Hermann Göring begins as a decorated World War I fighter pilot, one of the last commanders of the squadron once led by the Red Baron, before he becomes one of Adolf Hitler's earliest and most powerful lieutenants. The film traces his climb through the Nazi Party from the failed Beer Hall Putsch to the founding of the Gestapo and his appointment as head of the Luftwaffe, the air force he built into a weapon of both conquest and terror. It follows his accumulation of titles and wealth, his role in planning the war economy and the persecution of Jews, and his fall from favor as Germany's fortunes turned and his promises of air superiority collapsed over Berlin. Archival photographs and wartime footage carry the account through to his capture, his defiant performance at the Nuremberg Trials, and his death by suicide the night before his scheduled execution. The result is a chronological portrait of how proximity to Hitler turned a war hero into one of the regime's most culpable architects.