On October 15, 1946, Hermann Göring cheated the gallows. Hours before his scheduled execution at Nuremberg, the Reichsmarschall, convicted on all counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, swallowed a cyanide capsule in his cell. He left behind a widow, Emmy, and an eight-year-old daughter, Edda, who had visited him in prison during the trial, photographs capturing a small girl trying to hold onto a normal life inside the walls of a war crimes tribunal. That girl, born in Berlin on June 6, 1938, was the product of the most powerful household in Nazi Germany, and she would spend the rest of her life in the shadow of a name that became synonymous with evil.
Her father was Hermann Göring, Hitler’s designated successor, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, and a man whose appetite for power and plunder was matched only by his loyalty to the Führer. Her mother was Emmy Sonnemann, a celebrated German actress who had married Göring in an elaborate ceremony attended by Hitler himself. Edda was named after Benito Mussolini’s daughter, a gesture reflecting the bond between Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Her childhood was spent at Carinhall, the vast estate north of Berlin named after Göring’s first wife, where she had her own suite of rooms, a private menagerie including lion cubs, and every material comfort that Nazi plunder could provide.
The estate was filled with looted art worth hundreds of millions of dollars, staffed by dozens of servants, and surrounded by hunting grounds that stretched for miles. In photographs from the period, Göring appears as a doting father, playing with his only child with obvious delight. Edda’s early years were marked by parental love, even as the regime her father served orchestrated genocide across Europe. The war changed everything.
As Allied bombing intensified and German defeats mounted, Göring’s influence with Hitler withered. The Luftwaffe had failed to protect German cities, and his once-dominant position eroded. The family spent less time at Carinhall, moving between residences to stay ahead of the advancing Allied forces. In April 1945, as the Soviet army closed on Berlin, Göring ordered the destruction of Carinhall to keep it out of enemy hands.
He then made a fatal miscalculation: believing Hitler was incapacitated in his bunker, he attempted to assume leadership of the collapsing Reich. Hitler responded by ordering his arrest and expelling him from the Nazi Party. In the chaotic final weeks, Göring, Emmy, and seven-year-old Edda fled south toward Bavaria, hoping to surrender to American rather than Soviet forces. On May 6, 1945, days after Hitler’s suicide and Germany’s unconditional surrender, Göring surrendered to American troops at a castle in Austria.
Edda was seven years old. The father she knew as loving and playful was taken into custody, and she and her mother were placed in American military facilities, not as prisoners but as dependents of a high-ranking Nazi official. Their possessions were confiscated. Emmy and Edda spent the immediate post-war months in a state of uncertainty, their status unresolved.
For a child who had known only privilege, the collapse was total. She was old enough to understand something terrible had happened, but too young to grasp the scope of the catastrophe that had engulfed her world. Göring was transferred to Nuremberg to stand trial before the International Military Tribunal. He was the highest-ranking Nazi defendant still alive; Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels had all committed suicide.
The charges against him included conspiracy, crimes against peace, aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The evidence was overwhelming. During the trial, Emmy was permitted occasional supervised visits, and she sometimes brought Edda. These meetings, captured in haunting photographs, were the girl’s last real contact with her father.
He wrote her letters, told her stories, and tried to shield her from understanding what was about to happen. On October 1, 1946, the tribunal delivered its verdict: guilty on all counts, sentenced to death by hanging. Göring, who had expected the verdict, considered hanging a dishonorable death for a man of his rank and requested to be shot instead. The request was denied.
On the night of October 15, he swallowed the cyanide capsule. How he obtained it, despite the searches and surveillance, has never been definitively explained. His suicide denied the Allies the satisfaction of executing him, but it meant that Edda would grow up without a father, carrying his name and his legacy for the rest of her life. Emmy was devastated but also relieved that the trial’s public scrutiny was over.
Mother and daughter now faced the question of survival in postwar Germany. All the family’s property had been confiscated. Emmy had no income. They lived on charity and assistance from friends and acquaintances, some motivated by genuine sympathy for the innocent child, others by lingering loyalty to the Nazi cause.
Whatever the motivations, the family that had known unimaginable luxury now lived in relative poverty. The question of Edda’s education was complicated by her surname. German schools in the occupation zones were supposed to be denazified, teaching children democratic values and the truth about Nazi crimes. But how do you treat the daughter of a Nazi leader?
