Hermann Goering and the Nazi Mind — Part 2

There are many men who don't know they are fascists, but they will find out when the time comes. Ernest Hemingway On October the 20th, 1945, the same day indictments were handed down to the leading figures of the Third Reich, A stocky, bespeckled man arrived in Nuremberg. He was Gustav Mark Gilbert, a 34 year old from New York State, the son of Jewish Austrian immigrants to the USA. He had a serious demeanour and spoke fluent German due to his parents conscious effort to nurture a bilingual home.

He had a PhD in psychology from Colombia and had spent the war studying misfit soldiers and then, after the fighting had ended in Western Europe, served as an intelligence officer, seeing first hand the brutality of the Nazi death camps. Like Kelly, he possessed a burning desire to understand what had motivated the men who had carried out the crimes of the Third Reich. In hundreds of hours of interviews with low level Nazis and ordinary soldiers, Gilbert had received a common set of answers.

We were just following orders. We have no power to influence the decisions. The same old excuses were trotted out by 1 dignitary, official and private after another. But Gilbert hoped that access to the Nazi leaders would give him more satisfactory answers. Welcome to Ancient Recent. My name is Joseph Parkinson and today we will finish the story of Herman Goering, Doctor Douglas R Kelly and the Nuremberg trials. Episodes of Ancient to Recent are out every Friday and are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Upon arriving, Gilbert applied to Andrus to be the prison psychiatrist, with Andrus agreeing immediately that straight away it was apparent to the other staff that Gilbert has an alternative motive other than pure scientific research. For being in Nuremberg, Gilbert was writing a book, a fact he never hid from the other stuff. This hindered his work as he was always looking for juicy quotes and material he could turn into eye catch and copy, rather than dedicating himself to understanding the prisoners for the betterment of humanity.

Gilbert's principal task included maintaining the morale of the Nazis so they would be fit to stand trial. He had unrestricted access to the prisoners but soon registered a conflict of interest similar to that of Kelly. Who did he work for? Should he pass details that helped the prosecution on to the authorities, or was doctor patient confidentiality sacred even in these extreme circumstances? His fluency in German helped the prisoners relax and open up.

In his company, Gilbert collected the responses of the prisoners to their indictment. Who protested, who remained defiant, who descended into despair. Gilbert did not reveal at first that he was Jewish. Many of the prisoners had indicated that they could instinctively detect the presence of a Jew, but none had shown any ability to identify Jewish people, neither Gilbert nor any of the other Jewish staff. Many simply described those that they did not like, such as Andres or the Judges, as Jews, ironically all of them Gentiles.

When Gilbert revealed to the prisoners that he was Jewish, most protested that they didn't care, had never believed in Nazi racial ideology, or that many of them had Jewish friends. Only Rosenberg and Striker displayed an unease at being in the presence of a Jew. Kelly felt somewhat undermined by Gilbert, but they tried to make the best of the situation. On the 23rd of October, Kelly and Gilbert visited Robert Lay in his cell. Lay insisted that all he and Hitler had done was act in the best interest of the German people. In his report, Kelly stated that Lei, though excitable and depressed, was sane and otherwise healthy, fit to face trial, and the dangerous suicide had passed. The next day, the evening of the 24th of October, around 8:15, PMA guard raised the alarm.

Lei had taken a towel, soaked it in water to tighten it, wrapped it around his neck, tied the towel to the toilet pipe, stuffed his own underwear in his mouth to prevent himself from screaming, and strangled himself to death. He had sat on the toilet, the only part of the prison cell partially concealed from the guards, which allowed him a few moments unobserved to carry out the deadly deed. And thus ended one of the most heinous Nazi war criminals of them all, Robert Lay, a man who had commanded a vast army of slaves worked to death to bring about Hitler's dream of 1000 Year Reich. Strangled with his own dirty knickers stuffed in his mouth, Sitting on the crapper, Andrus immediately tightened security. A guard was sat outside each of the cells around the clock, observing the prisoners at all times. The prisoners were told individually about Lei suicide with during expressing relief believing Lei would have made a spectacle of himself.

