Hermann Göring - World War I

World War I

During the first year of World War I, Göring served with his regiment in the Mulhouse region, a garrison town only a mile from the French frontier. He was hospitalized with rheumatism, a result of the damp of trench warfare. While he was recovering, his friend Bruno Loerzer convinced him to transfer to the Luftstreitkräfte ("air combat force") of the German army, but the transfer request was turned down. Later that year Göring flew as Loerzer's observer in Feldfliegerabteilung 25 (FFA 25) – Göring had informally transferred himself. He was detected and sentenced to three weeks' confinement to barracks. The sentence was never carried out; by the time it was imposed Göring's association with Loerzer had been regularized. They were assigned as a team to FFA 25 in the Crown Prince's Fifth Army. They flew reconnaissance and bombing missions, for which the Crown Prince invested both Göring and Loerzer with the Iron Cross, first class.

On completing his pilot's training course, he was posted to Jagdstaffel 5. After being seriously wounded in the hip—taking nearly a year to recover—he joined Jagdstaffel 26, commanded by Loerzer, in February 1917. He steadily scored air victories until May, when he got his first command, Jagdstaffel 27. Serving with Jastas 5, 26, and 27, he continued to claim air victories. Besides the Iron Cross, he was awarded the Zaehring Lion with swords, the Friedrich Order, the House Order of Hohenzollern with swords third class, and finally in May 1918, the coveted Pour le Mérite. According to Hermann Dahlmann, who knew both men, Göring had Loerzer lobby for the award. He finished the war with 22 confirmed victories.

On 7 July 1918, after the death of Wilhelm Reinhard, the successor of Manfred von Richthofen, Göring was made commander of the famed "Flying Circus", Jagdgeschwader 1. Because of his arrogance, Göring was not popular with the men of Jagdgeschwader 1.

In the last days of the war, Göring was repeatedly ordered to withdraw his squadron, first to Tellancourt airdrome, then to Darmstadt. At one point he was ordered to surrender the equipment to the Allies; he refused, and many of his pilots intentionally crash-landed their planes to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Like many other Germans, Göring was a proponent of the Stab-in-the-back legend, a notion that held that the German Army did not lose the war, but was betrayed by the civilian leadership, Marxists, and especially the Republicans who had overthrown the monarchy.