Hermann Pölking was born in Bremen in 1954 and was raised in Vechta. From 1974 on, he studied journalism in West-Berlin, where he was also active in the political theatre scene. In 1979, he became a shareholder and employee at Elefanten Press, and from 1983 on, he worked as an editor and author of books on technical history and popular culture. In 1985, he moved to Bremen, where he became publisher at the "Steintor Verlagsgesellschaft" and managing director of Albers & Pölking-Eiken Werbeagentur".

In 1989, Pölking started work on the project "Zeitreise Deutschland": Extensively using archival records and film footage, he compiled over 30 film chronicles which focused on German regional history. Together with Stefan Aust, he used this material to create numerous TV features on German history.

In 2005, he began work on "Die Deutschen 1815 bis heute", resulting in four books and twelve DVD releases which chronicle German history from imperial times until today. In 2011, he, Helmut Albers and Julio Olmo Poranzke co-founded the production company "Helden der Geschichte" in Berlin. The company published books on the history of Eastern Prussia and the Memel region and released the DVD documentary "Ostpreußen – Panorama einer Provinz" (2014).

Pölking's documentary "Memphis Belle - Die Wahrheit des Luftkrieges" (2012) took its inspiration from William Wyler's famous war documentary "The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress" (1944) and addressed the dramatic situation of German civilians during the Allied air raids in WWII: Together with Linn Sackarnd, he next made the two-part documentary "Hitlers Berlin in Farbe: 1933-1945" (2013), which exclusively used rare archival footage.

At the 2017 Munich Film Festival, Hermann Pölking presented his monumental documentary "Wer war Hitler?" ("Who Was Hitler?"), in which he again employs rare or never before released archival footage to create a biographical portrait of the "phenomenon" Adolf Hitler. Originally structured in three parts and running at eight hours, the film was edited down to three hours for the theatrical release.