At the trial, Kelly managed to get Lei's brain removed and sent in a parcel marked spices by special airmail to the US for examination. Initial assessment showed that Leigh did indeed suffer from frontal lobe degeneration which delighted Kelly as it aligned with his prognosis, only for this to be later revised, much to Kelly's disappointment. Gilbert readministered the Rorschach test of Goering and came to strikingly different conclusions from Kelly this time. Goering's test revealed him to be an intellectual mediocrity, lacking original thoughts, cynical and self interested, but not an exceptional mind at all.

Why did Gilbert and Kelly's results show up so differently? Kelly had spent months with Goering, spending hundreds of hours conversing, and had to some extent come to form a bond with the former Reichs Marshall. Gilbert, on the other hand, had no such relationship. What appeared to be brilliant to Kelly was mundane to Gilbert. Maybe Kelly was losing his objectivity. Gilbert issued a series of tests to the other Nazi prisoners, including asking them to do jigsaws, solve puzzles, and assemble comic strips.

Though Goering went about this with childlike enthusiasm, Hess displayed total confusion and befuddlement. Gilbert and Kelly operate for the most part independent of each other, not conferring and not sharing notes. But they did begin a conversation about maybe working together to write a book on the collective findings. Opinions of the prisoners differed on Kelly and Gilbert. Some liked Gilbert's straightforward professionalism, others preferred Kelly's laid back demeanour.

Goering took a clear liking to Kelly. He talked openly to Kelly, where he opined on the legality of the trials, claiming that they were a sort of victor's justice with no basis in any recognizable law. Goering was torn between a sense of himself as a great man who had acted in the interests of Germany, a man who would be, in the final reckoning, vindicated by history and seen as a German hero, and also a sense that he was doomed to hang as a recognizable symbol of the state that the victors had to punish.

It was during this time that Goering's wife, Emmy was arrested on allegations that she had assisted Goering in the looting of art. Emmy and EDA, Goering's daughter, was separated and placed in jail. This sent Goering into a rage, who viewed his family's arrest as a betrayal. Andrus intervened to have Emmy and EDA confined together before their eventual release. Whilst walking EDA between cells, Goering's daughter popped a peppermint sweet into her mouth.

The guards, thinking it was a cyanide capsule and with the recent example of Robert Lay looming large, went into a panic struggle to get her to spit it out, causing the child much distress and confusion. Though a false alarm, this was an illuminating incident. No matter how tight security was, there would never be a 100% guarantee against suicide. Hesse continued to puzzle the authorities. Was he genuinely mentally ill and therefore unfit to stand trial? Would putting him on trial collapse the prosecution's case, or would it generate sympathy for the Nazi cause? Or, alternately, was Hess A practised and talented fraud? Hess had scored poorly on the IQ tests and shown dismay and confusion during the entire battery of examinations. He seemed to act like a scared and frightened child. But then there were moments of clarity, moments where something deeper seemed to breakthrough.

Some semblance of who Hess maybe Once Upon a time had been seemed to emerge before sinking black into a cloud of confusion and dismay. He had claimed uneasier, even, not recognizing Goering himself. So Kelly designed a set of tests specifically for Hess. He had Hess brought into a room, the lights turned down, the windows closed, and a projector brought in. Onto the wall was cast images of Nazi rallies, with Hess speaking, dressed in his brown Nazi uniform in front of enraptured crowds.

The next image would be Hitler then lay goering, followed by other Nazi luminaries. All the while, Hess would be watching, and Kelly would be watching Hess, noticing how his face changed, twisted and contorted when images of Hitler appeared before him. Hess stood to his feet, showing a deep enthusiasm. But as soon as the image then moved on to one of the other Nazi dignitaries, Hess would sit back down. Was this maybe touching on something deep in the minds of the deputy Fuhrer?

Hess broke into sweats, His hands shook. He twisted, fidgeted and contorted every time he saw the image of his former leader appearing before him. Hesse was assessed by a team of doctors from France, the UKUSA and USSR, with Kelly believing the Hesse's amnesia may have been faked at first, but then taken such a deep root that it took on a reality all of its own. The amnesia was self induced as a shield, as an outer shell, a defence mechanism to avoid responsibility.

