhibit.

His guilt, they said, was unique in its enormity.

They are just pure parasites.

But the ending would be as mysterious as it was controversial and would take everyone by surprise.

[Music] Germany, 1945.

The tide of war had turned against the Nazis.

As the Allies pushed deeper into the Third Reich, the outcome was inevitable.

All over occupied Germany, the pattern remains the same.

the battle, the swift driving on of the armies, the civilians who come out of their shelters, the posting of allied proclamations, and a stunned and beaten people cut off from the outer world, cut off even from its neighbors, is given orders and obeyed.

As the allies closed in, one after the other, the top Nazis choose suicide.

Adolf Hitler, the furer since 1933, killed himself on April the 30th.

Joseph Gerbles, Hitler’s sinister propaganda minister, killed himself and all his family.

A few hours later, Hinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, he took a cyanide pill after being captured by the British.

Now there was only one left.

Herman Guring, Hitler’s deputy and head of the Luftvafer, the German air force.

He was still at large and the allies were desperate to catch him.

What the Allied Nazi hunters didn’t know was that Hitler’s former Reichkes marshal also wanted to make contact with them.

Despite being high on the allies most wanted list, unbelievably Guring thought he could secure himself a place in a post-war regime.

That sort of bravado was typical of Herman Guring.

He was no pen pushing bureaucrat.

Herman Guring was an intelligent and imposing man.

So unlike many other senior Nazis, Herman Guring was genuinely formidable.

He had been a decorated fighter ace in World War I and had downed 22 enemy airmen.

He was the last commander of the legendary Red Baron’s fighter squadron.

[Music] But after the war, when Germany descended into poverty and despair, Guring suffered along with millions of others.

[Music] The former hero was forced to scrape a living as a circus stunt flyer.

But then an encounter would change his life.

He met Adolf Hitler.

And soon he was right by Adolf Hitler’s side in his fledgling party.

In 1923, Hitler appointed Guring head of the SA, the party’s storm battalions, uniformed thugs.

[Applause] Guring turned the unruby brown shirts into a disciplined military outfit.

[Applause] Germany was then in a state of political chaos.

There was open warfare on the streets.

Going shock troops fought running battles with the Nazis arch enemies, the communists.

In November 1923, Guring proved his loyalty to Hitler yet further.

The Nazi party attempted a coup.

Guring was seriously wounded and had to be treated with morphine, triggering a drug addiction that would never leave him.

The so-called beer hall push failed and Guring had to flee Germany.

When he returned in the late 1920s, he found himself once again at Adolf Hitler’s side.

Together, they plan to build Nazism into a mass political movement.

At this stage, the target for Hitler’s hatred remained the communists.

Ending this [Applause] harvest game.

[Applause] Their plans succeeded.

The party began to win over voters and become a true mass movement.

[Applause] [Applause] Aons come to Dan.

[Music] In January 1933, Hitler won enough votes to become chancellor, prime minister in a coalition government.

Guring was one of just two Nazis in the cabinet.

[Music] Three months later, Hitler was given authority to rule by decree.

He became dictator.

Democracy had died in Germany.

[Applause] These were good times for Herman Guring.

And in 1935, he married Emmy Sonamon, a former actress with whom he had a daughter, Eda.

Hitler was godfather.

Then came yet more success.

In 1936, he was given a new and extremely secret mission.

After World War I, Germany was forbidden from having anything other than a tiny army.

Hidden from the world, Gurring supervised the wholesale rearming and re-equipping of the German nation.

[Music] He created a formidable fighting force with over half a million men equipped with cuttingedge weaponry and technology.

His crowning achievement was the creation of a modern air force, the Luftvafer.

To the world’s amazement, it was unveiled in 1936.

It was the most powerful in Europe, feared and envied in equal measure.

[Music] But behind the scenes, he now became embroiled in the policies that would make the Nazis so notorious.

By the 1930s, the Nazis focus had shifted towards the Jews and it became increasingly hostile.

