days) after sentencing. Now that Göring was formally a con-
demned criminal, Andrus intensified security precautions he
wanted nothing, but nothing, to go wrong. He denied Göring
all outside exercise, and he refused him permission to shower on
the fourth and eleventh. Göring wrote two letters between the
first and fifth; Andrus seized them both.* On the morning of
the fifth, he ordered the straw pallet in Göring’s cell changed
without warning. He ordered the prisoner manacled to a cell
guard and escorted during each of the remaining seven inter-
views over the next two weeks Göring was taken to Room
on October to sign papers, and then again to see his attorney
on the rd and th as well as (finally) twice on the th, their
th and th meetings.
He had instructed Stahmer not to submit any plea for
mitigation of sentence. Nevertheless, Stahmer formally peti-
tioned the Control Council on October , requesting it to com-
mute the death sentence or at least to alter it from hanging to
the firing squad. Stahmer pointed out that Göring had been a
brave officer in World War , and one universally respected for
his chivalry. He also referred to Göring’s then-little-known
efforts before the war to maintain European peace, and argued
that there was not the slightest evidence that Göring had even
known of “the extermination of the Jews carried out by
Himmler.”
A last letter had now come from Emmy, written, despite
his veto, on the fourth. “My beloved,” she had written:
... today suddenly a great calm has come upon me. I
am close to you. You are near me, whatever happens!
- According to Dr. Stahmer. In later years an impudent “last letter” allegedly
composed by Göring to Churchill and dated October , , was widely cir-
culated in right-wing circles. It was probably a forgery, emanating from
South Africa.