mortal lines before this last arbitrary tribunal of mortal enemies.
He embellished his replies with repartee, attracting gales of
laughter from the public in the courtroom, then subtly hushed
the listeners with some throwaway self-incrimination of appar-
ent sincerity.
Millions of listeners around the world were hearing the
trial broadcast. It was relayed by loudspeaker over prison camps
all over Germany, the United States, and Britain. The effect was
not what the victors had desired at all. Meals halted and the
prisoners poured outside to listen as Hermann “Just
Hermann! Never anything but Hermann!” began this last
battle for his country. In the courtroom itself the newspaper-
men were stunned by his performance they had swallowed
their own reports, believing, as Jackson wryly commented later,
that the Reichsmarschall was indeed a dope fiend, a physical
wreck, a neurotic.
Too excited to eat, he sat on his cot afterward, unwinding;
he smoked his long meerschaum pipe, and held out an arm to
Dr. Gilbert to show how steady he now was. He had mapped the
broad outlines first, while digging in for the main attack, so he
explained. He ruminated out loud about man as the world’s
most fearsome beast of prey, and about the inevitability of war.
Perhaps, reflected Gilbert, the great music of Richard Wagner’s
Götterdämmerung was pounding through the chords of his
brain; more likely, the Reichsmarschall’s mind was prowling on
ahead to the moment when he, the beast of prey, would liberate
himself from this earthly cage.
On the next day, March , he testified with frankness and
candor on how he had consolidated the Nazi stranglehold on
Germany, and once more made no bones of his role in the
Röhm massacre. Gilbert asked him, as they adjourned for lunch,
what he proposed to say about the SS atrocities.