US Army

Field Marshal Goering surrenders - May 1945

Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering surrendered peacefully. by arrangement, on a country road, to Brig. Gen. Robert Stack, Asst. Div. Commander, 36th Infantry Div. This is an Army Signal Corps photo. Back at the HQ, the division commander, Maj. Gen. John E. Dahlquist, interviewed Goering in private. He then gave him time to bathe and change his uniform. A chicken lunch for both followed, after which the general provided Goering and his wife with a night's lodging in a castle. While head of the Nazi Luftwaffe (Air Force), Goering was once considered second-in-command of Hitler's Third Reich, but he was stripped of his titles and all decorations (including his title of "Reich Game Keeper") by Hitler shortly before the Fuhrer committed suicide. Goering and his wife, Karen, had left Berlin and were in Bavaria when the Nazi surrender took place. He was giving jocular interviews to the Allied press when he learned from reporters that he was going to be tried at Nurenberg for war crimes. His smiles vanished.