Andrus on the other hand, just believed that Hess was a fraud, trying to hoodwink the authorities and he held Hess in contempt. Kelly passed a series of titbits from the prisoners that trusted him about their defence strategies to William Donovan, the lead Allied prosecutor, including revealing that Goering intended to call upon a series of witnesses, including Lord Halifax, to testify on Goering's behalf. Halifax had been the British Foreign Secretary when Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia and was at that moment, at the end of the war, the UK ambassador to the United States of America. Goering was also hoping to lean upon a memorandum that he had passed to Halifax in 1936 about how Britain and Germany could avoid conflict as evidence of Goering's peaceful intentions. Kelly told Donovan that Yodel intended to stress that he was following orders.

Dernitz doubted the mass of evidence collected from the paperwork left behind by the Nazis would lead to a clear conviction. And Frank was continuing his religious turn, insisting the Nazis were in league with Satan. Frank quite possibly in that instance, may have been on to something. Goering would insist that the Nazis only founded the Gestapo to fight communism, and Kelly even passed on the books that Goering intended to reference in his defence. In the end, Kelly's memorandums were of little use to the prosecution.

A split was starting to emerge between Donovan and Robert Jackson, another US lawyer, on the strategy the prosecution should pursue there would be most likely to lead to a conviction. Donovan was committed to a strategy of cross examination. Jackson wanted to turn to the massive evidence for a more comprehensive conviction. In the end, the disagreement was too much and Donovan left the prosecution and returned to the USA.

As the trial grew near, the defense intensified its preparations. Lawyers were recruited for each of the defendants, some at the request of the defendants, others appointed by the Allies. The preparation for the trial allowed, for the first time in months, the defendants to have contact with those in the outside world who were not Allied military personnel. This led to a concern about smuggling. Andrus responded with ever tightening security, random searches and inspections, the removal of the few items the prisoners were allowed, constant observation. And yet, despite Andrus's best efforts, contraband was constantly being discovered.

Contraband of an alarming nature. Shoelaces, nails, pills, even razor blades were taken from the defendants. When the same searches were performed again, yet more was found. Rumors swirled that an attack by diehard Nazis was being planned, so the prison and Palace of Justice were further fortified. Tanks were moved into place, armed guards on every corner. A constant watch was kept, papers demanded and inspected relentlessly. Room 600 in the Palace of Justice Nuremberg would hold the attention of the world for the duration of the trial. The room had been transformed from a shattered shell to a theatre ready for a showdown between a world thirsty for answers and the greatest criminals of our times. New lights were fitted.

The room was enlarged to fit hundreds of journalists, long benches constructed for the defendants, facing the judges who would be seated in front of the windows with their national flags behind them. Andrus was determined that the defendants not be seen as pitiful figures. He insisted that they be given new clothes, were presentable with combed hair and pressed shirts. Nothing was to be allowed that would allow the defendants to draw sympathy. Andrus further insisted that the guards not be allowed to carry guns, only white Billy clubs.

Andrus feared that a defendant might seize a pistol and make an escape attempt. On the 20th of November, the defendants filed into the docks, each seated by the order they had been indicted with Goering. First they chatted. Some seemed nervous, some fidgeted. Some faced what was to come with stern determination, others seemed almost passive. Goering wore his grey dress uniform stripped of epaulettes and medals. He seemed to revel in the spectacle.

Months of confinement had bored him and now he, the ultimate showman, finally had. The stage to a form on the court was called into session at 10 AM. The proceedings began with the prosecution reading the indictments. This bored the defendants, both because to simply list the crimes of the Nazis, crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity took hours, and because the defendants had already read the indictments before. They sat on their benches, staring at the room, some paying attention, some not.

The Nazis were bored, some chatted quietly with each other, has read his novel. And at midday proceedings adjourned for lunch. The defendants sat together, all apart from Striker, who even to the Nazis was totally beyond the pale and ostracized from the group. The next day, the defendants were called to make their plea. How do you answer the charges placed before you by the International court? Goering maybe his mind turning back to the bombastic performance that Hitler had put in at his trial after the 1923 Beer Hall porch, where the future Fuhrer gave long electrifying speeches to wild applause and was allowed to turn the court into his own theatre.