First, Jews were singled out for discrimination.

Shops were boycotted.

Violence at the hands of the SA soon followed.

By 1938, there were targeted riots, ransacking of synagogues, murder, and imprisonment.

Guring, a rabid anti-semite, actively encouraged this policy towards the Jews.

[Music] In September 1939, Hitler committed his first major war crime.

He invaded Poland.

[Music] Guring’s Luftvafa was at the forefront of this war of aggression.

[Music] It played a key part in the Germans revolutionary blitzkrieg tactics.

Its aircraft paved the way for ground forces.

[Applause] Stucker dive bombers were used as aerial artillery to eliminate strong points.

Medium bombers obliterated larger targets.

[Music] in Poland, the Low Countries, and France.

Guring Luftvafa pummeled everything in its path.

Tanks then pushed fast and deep into enemy territory to capture key objectives, leaving the infantry to mop up behind them.

[Applause] It was a huge success and Guring was the hero of the hour.

In 1941, he was rewarded.

In June, he was anointed as Hitler’s successor.

He was just one heartbeat away from control of the Reich.

But then he became involved in the Nazis most infamous crime.

More and more Jews were rounded up in the newly captured lands.

In 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia, their numbers grew again, and so did the Nazis Jewish problem.

In a letter dating from just after the invasion of Russia, Guring spoke euphemistically of the need for a final solution.

At his insistence, a conference was held at Vance, a Berlin suburb in January 1942.

The details of Guring’s so-called final solution were worked out.

It would be mass murder.

Death camps would be created.

Poison gas would be used to kill the Jews.

This was the first time anyone had ever attempted industrialized killing.

From 1941 onwards, 6 million Jews were wiped out.

Herman Guring had started it all off.

This made him an arch criminal.

Garing had been central to Hitler’s wars against peaceful nations and was fully implicated in the Holocaust.

But ironically, the first person to hunt him was not the Allies, but Adolf Hitler himself.

As the war went on, Guring’s fortunes began to wne.

[Music] In 1943 in Russia, the German sixth army was crushed in the cauldron of Stalingrad.

Guring had promised the Fura his air force would save the encircled army.

[Music] But 100,000 German soldiers were killed and 91,000 captured.

[Music] The Germans were driven from more and more cities in the east.

The end.

Like rats from their holes stream the remains of what was once the flower of Hitler’s army.

To make doubly sure, one batch clad their flag bearer in white too.

In victory they had pillaged, tortured, murdered.

In defeat, they cringed, looking to their vanquishers for what was not to be found in themselves, mercy.

Meanwhile, the German heartland was being blitzed.

Allied bombers thundered over the Reich day and night, leveling factories, cities, and docks.

Hamburg was flattened.

50,000 were killed.

Berlin bombed around the clock.

In Dresden, thousands of civilians were killed in just one night.

[Music] Guring’s Luftvafa now desperately attempted to hold back the Allies.

[Music] The problem was that the Luftvafa had been built up for offensive warfare, Blitzkrieg.

Now Germany was on the defensive and the overstretched force couldn’t cope.

[Music] Behind his back, other Nazis began mocking Guring.

Worse still, his life was spiraling out of control.

His drug addiction grew, and by the end of 1944, a huge gulf had opened up between him and the Furer.

Hitler was increasingly critical and aggressive towards his Luftvafa commander.

By April 1945, the war was almost over.

The Russian juggernaut was in the outskirts of Berlin.

Guring knew the Nazis were finished, so he quietly plotted to betray Hitler and save himself.

As shells rained down on Berlin, Guring left Hitler’s besieged bunker, citing extremely important tasks in the south.

He was soon on route to his retreat at Bersus Garden in the Bavarian Alps.

His plan was to meet General Eisenhower and sue for peace.

On the 23rd of April, he had arrived at his Bavarian mountain hideaway.

Now he decided to take action.

