On the night of 15 October 1946, Hermann  Göring ended his life in his Nuremberg cell,   just hours before his scheduled execution.  His death closed his chapter in history,   but it opened another one: what happened  to the family he left behind? From the   luxury of Carinhall to the uncertainty of postwar  Germany, the Göring name faced a dramatic fall.

  In the final weeks of the war,   Emmy and Edda Göring watched the world they knew  disappear. In late April 1945, as Soviet forces   advanced through Germany, Hermann Göring ordered  his estate at Carinhall Estate destroyed. By the   time the last structure was turned into rubble,  Emmy and Edda were already being moved deeper   into Bavaria, first toward Berchtesgaden  and then into scattered Alpine retreats   controlled by the collapsing Reich leadership. On 6 May 1945, U.S. troops intercepted Göring  

near Radstadt, Austria. His surrender was  reported within hours. Shortly afterward,   Allied authorities located Emmy and Edda in the  same region. They were escorted to temporary   holding sites for “dependents of high-ranking  officials,” a category created to prevent flight   and secure potential witnesses.

 The facilities  ranged from requisitioned hotels to guarded   houses, and living conditions varied, but the  message was clear: freedom would not come soon.  Allied interrogators questioned Emmy repeatedly.  She had been one of the most visible women of   the regime, often photographed alongside Hitler’s  inner circle. They pressed her on her influence,   her wartime privileges, and her  proximity to official decisions.  

For the first time since the 1930s, she no  longer had staff, status, or protection.  For Edda, the transition was even  more abrupt. At just seven years old,   she moved from a household surrounded by servants  and ceremonial displays to a string of unfamiliar   rooms under military guard.

 Allied personnel noted  that she remained quiet and polite, often holding   tightly to a small suitcase containing the few  belongings she had been allowed to keep. She   asked repeatedly when she would see her father. Meanwhile, Hermann Göring’s arrest changed Emmy’s   legal position overnight. The Allies began  a detailed inventory of the family’s assets,   from jewelry and furs to art pieces linked to  larger restitution investigations.

 Personal   items that Emmy attempted to keep  were often confiscated for review.  By the late summer of 1945, Emmy and Edda  had been transferred several times. They   lived for weeks in a requisitioned building  near Garmisch-Partenkirchen before being   moved again to facilities closer to Munich.

 The war was over, but for the Göring family   the ordeal had only begun. With Hermann Göring  now awaiting trial before the International   Military Tribunal, Emmy and Edda entered  a new and uncertain phase, caught between   the legal machinery of denazification and the  personal collapse of everything they had known.  Nuremberg: Impact on the Göring Family As the International Military Tribunal   opened in November 1945, Hermann Göring became  its most prominent defendant.

 His testimony,   delivered across the winter and spring of 1946,  dominated world headlines. He denied criminal   responsibility, defended the regime’s decisions,  and attempted to position himself as a statesman   rather than a leading architect of the war. For  Emmy and Edda, still under Allied supervision,   the trial meant months of uncertainty and  renewed scrutiny.

 Allied reports noted that   Emmy asked repeatedly for updates but was  not permitted direct communication with him.  The sentence came on 1 October 1946. Göring was  found guilty on all major counts and condemned   to death. Less than two weeks later, on 15  October, he took his own life in his cell   using a hidden capsule.

 His death ended his role  in world affairs but intensified the legal and   political consequences for his family. When the  news reached Emmy and Edda, observers noted a   quiet but profound shock. Emmy reportedly refused  to believe the details at first; Edda, then   eight years old, asked where her father had gone. Beyond the personal impact, the Nuremberg verdict   triggered the full legal dismantling of the Göring  estate.

 Allied and German authorities began formal   seizure procedures covering properties, valuables,  and financial accounts. Carinhall had already been   destroyed, but the family still held art,  jewelry, and personal collections. Much of this   inventory was linked to larger restitution efforts  involving art taken from across occupied Europe.  The most famous case involved  the Göring art collection,   one of the largest private collections assembled  during the Third Reich.

 Allied investigators   tracked hundreds of paintings, sculptures, and  decorative objects to repositories in Bavaria   and Austria. The collection was disassembled and  distributed for restitution or held as evidence.   When Germany entered the denazification   phase in 1947, Emmy Göring’s case drew intense  attention.

 Unlike many spouses of Nazi officials,   Emmy had been a highly visible figure. As the wife  of Hermann Göring, she attended public ceremonies,   cultural events, and diplomatic functions.  Some Allied investigators even referred to   her informally as “the social First  Lady of the Reich,” a description   that shaped the proceedings that followed.

 The loss she faced after 1945 was financial   as well as symbolic. With no estate  and no access to former privileges,   Emmy entered the postwar years without security.  Compensation claims she attempted to file in the   late 1940s stalled under denazification  regulations, and pension rights tied to   her husband’s former state roles were denied. Edda’s situation was also marked by uncertainty.  

Although children were not  subject to denazification,   the Göring name carried considerable weight.  Allied administrators briefly debated whether   she should be placed under outside guardianship  during the process. The idea was ultimately   rejected in favor of returning her to Emmy under  supervision once the mother’s case was resolved. 

In early 1947, Emmy was summoned before  a Munich denazification tribunal.   Prosecutors presented photographs, witness  testimonies, and records showing her involvement   in state-sponsored cultural organizations. They  argued that her public presence supported the   regime’s image and contributed to the  normalization of Nazi leadership.