An important moment in the rise of the Nazis that helped turn Hitler from an obscure criminal into a national figure. Maybe Goering had planned a similar moment, but no sooner than he had opened his mouth that he was interrupted by the judges. A simple guilty or not guilty will do. This was not post World War One Germany dripping with pity and desperate for a Redeemer. This was an international court and he was on trial for his life. Goering, annoyed, denied his big moment, for now at least, leaned into the microphone and seething with pure defiance said not guilty.

In the sense of the indictment. This would be a rallying cry for the Nazi defendants. Not a clear answer, but one that by it's very uttering, denied the validity of the proceedings, hurled back in the face of the court their very right to stand in judgement over him. Hermann Goering, Reichs Marshall of the Luftwaffe, heir to the throne of Adolf Hitler. Jackson opened the trial for the prosecution. He stressed the gravity of the proceedings, that it was not Germany or the German people who were on trial, but the Nazi regime and its leaders. That what was achieved in this very room in the form of beating heart of the Nazi empire would echo through time. That history will ask what were the lessons drawn from the horrors of war and the crimes of the Nazis? Will the lessons be that might makes right and the weak suffer what they must?

Or is there a higher law, a law that binds all men, and that these men have broken that law and have committed crimes against humanity itself with their heinous deeds? Jackson stressed that this was not Victor's justice, that the precedents that are set here would not be applied just to the vanquished, but to the triumphant as well. The allies will be held by the same standards and will be asked to stand before the same God and make their plea when their day comes. The press was enraptured by the case. Hundreds of journalists from around the world had crowded into the courtroom and they reported on every detail. The demeanour of the defendants, what Goering War, what has read Every tick and intricacy was detailed, documented and commented on.

During was desperate to perform, to be the center of attention. Unlike the other Nazis, Goering's defense was full blooded, defiant, bold even. He saw himself as a symbol of the Reich and a defender of German honor and manhood. He would stare down the Allied prosecutors who dared stand in judgement over the Thousand Year Reich and give not a single inch. If he failed, if he went to the hangman's noose, then it would be so, he thought, one final act of sacrifice for the Fatherland. Goering took the role as the leader of the shrunken Reich that now extended no more than the prison walls. He positioned himself at the head of the table during lunch. He constantly harangued the other prisoners to be defiant, to stand tall.

When other prisoners show doubt or start to shift the blame onto Hitler, Goering would admonish them. Goering tried to rally the Nazi leaders, appealing to their ego, their vanity, their sense of history, whatever it took to assert his dominance over them and to put some steel in their defence. November the 29th was a pivotal moment in the trial. The lights of the courtroom were dimmed. Silence descended as the projector was brought in. The content of the film, reported around the world shocked not just those in the courtroom, he shocked the world itself.

The Allies had taken camera crews into Auschwitz, Treblinka, Maidenacht, Saxon, Hausen and many other Nazi death camps. They had documented for the world to see so that there could be no doubt the deeds of the Thousand Year Reich. Emaciated corpses piled high, bodies heaped on top of each other, mass graves full of humans, starved and tortured. Barbaric experiments the likes of which would give those who uncovered these crimes nightmares for the rest of their lives. The sort of crimes once witnessed, no one can forget, no one can forgive.

Piles of shoes. Bulldozers pushing lifeless heaps of women and children into mass graves. This was the greatness of Hitler's empire displayed for all the world to see. The legacy of the defendants Kelly and Gilbert stood on either side of the docks, watching as the film rolled, as the lights flickered, cast across the faces of the architects of the Final Solution. Some covered their faces, some turned away. Sounds of sobbing could be heard in the room. Some stared in disbelief.

Some couldn't watch, being confronted with what they had done, being simply too psychologically painful even for hardened Nazis. Only Striker stared, captivated, drinking in every drop of the vast ocean of misery he had done so much to unleash in the docks. Hess was heard to say. I don't believe it. Goering told him to be silent. Kelly and Gilbert toured the cells that night. Some protested their innocence. They didn't know.

