When the guns fell silent in May 1945, the name Hermann Göring was already infamous around the world. As Reichsmarschall, head of the Luftwaffe, and one of Hitler's closest confidants, he had risen higher than almost anyone else in Nazi Germany.
But as the Allies closed in, his family's lives were torn apart just as surely as Germany itself. The story of what happened to his wife, his daughter, and his extended relatives is a remarkable and little-known chapter of the postwar era.
To understand it, we need to look closely at the fate of Emmy Göring, his daughter Edda, and the relatives who bore the burden of his name.
Emmy Göring, born Emmy Sonnemann, had been a successful stage actress before marrying Hermann Göring in 1935. Their marriage was a glamorous affair attended by Hitler himself.
Emmy became a sort of first lady of the Luftwaffe, known for her beauty, charm, and presence at official functions. When Germany fell in 1945, her glamorous world crumbled in an instant.
After the war, Emmy was arrested by American forces. Unlike her husband, who faced the Nuremberg trials, she was not considered a central figure of the Nazi regime. Still, her status as Göring's wife meant she was placed under investigation.
The Allies held her for over a year before a denazification tribunal tried her in 1948. The tribunal classified her as a lesser offender. She was not accused of war crimes, but was found guilty of benefiting from the Nazi regime.
Her punishment was mild compared to others. She was forbidden from the stage for several years and had much of her wealth confiscated. She had lived in luxury during the Third Reich, in mansions filled with stolen art and treasures, but by the late 1940s she had been reduced to a modest life.
For Emmy, survival after the war meant raising her daughter Edda in an environment where the Göring name carried enormous stigma.
Edda Göring was born in 1938, the princess of the Nazi elite. Hitler himself was her godfather. During the war, she lived in privilege, shielded from the horrors unfolding around her.
When the Allies captured her father in May 1945, Edda's childhood ended abruptly. She was only 7 years old when her father stood trial at Nuremberg, one of the most publicized events of the 20th century. Edda never saw him again after 1945.
He was sentenced to death, but famously cheated the hangman by swallowing cyanide in his cell on October 15, 1946. For Edda, it was the defining event of her life.
She later recalled the crushing weight of being Hermann Göring's daughter. Every schoolmate, every neighbor knew the name. It was impossible to escape.
Despite this, Edda grew up with fierce loyalty to her father. Even as an adult, long after the world had condemned him as a war criminal, she continued to defend his reputation. She insisted that he had been unfairly judged, that he had been a man of honor, and she never wavered from that position.
Her childhood after the war was difficult. Emmy struggled to provide for her, and they lived in relative poverty, surviving on small pensions and odd jobs.
Yet Edda managed to build a life for herself. She studied law in Munich and later worked as a nurse and medical assistant. Unlike other Nazi children who tried to change their names, she never hid who she was. In fact, she wore it openly.
This stubborn pride earned her both admiration and scorn. What is especially striking is that Edda did not simply fade into obscurity. She remained somewhat active in public life, though always quietly.
She was known to attend veterans' gatherings, particularly among Luftwaffe veterans, where her father was still remembered with a certain twisted reverence. She never married and had no children. Some suggest she chose this deliberately, unwilling to pass on the Göring name to another generation.
She died in December 2018 at the age of 80, still unrepentant about her father's legacy.
Hermann Göring also had relatives who survived the war and tried to move on with their lives. His younger brother, Albert Göring, has one of the most surprising stories of the postwar era.
Albert was the polar opposite of Hermann. Where Hermann embraced the Nazi regime, Albert despised it. He lived in Vienna during the 1930s and became known for helping Jews and political dissidents escape persecution.
Albert used the Göring name as a shield. He would sign documents or make calls claiming to act on behalf of his brother, intimidating Nazis into freeing prisoners or halting deportations. His acts of quiet defiance saved dozens, perhaps hundreds of lives.
Yet after the war, Albert was arrested simply because of his last name. The Allies could not believe that the brother of Hermann Göring could be innocent. He spent time in prison under suspicion of being a collaborator until those he had saved came forward to testify on his behalf.
Eventually he was released, but his life never recovered. He lived in poverty, working odd jobs, and died in 1966, almost forgotten. Only later was his story properly recognized. Today, Albert is remembered as the good Göring, a rare example of decency in a family name otherwise steeped in blood.
One of the more overlooked aspects of Emmy and Edda's postwar life was their struggle with property and inheritance. The Göring estate had been vast, including castles, mansions, and art looted from across Europe. After the war, the Allies confiscated most of it.
Yet Emmy spent decades filing lawsuits trying to recover parts of the property, especially art pieces. She claimed some items were family possessions rather than stolen goods. Most of these cases failed, but a few minor restitutions were granted.
For Edda, the fight continued into her adult life. She too pursued legal claims, particularly over items in museums that had once belonged to her father. German courts, however, consistently ruled against her. These legal battles stretched into the 1990s and 2000s, long after most people had forgotten about the Göring family.
Emmy herself lived a quiet existence in Munich after her release. She raised Edda, kept largely to herself, and never remarried. She died in 1973 at the age of 71. By then, she was a faded figure from a darker time, remembered mostly as the glamorous companion of a man who helped plunge the world into chaos.
For historians, the Göring family represents the strange duality of Nazi legacies. On the one hand, Hermann Göring was a central architect of the war and the Holocaust, a man who profited enormously from plunder and death. On the other hand, his brother Albert risked his life to oppose that very system.
Emmy and Edda, meanwhile, show how deeply family loyalty can endure, even when the world condemns it. Perhaps the most haunting part of this story is Edda's refusal to reject her father.
Many children of Nazi leaders, such as Gudrun Himmler or the children of Joseph Goebbels, were consumed by the burden of their parents' crimes. Some cut ties with the past. Others carried on the torch of denial. Edda stood firmly in the latter camp. For her, Hermann Göring remained a hero, not a criminal. To the very end of her life, she spoke of him with admiration.
In the end, the fate of Göring's family shows the complexity of history's aftermath. The fall of Nazi Germany did not just destroy a nation. It shattered families, reputations, and legacies. Some rebuilt, some denied, some were forgotten, but all bore scars that never fully healed.
His wife, Emmy, lived quietly after her conviction, stripped of her stage career and wealth. His daughter, Edda, grew up under the shadow of his name, fiercely loyal to her father until her death in 2018. And his brother, Albert, almost forgotten, spent his life in poverty despite having saved lives during the war.
The Göring family story is a reminder that even after the Reich fell, its shadow lived on in courtrooms, in memories, and in the unshakable weight of a name.