 Emmy   countered that she had been only a private  person, forced into a role she never sought.  The tribunal issued its ruling in March  1948. Emmy was classified as a “Belastete,”   or major offender, the second most serious  category under the denazification system.   She lost all remaining property rights, including  claims to household goods held by the Allies.

 She   faced a permanent ban from working in public  sectors, as well as restrictions on travel,   media appearances, and participation in  cultural institutions. The verdict also   barred her from receiving pensions tied  to her husband’s former state positions.  Appeals followed almost immediately.

 Emmy argued  that her classification overstated her political   involvement, emphasizing her lack of formal  power within the government. Defense attorneys   cited her responsibilities as a mother, her  limited knowledge of high-level decisions,   and her withdrawal from public life after 1939.  Appeals eased some restrictions over time,   especially those affecting movement and  personal employment.

 Still, the central   penalties remained in place throughout her life. Her financial situation after the trial was   challenging but not desperate. Emmy resettled in  Munich, where she lived in modest accommodations   supported by long-standing friends from the  theatrical world. Some accounts portray her   as destitute, while others suggest she  managed a quiet, stable existence without   luxury. Historians still argue whether she  dramatized her hardship in later interviews. 

In the late 1960s, Emmy briefly stepped back  into public view. In 1967, she published her   autobiography An der Seite meines Mannes.  An English edition, My Life with Göring,   followed in 1972. In the memoir, she portrayed  Hermann as compassionate and attentive,   defending him against the historical record and  presenting her life with him as one of devotion   and loyalty. She never altered this view.

 Her final years were marked by declining   health.On 8 June 1973, Emmy died in Munich at age  80. Edda remained with her mother until the end.   Edda Göring was born on 2 June 1938, and the  nazi regime treated her birth as a national   celebration. Ten days later, crowds filled  the streets of Berlin when Hermann Göring   brought Emmy and their newborn daughter home.

 On  4 November 1938, Hitler served as her godfather   during a formal baptism at Carinhall, an event  covered by Life magazine. Among her gifts were   paintings attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, a  sign of the privilege surrounding her from birth.  Carinhall, the family estate in the Schorfheide  forest, featured an indoor pool, a cinema,   a gymnasium, and a small zoo. Members of the Nazi  elite often called her the “little princess.

” In   1940, the Luftwaffe built her a miniature palace  in the orchard, a 50-meter structure complete with   a small theater. Known as the Edda-Schlösschen. That world fell apart in 1945. For Edda Göring,   childhood ended in an internment building under  Allied guard. After her mother’s denazification   case concluded, she returned to Munich.

 Through  the late 1940s and 1950s, she tried to build a   normal life, attending local schools and  living with her mother in modest rooms.   The name “Göring” ensured she lived with a label  she had not chosen, and firmly refused to remove.  As Edda entered adulthood, she began studying  law at the University of Munich. She worked   briefly as a law clerk before moving into a  hospital laboratory as a medical-technical   assistant. She kept that career for decades,  never married, and never had children. 

In the 1970s, Edda briefly stepped back into  public life. For several years, she was closely   associated with journalist Gerd Heidemann, who  had purchased the Carin II, the yacht once owned   by her father. Their relationship placed her  in social circles where the past was often   discussed openly.

 On board the yacht, gatherings  sometimes included former figures from the wartime   era, among them Karl Wolff and Wilhelm Mohnke. What set Edda apart from many descendants of Nazi   leaders was her unwavering defense of her father.  In interviews during the 1990s and early 2000s,   she insisted her father had been a kind,  protective figure in her life and claimed he   had tried to restrain the excesses of the regime.

  When asked directly about his crimes, she simply   replied that she remembered “a loving father.” She continued to live quietly, spending years   in Schwaz, Austria, before returning to  Munich. When she died on 21 December 2018,   her obituary in The New York Times highlighted  her unwavering loyalty, a loyalty that set   her apart not only from German society, but  even from members of her own extended family. 

Edda was not the only living descendant of  Hermann Göring. His grandniece, Bettina Göring,   born after the war, took a radically different  path. Raised outside the immediate family   structure, Bettina grew up deeply aware of  the Göring legacy and the impact it carried   in Germany and internationally. Unlike Edda,  she rejected the family narrative entirely. 

Bettina moved to the United States in adulthood  and later settled in New Mexico. In interviews,   she openly described the burden of carrying the  Göring name and spoke about the psychological   weight of being related to one of the most  notorious figures of the Third Reich. Her   statements attracted international attention in  the 2000s when she revealed that both she and her   brother had voluntarily undergone sterilization.

  Her reasoning, as she put it, was to “end the   line” and ensure that no future generation would  inherit what she called “the shadow of Göring.”  Bettina’s decision reflected a personal attempt  to break from the family legacy entirely. Her   choice stood in sharp contrast to Edda’s lifelong  loyalty. While Edda defended her father until her   final years, Bettina confronted the past  head-on, discussing shame, responsibility,   and the cost of inherited history. Well that’s it.

 If you found this   video insightful, watch “What Happened to Heinrich  Himmler’s Family After WW2” next. Like this video,   subscribe, and hit the bell for more  History Inside. Thanks for watching.