They hadn't heard whispers of gossip, Propaganda, surely. Propaganda It was this was thing, this lies. The stories that they stuck to despite the evidence that they had seen the tales. They were too fantastic for us to believe. We heard something, but we didn't know exactly what was going on. They repeated the same old lies they insisted upon the same old falsehoods. They didn't know it was someone else's fault. They weren't to blame.

Only Hans Frank, the former governor of Nazi occupied Poland who had returned to his Catholic faith in captivity, faced the accusations soberly. He seemed to be the only prisoner capable of facing what he had done without producing an endless ream of obfuscations, denials, excuses or attempts to ship the blame. Ernst Kelton Bruner, the feared s s man responsible. So much for sending so many of those seen and those awful films to their deaths.

A man so intimidating, so merciless, so tough when dealing with women and children, wept like a child, the most pathetic of a sad crew. Goering, whether he couldn't or wasn't willing to face the reality of what he was responsible for, insisted that though he heard some reports, it was Himmler. Yes, Himmler, the s s, they were responsible. Heidrich, they were all. It was them. They had been responsible for this. He was an honourable soldier, following orders, not a ruthless, cold hearted murderer of women and children. But day by day, the evidence was mantic against the Reichs. Marshall Hess was called to the stand. There had been a long debate about the sanity of Hess. Was it even fair to put him on trial? How culpable was he for his own actions? Or was he playing one final trick to escape justice? He took to the podium and launched into a rambling, contradictory speech in which he declared to the judge, the court, the assembled press, and his fellow defendants that he had been faking his amnesia all along and was quite sane. There was a moment of stunned silence and then, starting with Hess's own defence attorney, Doctor Gunther von Rorschite, a wave of laughter rippled through the court. You can only imagine, as the room, including the man charged with defending Hess, was convulsed with laughter and Hess announcing to the world that he was simply a convincing liar, the reaction of Goering rolling his eyes at the absurdity of Hess, who seems to have been sent to Earth to establish himself once and for all as the most ludicrous figure in all of history.

Was this a ruse? Was this declaration of sanity further evidence that Hess was in fact Matt? As the laughter died down, nobody knew. Goering continued to cajole and rally the other defendants, exhorting them to not give an inch to the prosecutors. So Andrus decided the time had come to break the Reich Marshall spell. During lunch, Goering was now separated from the other prisoners and forced to eat alone. The Nazis could now talk amongst themselves without Goering's interference.

Freed from Goering's domination, the Nazi prisoners began to reflect. Some even started to ask questions about Hitler, Nazism, and the entire Nazi project. Some asked themselves why they'd gone along with it all in the 1st place. Goering could feel his grip loosening. Goering was obsessed by power and control. He was a man who believed that by sheer force of will he could remake reality itself, subject the world to his desire, and force others to comply.

He now found himself in a situation totally beyond his influence. As day by day, witness by witness, methodically the prosecution lay out its case. Goering's determination to exonerate not just himself, but the Reich was dying a death of 1000 cuts, and there was nothing he could do to stop the bleeding. Gurren cast a frustrated figure in the docks, donning dark glasses to hide his eyes, his hand propping up his head.

Bored, frustrated, infuriated, he muttered to himself, insults directed at the witnesses after one, damning testimony after the next, each pushing him closer to the final trapdoor. 1 by 1. The defendant started to break. The pathetic pleas of figures such as Wilhelm Keitel, the last commander of the Van Marks, insisting that he had been just following orders, rang hollow. Kelly had now grown weary of the trial. He'd been separated from his wife since 1942, and he was keen to go home and put the wall behind him, get on with his life. On his last day in the prison, Kelly, who had spent so many hundreds of hours trying to understand these men, trying to diagnose them, analyze them, humanize them, made one last trip round the cells to say his farewell. Some gave him warm regards, others were indifferent. Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi philosopher, had a final parting gift for Kelly, an incoherent letter outlining how a conspiracy of Jews and African Americans were plotting to bring down the US government.