Some wanted her treated like any other child; others believed she should not be allowed to blend in anonymously. Edda herself, too young to make sense of these debates, knew her father only as the man who played with her. Emmy Göring spent the rest of her life defending her husband’s memory. She portrayed him as a loving family man caught up in events beyond his control, a moderate who had tried to temper Hitler’s extremism.
This narrative was contradicted by the historical record: Göring had established the Gestapo, implemented anti-Jewish laws, plundered art across occupied Europe, and supported Hitler until the end. But Emmy raised Edda to believe in the sanitized version. In 1967, Emmy published her memoirs, My Life with Göring, which presented a sympathetic portrait and downplayed his role in atrocities. The book was controversial and criticized for whitewashing, but it provided income and a platform.
As Edda grew into adolescence and young adulthood in the 1950s, she faced the constant weight of her father’s legacy. She was shunned by some, and morbidly curious others wanted to know what it was like to be Hermann Göring’s daughter. She struggled to form normal relationships. Accounts suggest she changed schools multiple times due to harassment or unwanted attention.
She lived quietly with her mother in Bavaria, trying to maintain privacy. Edda’s own views on her father have remained consistent over the decades. In the few interviews she has given, she has described him as a loving father and rejected the historical consensus about his guilt. She has suggested he was scapegoated at Nuremberg and that the trial was unfair.
These views have put her at odds with historians and mainstream German society. Her defenders note the psychological difficulty of accepting that a loved parent was a monster; her critics argue that her insistence on his innocence constitutes a form of Holocaust minimization that comforts deniers and neo-Nazis. In 1967, Edda married and took her husband’s surname, apparently hoping for anonymity. The marriage ended in divorce, and she returned to using the Göring name.
She worked as a nurse and in other healthcare-related positions, living modestly in small apartments in Bavarian towns. She never had children, meaning the direct bloodline of Hermann Göring ends with her. Her mother died in 1973 at the age of eighty, leaving Edda the sole keeper of the family narrative. She inherited her father’s letters from prison, which showed his affection for his family but also a complete lack of remorse.
He saw himself as a loyal German officer who had done his duty, not as a criminal responsible for mass murder. Over the years, her name surfaced in legal disputes over artifacts seized by the Allies. She claimed some personal effects were family property and fought for their return. The most notable case involved Göring’s ceremonial field marshal’s baton, encrusted with precious stones, which had ended up in the hands of a private American collector.
Edda claimed ownership and sued. The case dragged on for years; ultimately, the baton was sold at auction for millions, though she did not receive the proceeds. Each controversy drew journalists back to her, asking about her father, her childhood, and her views on Nazi crimes. Her answers never changed: she loved her father, believed he was a good man unfairly vilified, and rejected his portrayal as a war criminal.
In 2015, at age seventy-seven, she gave a rare extensive interview to a German newspaper. She reiterated her love for her father, spoke of him teaching her to love nature and animals, and insisted he had been trapped in circumstances beyond his control. She expressed no sympathy for Hitler but argued her father should not be judged by the same standards. The interview generated significant controversy.
Holocaust survivors expressed outrage that a platform was being given to defend the memory of a major war criminal. Historians pointed out factual errors in her account. Debates followed about whether such interviews should be published at all. Her defenders argued she had a right to her personal memories and that German society had rejected the principle of Sippenhaft, punishing family members for an individual’s crimes.
Edda Göring is now in her eighties. Questions remain about what will happen to her personal papers, photographs, and letters from her father after her death. Historians would like access; Jewish organizations worry the materials might fall into the hands of neo-Nazis or Holocaust deniers. Edda herself has been non-committal, suggesting she might destroy them, donate them to an archive, or leave the decision to her executors.
Her refusal to have children means Göring’s direct bloodline ends with her, perhaps a deliberate choice to spare future generations the burden of the name. Her life raises questions without easy answers: how should society treat the children of historical criminals? Edda did not choose her father. She was born into circumstances beyond her control, and her memories of his affection are genuine, even if they represent only one facet of a deeply evil man.
Yet her insistence that he was not truly guilty, that he opposed Hitler’s worst excesses, and that he was treated unfairly at Nuremberg places her in active opposition to historical truth. Her views comfort those who minimize Nazi crimes, even if she does not personally associate with such groups. She is both a tragic figure and a controversial one, a reminder that history’s judgment falls not only on those who commit crimes but also on their families and descendants.
When she dies, she will take with her the last personal memories of Hermann Göring as a father rather than as a war criminal, and the Nazi era will pass fully into the realm of pure history.
