had spent his youth in the skies and his manhood at the wheel
of a sports car on Hitler’s autobahns, every moment of this con-
finement hurt. He was wasting away. Front and profile mug-
shots taken on June show him glowering and drawn. On July
, similar photographs show the cheekbones protruding almost
like when he was a young lieutenant in the Richthofen Squad-
ron. But he was still defiant. “Except for a considerable loss in
weight,” the interrogators reported after seeing him on the sev-
enth, “Göring’s detention has not affected him very visibly. He
is... very wary. Göring knows that we are trying to convict him
of something, but he is not quite sure what that is.”
The commandant, Colonel Andrus, ordered the paraco-
deine dosage reduced. On July , Göring counted the pills, no-
ticed there were only sixteen, and complained, “Each day less
and less.” A German doctor had by now been introduced to the
prisoners Dr. Ludwig Pflücker, a mild-mannered urologist of
the type that Göring had often noticed at health spas. Göring
complained of headaches, and asked for a sedative. Pflücker,
avoiding problems, applied heat therapy instead.
“Send up Fat Stuff!” The cry became routine that July and
August in Mondorf, and Göring would attempt a pixie smile as
he loped off to the interview room between two guards. On July
and , , several U.S. Army historians came to talk with
him. Their chief, Dr. George N. Shuster, had no axe to grind
and allowed him free rein in venting his spleen about Hitler and
Bormann. “Once,” reminisced Göring, “we had to make four
thousand phone calls to answer one single question from the
Führer” he still called Hitler that “about an airplane en-
gine.” His real bête noire was Martin Bormann. “I can’t conceal
that Bormann was the Führer’s evil genius, and I couldn’t wish
anything sweeter than to shoot the dog down myself. I haven’t