One can only imagine Kelly's reaction to such a gift. One of Kelly's final visits was to Goering, the man who had fascinated him, the man he may be had the most in common with. They chatted briefly. When Kelly told Goering that he was leaving the feared Reichs, Marshall burst into tears. Goering's world grew smaller once again. The walls were closing in. Kelly returned to the US in January 1946. He took with him vast amounts of documents, books, research reports and notes.

Ones promised to Gilbert to help them collaborate on their book. Kelly took them all. Kelly didn't tell Gilbert he was taking the research, which Gilbert thought would be available to him, and without Beach, Gilbert would struggle to compile a book. But that was the point. Kelly had decided to write the book without Gilbert. Kelly didn't even give Gilbert a forwarding address so that they could correspond. Gilbert, who stated the trial, was enraged. Feeling cheated of a place in history by Kelly's manatee, Goering continued his strategy, brushing off his loss of power amongst the Nazi group and the mounting evidence he was determined to make a stand to redeem the honour of the Reich. Goering took to the witness box in March 1946. He offered a long winded and resolute defense of his actions. He was, you see, acting out sincere patriotism. Germany had been humiliated, brought low by the Allies and the Communists.

Germany was threatened on all sides. War was forced upon a reluctant Germany that had no choice but to shoulder pack and rifle in defence of civilization against Asiatic Judeo Bolshevism. Acting almost as if this was some big misunderstanding and that one day not just Germany, but the world, the British, the French, the Americans, everyone included will look back and realize that the Nazis were right and had been defending Western civilization.

The witness box gave during the stage he had so longed for, he was able to deploy his full repertoire. Charisma, bombast. He was enjoying himself but cut the thrust, the parry, the never giving an inch. This was Barnacle red in tooth and claw St. biting and he was in his element. Robert Jackson, the leader of the prosecution, crosses Armand Goering. And Goering, like an experienced massador, took on his prey with steely determination, not a flinch, not a moment of doubt.

Staring Jackson down, daring him to charge, planning to lurch the side of the last moment, red rag waving, expecting the olays of his compatriots. Goering anticipated Jackson's question and delivered. Dismissive, long winded answers to the judge allowed Goering to get away with. Goering's bombast unsettled Jackson, who seemed to be taken aback by Goering's sheer arrogance, his contempt and his larger than life presence. Morale amongst the prisoners had been at rock bottom, but Goering's performance, complete with rhetorical jabs, uppercuts and haymakers delighted his fellow Nazis. On returning to the pen, the other Nazi notables congratulated Goering's with slaps on the backs, handshakes and smiles.

Goering's aggressive stance may have won him plaudits from his fellow Nazis. For all of the Reichs, marshals, bombast and bluster, the facts built up the sheer weight of evidence mounted page by page, fact by fact. No amount of bullying could help him escape. The turning point arrived when evidence emerged that Goering had signed off on the execution of 50 captured British officers in 1944. Goering denied any involvement in this incident and also any involvement at all in the Holocaust, and he allowed his anger to show, directing his venom towards witnesses as they testified, stumbling over his words and contradicting himself. During was outraged at being coiled and insisted that Hitler must be absolved of guilt in the teeth of the ever mounting evidence.

This was the moment, having tried to defend the Fuhrer, he finally lost credibility. Wounded during slump back in the docks, under the constant, relentless assault of the facts, the defendants began to collapse. They were on the run, and Jackson knew it. Jackson, so overwhelmed by During at the start of the proceedings, now summoned A rhetorical flourish to drive the Nazis finally into the dustbin of history. Standing before the court, Jackson declared.

It is again such a background that these defendants now ask this tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs, Jackson recalled Shakespeare's Richard the Third. They stand before the record of this trial. As blood stained, Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you. Say I slew them not. And the queen replied, Then say they were not slain, but dead they are. And if you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say there has been no war, there are no slain, and there has been no crime. Jackson had his moment of utter triumph. Goering, Hess.

