They were brothers, raised in the same
castles, by the same parents.

One became Hitler’s second-in-command.

The other spent
the war smuggling prisoners to freedom.

When the Allies captured Albert Göring in
1945, he insisted he had spent years saving lives.

His story seemed impossible.

After all, he was Hermann Göring’s brother.

Albert Göring was born on 9 March 1895 in Friedenau, a quiet suburb
of Berlin.

He was the fifth child of Heinrich Ernst Göring, a former Reichskommissar of German
South-West Africa, and Franziska Tiefenbrunn, a Bavarian farmer’s daughter.

His brother
Hermann, born two years earlier, would become one of history’s most notorious war criminals.

Albert would become something else entirely.

The Göring children grew up in unusual
circumstances.

Their godfather, Dr.

Hermann von Epenstein, was a wealthy Austrian physician
of Jewish heritage who owned two castles, Burg Veldenstein in Franconia and Burg Mauterndorf
in the Austrian Alps.

With their father often absent on diplomatic postings, Epenstein became a
surrogate parent.

The family lived in his castles, enjoyed his wealth, and bore his influence.

Rumors
persisted for decades that Epenstein was Albert’s biological father.

The two shared a striking
physical resemblance, slight build, dark features, that contrasted sharply with Hermann’s bulk and
pale blue eyes.

The rumor was never confirmed, but it followed Albert throughout his life.

Hermann later described the contrast himself: “He was always the antithesis of myself.

He was
quiet, reclusive; I like crowds and company.

He was melancholic and pessimistic, and I am an
optimist.

” Where Hermann climbed mountains, played at war, and craved attention, Albert
preferred the piano, books, and solitude.

When the First World War erupted in August
1914, both brothers enlisted.

Hermann became a celebrated fighter ace, earning the Pour le Mérite
and eventually commanding the legendary squadron once led by the Red Baron.

Albert served as a
communications engineer in the trenches of the Western Front.

He was wounded at the First Battle
of Ypres in November 1914 and again in July 1918, taking a bullet to the abdomen.

By the
time he was discharged that August, he held the rank of Oberleutnant and had
earned the Iron Cross.

But unlike Hermann, he returned home with no taste for glory.

After the war, Albert studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University
of Munich, graduating in 1923.

He worked briefly for IG Farben, then moved to Vienna in
1927 as a sales representative for Junkers.

He married twice during this period, settling
into a comfortable life in the Austrian capital.

When the Nazis seized power in Germany
in January 1933, Albert made his position clear.

He despised the regime and wanted nothing to
do with it.

On 23 February 1935, he applied for Austrian citizenship, a formal rejection
of everything his brother now represented.

By 1936, Albert had become technical
director of Tobis-Sascha, Austria’s largest film studio.

He was forty-one
years old, professionally successful, and determined to stay far from Nazi Germany.

But history was about to drag him back in.

The first time Albert Göring used his brother’s name to save a life, the request came from Hermann
himself.

In 1936, the Reichsmarschall’s wife asked him to help Henny Porten, a famous
German actress whose career had collapsed after she refused to divorce her Jewish husband.

Hermann could not be seen intervening publicly, so he telephoned Albert in Vienna.

Albert arranged
a film contract for Porten at Tobis-Sascha, quietly moving her out of Nazi reach.

The
rescue gave Albert an unexpected realization: his surname, which opened doors across the Reich,
could be turned into a weapon against the regime.

The opportunity to use it came quickly.

On 12
March 1938, German troops crossed the Austrian border.

The Anschluss brought Nazi rule to Vienna
overnight.

Within days, Jewish citizens were dragged into the streets, forced onto their hands
and knees to scrub pavements while crowds jeered.

Albert witnessed one such scene and did something
unthinkable.

He removed his jacket, knelt beside the women, and began scrubbing alongside them.

When an SS officer demanded his identification, the name on the card stopped everything.

The
officer, unwilling to risk humiliating the Reichsmarschall’s brother, sent everyone home.

Weeks later, Albert encountered an elderly Jewish woman on a Vienna street.

SA stormtroopers
had hung a sign around her neck reading “I am a Jewish sow.

” Albert tore off the sign and led
her away.

He was arrested on the spot.

A single telephone call to Berlin secured his release.

These confrontations revealed a pattern Albert would exploit for the next seven years.

He
arranged exit visas for Jewish colleagues at Tobis-Sascha.

He helped his former boss,
Oskar Pilzer, flee Germany with his family.

He provided travel documents, money, and
letters of protection.

One such letter, carried by a Jewish doctor named Medvey,
warned that anyone who harmed him would answer to the Reichsmarschall personally.

The
letter worked.

Medvey reached London safely.

Albert also intervened for prominent figures.

Former Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, imprisoned after the Anschluss,
received his assistance.

So did Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of the Habsburg dynasty.

By 1939, Austria had been fully absorbed into the Reich, and Albert’s position at Tobis-Sascha was
no longer tenable.

He briefly relocated to Rome, where he funneled most of his salary to a Jewish
resistance worker named Ladislao Kovacs, who used the funds to help refugees escape via Lisbon.

But Albert’s war was just beginning.

That spring, an offer arrived from occupied Czechoslovakia,
one that would place him at the center of the Nazi war machine.

On 4 May 1939, he accepted a position as
export director at the Škoda Works in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia.

The appointment was strategic.