He telegmed Hitler asking to assume immediately total leadership of the Reich with complete freedom of action at home and abroad.

In Berlin, Hitler was incandescent with rage.

His response was swift.

Garing was immediately stripped of his right of succession and formally accused of treason.

He was to resign immediately.

But Hitler’s left tenant, Martin Borman, went even further.

He decided to have Guring arrested and executed for high treason.

Guring was now a wanted man.

Borman immediately ordered the SS into action.

An elite squad was dispatched to capture and kill the Reich’s marshall.

On the evening of the 24th of April 1945, they arrived at Guring’s villa.

Guring was immediately placed in custody.

But despite the death warrant, the SS dithered.

Instead of shooting him, they hesitated and kept going under house arrest.

Meanwhile, all across Germany, chaos reigned.

Communications with Berlin had broken down and the war had only hours to run.

As if to remind Guring, the next day he heard RAF bombers flying over Burches Garden.

Their target, Hitler’s nearby mountain retreat, the Burgoff.

It was reduced to a pile of rubble.

And then came a piece of astonishing news from Berlin.

The Furer was dead.

Here is a news flash.

The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead.

I repeat that.

Hitler is dead.

On the night of the 30th of April 1945, Hitler committed suicide in Berlin with a bullet in the head.

Guring was off the hook.

And within days, many prominent Nazis would also commit suicide, leaving Herman Guring the last major Nazi standing.

[Music] In early May 1945, Herman Guring moved to Mountainorf closer to the American lines.

He made an arduous journey along roads crammed with refugees and soldiers.

His plan was still to do a deal with General Eisenhower.

[Music] His hope was to prepare himself for the post-war regime and secure himself a future.

But what he didn’t know was that the Allies had settled on a very different course of action for him, one that had been drawn up 18 months earlier.

In fact, the Allied leaders had long had a very clear idea about what to do with the Nazi elite.

For the few days, Tehran becomes the center and focus of the world.

We are no longer concerned with the question of how to win the war.

The question is how soon? [Music] At the Tehran Summit in November 1943, the big three allies, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, hammered out the details of what punishment might be the Germans.

Stalin, half inest, suggested the Holocaust could only be avenged by executing 50,000 top Nazis.

Roosevelt sarcastically suggested 49,000 would do.

Churchill walked out in disgust.

Eventually, they reached an agreement.

Evil would be put on trial.

Now, victory was close.

An international court was being made ready.

There was no legal precedent, nothing like it had been attempted before, but the Allies needed someone to put on trial.

This made Herman Guring an even more important target as he was the only one left.

As Guring plotted his next move, the final chapter in the Third Reich was being written.

Germany formally surrendered on the 7th of May 1945.

The war was over.

[Music] Radios across the theater of operations told troops from both sides to stand down.

Herman Guring could now make his move.

Oblivious to the fact the Allies wanted his head, Guring now decided actively to seek them out rather than wait for them to find him.

He sent his agitant Colonel Bert von Browage as an envoy to make contact with the Americans.

[Music] He was armed with a letter addressed to Allied Supreme Commander General Eisenhower.

In it, he offered his full cooperation in the rebuilding and running of Germany.

[Music] The letter was delivered to the 36th Infantry Division at Kufstein.

[Music] The division had already tracked down some high-profile Nazis, including senior German General Geron Runstead.

Now, with the promise of another major Nazi, the division swung into action.

Soldiers were ordered to prepare for a special mission.

They ready their vehicles, weapons, and 5 days worth of ammunition and rations.

The first great Nazi hunt of the postwar era was underway.

Rumors spread among the troops their target could be the biggest prize in Nazi Germany, second only to Hitler.

[Music] The American column crossed the German lines.

They passed through the eerily quiet fields of troops and motored on to Mountain 54 miles away.

But when they got there, Guring had gone.

It seemed they had missed their prey.

In fact, Guring had grown impatient at the lack of response to his letter and had set out to find the American Nazi hunters himself.