Dernis lay banished, Bully utterly crushed like the snake beneath the heel. On the 22nd of June, the judges began their deliberation. 2 months went by before the defendants were allowed to make their final statements. Goering claimed that he had never ordered anyone's murder as one final pathetic attempt to wipe so much blood from his hands. Hess managed the seemingly impossible by appearing an even more pathetic figure than before, rambling through yet another incoherent statement before muttering about tampered and faked evidence.

In March of 1946, Goering's wife Emmy, who had been detained, was set free. She begged to see her husband. Initially, Goering declined the request. So long the strongman now beaten and humiliated, nothing but a criminal. He did not want this to be her memory of him, but with the trial soon over, going relented. His wife visited him every day apart from Sundays. These moments meant a lot to him, even if he had not been allowed to hold his wife's hand or hug his daughter.

On the 29th of September, all members of the defendants families were ordered to leave Nuremberg. A few days later the moment came. The judges would announce their decision. Of the 21 defendants, Franz von Papen, Hans Richer and Helmer Schlacht were acquitted. 18 guilty verdicts were passed down. 7, including Hess, were given long prison sentences. Rosenberg, Striker, Keikel, Ribbentrop, Kelton, Bruner, Yodel, Frick, Frank, Sais, Inkhart, Saukel and Goering.

All the leaders of the Third Reich, architects of Hitler's rise to power. Men who had steered Germany and Europe to war and destruction, who had committed untold crimes against humanity itself, and who had presided over the conception, design and execution of the greatest crime in the history of the human race. The Final Solution, The Holocaust that had sent 12 million people, 6 million of them Jews, to their death was sentenced to hang.

The executions were scheduled to take place on the 16th of October. Of the three men who were freed, their fates would vary. Hans Frischer, the prominent radio presenter and voice of Nazi Germany, would later be convicted of crimes related to the Nazi regime before dying of cancer in 1953. Franz von Pappen, the Chancellor of Germany before Hitler, was tried again and given a guilty verdict. He would be sentenced to 8 years of hard labour, only to have his conviction overturned.

He tried unsuccessfully to restart his political career and churned out articles defending his policies, dying in 1969 at the age of 89. How much lack? The economist and financier went on to found a bank and gave economic advice to developing nations, dying in Munich in 1970. Karl Dernitz, the head of the German Navy, the Creeks Marine, was given a 10 year sentence. After release from prison. He retired to a small village to write his memoirs and lived in obscurity until his death in 1980. Albert Speer would serve a 20 year prison sentence. Being released in 1966.

He hoped to restart his architectural career but with little success. He wrote a series of highly successful books about his time in the Reich and something of a myth developed around him as the good Nazi. He would die in 1981. Rudolf Hess, unlike Speer and Dernitz was not released from prison. He remained an ardent supporter of Hitler and the fanatical anti Semite, becoming a figure of admiration amongst neo Nazis. And on the 17th of August 1987, at the age of 93, he hanged himself in his prison cell. Goering asked to be shot.

He wanted a soldier's death, not that of a criminal. But his request was denied. The Allies wanted a death that would send a message. Goering was not a martyr, not a symbol, not a victim, not a hero. He was a criminal, nothing more. And he would die a criminal's death. In his final moments, Goering came as close as can be hoped to an admission of defeat. He conceded that the myth of Hitler, the Reich and the Nazi Party had been buried at Nuremberg.

The night before his execution, Goering asked the Catholic chaplain for Holy Communion. Goering told the chaplain that he rejected the Bible and that he didn't believe that Jesus was God, but he still wished for communion. The chaplain declined to administer the sacrament in his cell. The night before his execution was to take place, Goering was observed by the guards second by second. Goering wrote a note, folded the paper on the desk and moved to the toilet in the corner of the cell, momentarily away from the watching guard.

He returned to the bed. The guard, watching his every moment, turned and looked straight at the guard and bit down. In his brief moment on the toilet, out of the guard's sight, he had taken a glass container, possibly hidden on his body, possibly in some secret part of the cell that had evaded detection by frequent inspections. The capsule released cyanide into Goering's throat. Goering convulsed. The guard, realizing what happened, rushed to raise the alarm, opened the door of the cell, but Goering was already dead. The letter Goering had written moments before his death was addressed to Andrus to the Commandante. I have always had the capsules of poison with me. From the time I became a prisoner. When taken to Mondorf, I had three capsules. The first I left in my clothes so it would be found when a search was made.