Germany had annexed the country two months earlier, and Škoda, one of Europe’s largest
armaments manufacturers, had been absorbed into Hermann’s industrial empire, Reichswerke
Hermann Göring.

Czech executives hoped that placing the Reichsmarschall’s brother in
a senior role might shield the company from the worst of Nazi control.

They were
right, though not in the way they expected.

From his first day, Albert made his loyalties
clear.

Škoda’s chairman, Vilém Hromádko, later testified that Albert openly criticized Hitler
in the presence of Czech directors.

When Nazi officials visited the factory and raised their
arms in salute, Albert simply extended his hand for a handshake.

His secretary, Karel Sobota,
recalled that this small act of defiance was enough to warrant execution.

Albert did it anyway.

His position gave him access to resources, documents, and official channels, and he used
all of them.

When five Škoda managers were arrested on suspicion of espionage, Albert
appealed directly to Hermann.

Within days, the men walked free.

Employees engaged in
quiet acts of sabotage—delaying orders, losing paperwork, filling bomb casings with
sand instead of explosives, and Albert looked the other way.

He shielded members of the Czech
resistance and passed intelligence to agents, including warnings about the 1940 invasion of
France.

Resistance member Karel Staller later testified that Albert had provided the exact
date of the attack three weeks in advance.

Albert’s most audacious scheme exploited the
regime’s own bureaucracy.

Škoda needed labor, and Albert had authorization to request workers from
the camps.

He sent trucks to collect prisoners, then ordered the drivers to stop in isolated
areas and let them go.

The method was simple, brutal in its efficiency.

No one questioned a
requisition signed by Hermann Göring’s brother.

He also forged Hermann’s signature on transit
documents, allowing Jews and political prisoners to cross borders.

On Göring family stationery, he
wrote letters demanding that specific individuals be freed.

One such letter pulled Dr.

Josef
Charvát, a Jewish physician, off a train bound for Dachau.

The commandant, unwilling to risk the
Reichsmarschall’s anger, let two prisoners named Charvát go rather than chance making a mistake.

By 1942, Albert had married Mila Klazarova, a former Czech beauty queen.

Hermann did not
attend the wedding.

The Gestapo, meanwhile, was watching.

Reports on Albert’s activities
accumulated in Prague.

His conversations were noted.

The file grew thicker each month,
documenting what the Gestapo called “defeatism” and “anti-National Socialism.

” Albert knew the
protection was eroding.

But he did not stop.

By the summer of 1944, Göring had become a marked man.

Trapped in Bucharest as the
Red Army advanced into Romania, he discovered that SS Obergruppenführer Karl Hermann Frank had issued
a warrant for his arrest.

His travel privileges were frozen.

A death order followed, demanding his
execution on sight.

Hermann, whose own standing with Hitler had collapsed after the Luftwaffe’s
failures, could no longer guarantee protection.

He advised Albert to flee to Salzburg and disappear.

Albert survived the final months of the war in hiding.

When Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945,
he reported voluntarily to the American Counter Intelligence Corps in Salzburg.

Five days later,
he was formally arrested and transferred to the Seventh Army Interrogation Center in Augsburg.

There, in a converted apartment block filled with captured Nazi officials, Albert found himself
imprisoned alongside the men he had spent years opposing.

Hermann occupied a cell nearby.

The two
met briefly in the exercise yard and embraced.

It was the last time they would see each other.

Albert’s captors refused to believe him.

Major Paul Kubala’s report dismissed his testimony
as “as clever a piece of rationalization and whitewash as the Interrogation Center has
ever seen.

” No one investigated his claims.

Desperate to prove his case, Albert sat in his
cell and drafted a handwritten document.

He titled it “People whose lives I saved at my own
peril (three Gestapo arrest warrants).

” Below, in alphabetical order, he wrote thirty-four
names, politicians, industrialists, doctors, resistance fighters, along with their
professions, addresses, and the assistance he had provided.

Archduke Joseph Ferdinand.

Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg.

Dozens of others.

He handed the pages to his captors.

They filed them away without following up.

Then chance intervened.

Major Victor Parker took
over the case.

His birth name was Paschkis.

His aunt, Sophie Paschkis, had married the composer
Franz Lehár, and her name appeared at number fifteen on Albert’s pages.

Parker had heard
from her years earlier that Hermann Göring’s brother had helped Jewish families escape.

Suddenly, the impossible story had a witness.

On 14 March 1947, after a trial in Prague where
former Škoda employees and Czech resistance members testified in his defense, Albert was
acquitted.

He walked out of the courthouse in borrowed clothes, carrying a handful of sugar
cubes instead of money.

Hermann had been dead for five months.

Albert’s war was finally
over, but his punishment was just beginning.

Albert Göring returned to Germany a free man, but his surname made him a pariah.

No one would
hire him.

He lived on a small pension, sharing a modest Munich flat with his housekeeper.

In
December 1966, days before his death, he married her, so she could inherit his pension.

One final
act of quiet generosity.

He died on 20 December 1966, forgotten.

His grave is now unmarked.

Decades later, researchers submitted his case to Yad Vashem for recognition as Righteous Among
the Nations.

The request was denied.

Officials acknowledged that Albert “had a positive
attitude to Jews” and “helped some people,” but concluded there was insufficient primary
source evidence.

The brother of a war criminal, it seemed, could not also be a hero.

Thanks for watching.

If you found this video insightful, watch “What Happened to
Hermann Göring’s Family After WW2” next.

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