Hermann Göring

Hermann Göring (1893-1946) was a senior Nazi official whom Adolf Hitler placed in charge of the Four Year Plan in 1936. His economic-statecraft relevance lies in directing mobilisation for war, autarkic substitution and the coercive acquisition of assets and resources in occupied Europe. His authority overlapped with ministries, military agencies and private firms, so he should not be credited as sole designer of the Nazi war economy.

The Four Year Plan sought to make Germany ready for war within four years, prioritising synthetic fuel, rubber, metals, armaments and foreign-exchange allocation. Göring received broad powers to direct investment, production and imports. The state used controls, subsidies, compulsory allocation and state-backed industrial expansion to reduce vulnerability to blockade. Results were substantial but incomplete. Germany remained dependent on imported raw materials and later on extraction from occupied territories.

Göring also headed the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, a state industrial conglomerate expanded through domestic acquisition and seizure in occupied Europe. The programme combined industrial policy with dispossession, forced labour and plunder. These were not neutral development measures. They formed part of a criminal regime's preparation and conduct of aggressive war.

The International Military Tribunal convicted Göring on counts including crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He died by suicide in October 1946 before execution. The judgment provides a primary legal record, while economic historians have reconstructed the institutional competition and production constraints behind his formal authority.

The case shows the limit of autarky as resilience. Substitution and administrative control can increase wartime capacity, but they carry high costs and cannot create unavailable resources. When expansion supplied the missing inputs, economic mobilisation merged with territorial aggression and systematic exploitation.

See also

Four Year Plan (Germany, 1936) · Autarky · Wartime economic mobilisation · Strategic materials · Economic plunder · Reichswerke Hermann Göring

Sources

1. International Military Tribunal, judgment concerning Hermann Göring.
2. Hitler's memorandum on the Four Year Plan, 1936, German History in Documents and Images.
3. Richard Overy, *War and Economy in the Third Reich* (Oxford University Press, 1994).