The second I placed under the clothes rack on undressing and took to me again undressing. I hid this here in the cell and in Mondor so well that despite the frequent and thorough searches, it could not be found during the court sessions. I hid this on my person and in my high riding boot. The third capsule is still in my suitcase in the round box skin cream hidden in the cream. I could have taken this to me twice in Mondorf if I needed it. None of those charged with searching is to blame, for it was practically impossible to find the capsules. It would have been a pure accident. Doctor Gilbert has informed me that the Control Board has refused permission to change the form of execution to shooting. Theories abound as to how Goering had managed to dodge the hangman's noose.

One theory advanced by Telford Taylor, who worked on the prosecution case, argued that US First Lieutenant Jack Tex Wheeler had helped hide or even acquire the cyanide for Goering. A book by Ben E Swearingen called The Mystery of Hermann Goering Suicide, published in 1985, argued that Wheeler had assisted the Reichs Marshals cheating justice. But in 2005, Herbert Lee Stivers, a guard during the Nuremberg court hearings, claimed that he had, at the urging of his then German girlfriend, given Goering a pen that, unbeknownst to him, contained the capsules.

The condemned men one by one had their date with the Eternal. Some, like Ribbentrop, found a confidence within themselves that they had lacked their whole life. Some like Striker when kicking and screaming into the next World with harsh shouts of Heil Hitler. Doctor Gustav Gilbert returned to the US where he helped treat soldiers who had emotional breakdowns. He did end up writing a book on the psychological make up of the Nazis and went on to have a successful medical career.

He would testify at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. Gustav Gilbert would die at the age of 65 in 1977. Colonel Burton C Andrus did not attend the execution of the prisoners. He returned to the US in 1946 due to the ill health of his wife. He continued his military career serving in various overseas positions as an attache, including postings in Israel and Brazil, before retiring from the armed forces in 1952. He lived in Tacoma, WA, earned a Bachelor's of Arts in Business Administration, and became a professor at the University of Puget Sound.

He was active in the Boy Scouts and a lay preacher at his local church. He passed away on the 1st of February 1977 at the age of 84. Kelly was already back in the US by the time of the executions. He was surprised by goering suicide, but after years of being at war away from his family, he wanted to put the experience behind him. Kelly and his wife travelled for a time, but Kelly felt himself pulled back to the trial. He had been obsessed by the idea of a Nazi mind, something that American culture, basking in the self congratulatory glow of victory, was eager to believe in. The Nazis, they were not like us, They were different, perhaps psychologically, perhaps genetically. It could, of course, never happened here. We were incapable of such crimes. Kelly had amassed a mass collection of documents, reports, books, some signed by the Nazis, even X-rays of Hitler's skull.

He began compiling his foundings, but the more he dug, the more distressed he became. Where was the smoking gun? Where was the 1 undeniable, defining piece of evidence that would prove beyond doubt that they were different from us? The Nazis were obsessive, eccentric, but so are millions of people. The more he looked, the more dismayed he became. There was no Nazi mind. There was no difference between them and us. There was instead a we. The truth is that the Nazis were far from unique. They were actually painfully normal people. There are people who, if given the right incentives, would become Nazis in every office, gym and church in the land. They just don't know it yet.

In an America that wanted to feel morally superior post World War 2, Kelly's book with these shocking findings was not commercially successful. He went on to become the head of Department of Psychology at Berkeley University, where he investigated the psychological motivations of criminals Depressed, struggling with alcoholism, prone to fits of anger, and haunted by his findings. Douglas R Kelly on New Year's Day 1958, after an outburst of rage, told his family he was going to commit suicide.

Kelly bit down on a bile of cyanide, the very same method used by Herman Wilhelm Gerrick. Thank you for listening to Ancient to Recent. My name is Joseph Parkinson. Episodes of Ancient to Recent are out every Friday and are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.