Hermann Göring

Overview

Hermann Göring was a senior Nazi leader whose control of Prussian police institutions and direction of the Berlin phase made him a central operator in the Night of the Long Knives.

Current Profile

The episode places Göring in the institutional preparation for the purge. In Prussia, political-police and intelligence functions were reorganized under Nazi control, helping create the Gestapo and giving the leadership an apparatus capable of arrest and killing.

After Hitler moved against Röhm and the SA in Bavaria, Göring received the “colibri” signal and directed the Berlin action. That operation reached beyond stormtrooper leaders to conservative critics, former Nazi rivals, and other selected targets.

His role illustrates how the purge required more than Hitler’s rage or personal authority: rival Nazi power centers had built police capacity that could turn factional decisions into coordinated state violence.

Key Characteristics

• He converted Prussian political policing into Nazi institutional power.
• He helped create the Gestapo through police and intelligence reorganization.
• He prepared the Berlin target operation before the purge began.
• He acted on Hitler’s signal to widen the killings beyond the SA.
• His role joined factional rivalry to operational state violence.

Evidence

• Police capacity: 404. The Nazis in Power: The Night of the Long Knives (Part 1) connects Göring to the Nazification of Prussian policing and Gestapo formation.
• Berlin action: 404. The Nazis in Power: The Night of the Long Knives (Part 1) places him in charge after the “colibri” signal and identifies the wider target set.
• Consolidation outcome: 404. The Nazis in Power: The Night of the Long Knives (Part 1) presents his institutional power as part of the coalition that subordinated the SA.

Qualifications

This profile covers Göring’s purge-related police role in one episode, not his complete career or later wartime responsibility. Precise command chains, personal motives, and responsibility for individual deaths remain source-scoped.

What Changed

• Created Göring’s profile around the police-capacity and Berlin-operation components of the purge.

Relationships

• Adolf Hitler - leader whose purge decision he operationalized in Berlin.
• Ernst Röhm - rival movement leader targeted in the purge.
• Sturmabteilung (SA) - organization whose leadership was destroyed.
• Heinrich Himmler - parallel Nazi power holder whose SS-police apparatus also enabled the killings.
• Night of the Long Knives - purge in which Göring directed the Berlin phase.