My only sweetheart!
Upon mature consideration and after profound
prayers to my God, I have decided to take my own life
and thus not allow my enemies to execute me. I would
always have accepted death by firing squad. But the
Reichsmarschall of Greater Germany cannot allow
himself to be hanged. Moreover, the killings were to
be carried out like a spectacle with the press and film
cameras there (I assume for the newsreel pictures).
Sensation is all that matters.
I however want to die quietly and out of the pub-
lic eye. My life came to an end the moment I said my
last farewell to you. Since then I am filled with a won-
drous peace and I regard death as the final release.
I take it as a sign from God that throughout the
months of my imprisonment He allowed me the
means to free myself from this mortal coil, and that
this means was never discovered. In His charity, God
thus spared me the bitter end.
All my thoughts are with you, with Edda, and all
my beloved friends! The last beats of my heart will
mark our great and eternal love. Your Hermann.When the American prison surgeon, Lieutenant Roska, came to
his cell and talked about literature, for want of any other topic,
he remarked that Göring seemed remarkably cheerful. Refer-
ring to the coming event, Göring remarked that his father had
once told him to do anything he wanted but to do it with a
smile.
The psychiatrist Dr. Gilbert made his last visit to the con-
demned men on the thirteenth. “Only Göring seemed to be de-
liberately holding out,” he reported to Andrus, “because he did
not want to admit any more guilt than had already been proven
by the prosecution.” The Reichsmarschall had mentioned
somewhat bitterly that “the Control Council might at least have
given them another method of execution.”