He requested permission to return briefly by plane to his family
so that he could at least make the most essential arrangements
for them and take proper leave of them. He received no reply.
To while away that time, Admiral Hans von Friedeburg’s
adjutant taught the fifty imprisoned men how to play Battle-
ships. Göring sank Dönitz’s warships with as much gusto as if
they had been real, but he did not like to lose, and once the ad-
miral protested, “Hermann’s cheating! If he doesn’t like where
my shells are falling, he marks them in on different squares!”
Given a medical examination, Göring weighed in at
pounds, which was very fat indeed. (He would weigh only
pounds at the end.) His height was five foot ten, he was per-
spiring profusely, short of breath but not acutely ill. His pulse
was , but full of extra contractions (systoles). “His skin,” re-
ported the medic, “is moist, pale, and sallow except his face,
which is flushed. There is a marked irregular tremor of both
hands and he appears to be extremely nervous or excited.” They
found no diseases, and remarked that he was well developed,
“but extremely obese, flaccid, and generally in very poor physi-
cal condition.” Göring told the doctors that over the past few
months he had suffered increasingly frequent heart attacks,
“manifested by pericardial distress, dyspnoea, profuse perspira-
tion, and nervousness.”
The Americans had found two thousand mysterious white
pills in his possession. He told them he took twenty each day,
night and morning. “My surgeon,” explained Andrus helplessly
to Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF)
on May , “reports that if we suddenly remove this [medica-
tion] from him he will become totally demented.” SHAEF re-
plied that their only concern was that the prisoner remain co-
herent for some time to come. “There are a number of things we
wish to ask him,” they notified Andrus, referring probably to