[Music] Finally, contact was made on a road just outside Madden.

[Music] He was at the head of a long caravan of over 13 vehicles packed with his family, possessions, and entourage.

To the surprise of everyone present, the Reich’s marshall seemed happy to see them.

[Music] But this was not going to be the happy ending Guring had anticipated.

[Music] On May the 16th, he was paraded before the world’s press.

[Music] Far from being included in plans for a post-war Germany, he had become the star exhibit, the prize captive.

But even his star treatment was short-lived.

General Eisenhower immediately called a halt to the media spectacle.

From now on, Garing would be treated as a common criminal.

He was flown to the US Army interrogation center at Alsburg, stripped of his medals and jewels, and placed in a cold, damped cell.

There the penny finally dropped for Herman Guring.

Now a series of interrogations began.

They focused on all aspects of his role in the Nazi elite and his part in Hitler’s grand plans.

His art collections were of particular interest to the Allied interrogators.

They were eager to see the treasures returned to their rightful owners.

Guring guided US troops to their whereabouts.

On May the 21st, the Star Exhibit was told to dispense with his aids and prepare himself for a journey to stand trial for his crimes.

Behind the cold gray facade of this courthouse in Nuremberg, the greatest trial drama of our times begins.

Here, the governments of France, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States representing civilization oppose the top 20 leaders of an aggressor nation.

The big Nazis are being charged with mass crimes against humanity.

[Music] November 1945, the attention of the world’s press was focused squarely on Nuremberg.

An international military tribunal was ready to charge the Nazi elite.

Justice and democracy would be showcased against the despotic values of Nazism.

The trial would be conducted in five languages using simultaneous translators.

[Music] Two judges from each of the Allied nations would preside.

Herman Guring led the defendants into the courtroom on November the 21st, 1945.

[Music] Prison appeared to have been good for him.

[Music] He looked sharper, more alert.

He had lost weight and he had weaned himself off his addiction to morphine.

[Music] He immediately held court over the others.

The most powerful of the Nazi elite left alive seemed to retain all his past status.

All the defendants had been given copies of the indictment beforehand.

They knew the charges against them.

The tribunal had decided that the Nazi accused would be charged on four separate counts.

Conspiracy to wage war.

Crimes against the peace for invading countries without provocation.

War crimes for maltreating and executing soldiers and civilians.

And crimes against humanity for the Holocaust.

Attention.

Lord Justice Lawrence and Sir Norman Burkett, Britain, sit with six other judges, two each from US, France, and Russia.

In a comprehensive indictment of 24,000 words are listed the charges against the prisoners, a record of iniquity without parallel.

The indictment was read out to the accused by lead US prosecutor Robert Jackson.

The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored.

But right from the start, Guring was up for a fight.

The prisoners were brought one by one to the microphone to plead.

Number one, Guring.

How we all wish it had been Hitler himself.

You must plead guilty or not guilty.

Guring’s confident plea of not guilty was a sign that he intended to take on his accusers.

The prosecution began its case by trying to shock the court.

They showed horrific film of the concentration camps.

[Music] An American psychologist noted how guring looked.

walked away, not watching the harrowing footage, intended to overthrow and later did overthrow.

As the trial continued, moving testimony from camp survivors was heard by the defendants.

Grizzly exhibits were shown to the court, including number USA254, a shrunken human head used as a paper weight.

The trouble was, it was easy to show how evil the regime had been.

Even those in the dock couldn’t defend what they had seen.

The former rank of the However, finding evidence that proved the individual accused were responsible was more complex.

The task of pinning the blame on Guring began on March the 13th, 1946.

General of labor.

As the embodiment of the Nazi regime, it became all the more essential to prove Herman Guring’s guilt and convict him.

At Nuremberg, the judges enter to hear the case for the defense in the war crimes trial.

On the witness stand is Herman Villum Garing, leading living exponent of the Nazi philosophy and outstanding defendant among the score on trial.

Continue reading….
Next »