October 15 1946 Landsberg Prison.

 

A game of basketball is faked to conceal the noise of the gallows being erected for the major Nazis sentenced to death.  Early in the morning, only an hour or so before his hanging, Hermann Goering removes a glass container from a cut-down rifle cartridge, places it in his teeth and bites down.  This in full view of the guard.  No one has any idea where he got the poison from.  Several people have confessed to giving it to him but they have all been proven liars.  An American officer (Lt. Jack Wheelis) has been accused of procuring the poison for Goering with slightly more probability but this is not proven and the case is weak.  ("The Mystery of Herman Goering's Suicide", Ben Swearingen).
     Goering, a person of proven bravery and very great leadership ability, was a moral coward who was the one person who could have removed Hitler and ended the war.  He also signed the final solution order given to Reinhardt Heydrich, on anybody's short list of most evil man ever.  Other than the extermination of the Jewish people, his greatest crime was telling the Fuhrer that he could resupply doomed Sixth Army from the air.  His own soldiers should have been allowed to hang his fat ass.
     Goering was a charming person of education and taste.  When he became marginalized during the course of the war he spent his time eating paracodeine pills by the handful and looting Europe in the largest value heist of all time.* 

 

*Goering was the highest ranking soldier ever.  He was the Reichsmarshall, with all the German field marshals under him.  In American terms, this would be a 6 star general.  After the Luftwaffe failed to destroy the English and the French at Dunkirk, Goering fell out of favor with Hitler, although he retained his high position.  It is probable that he knew the war was lost, and became addicted to paracodeine, which he took by the handfuls.  He had no problem with the Jews until he saw opportunity, once famously declaring, 'I will decide who is Jewish'.  Under his jovial exterior, however, was a savage person of no restraint.  His signed order implementing the Final Solution was produced at his trial by Justice Robert Jackson, finally, after Goering made a fool of him during cross examination.  Goering spoke English but pretended not to in order to have more time to frame his responses.  Goering knew he was going to be executed and worked out a plan to take poison before that would happen.  One thing is certain, the cyanide was not in that cell until right before he took it.  There have been many candidates for who gave it to him, but the prime suspect, in my opinion, is the prison physician, Dr. Ludwig Pflucker.  The doctor gave Goering an envelope containing some tablets only hours before the execution was to take place, passing the cyanide vial to him would have been child's play.  Two other vials were found in his luggage as he said it would be in the letter he left in his cell.  How did Goering know that?  (The possessions of all the defendants were kept in a separate locked storage room).

Hermann Goering was the only high ranking Nazi at the Nuremberg trials who said, yes, we started the war and we had every right to do so and who are you to accuse me of anything?  He was kept separate from all the other prisoners in order not to infect them with his bad attitude.  The commander of Landsberg, Colonel Andrus, bragged that he weaned Goering off his drug addiction and 'made a man of him'.  This was a colossal mistake, Goering dropped about 80 lbs. and, clear headed again, became the focused schemer that he had been before the war.   After his suicide his body was burned and the ashes dumped in a creek so that a cult would not grow up around his bones.