prisoner’s “criminal features, the mean and mad face, the lips
with a rat-trap tightness about them,” Kingsbury Smith calcu-
lated in his cable to New York that Göring would have the long-
est walk to the gallows, as the No. cell was at the far end of
death row.
Perhaps Göring was recalling the words he had once mut-
tered to Dr. Friedrich Bergold, Bormann’s attorney an old
but particularly apt German proverb: “These Nurembergers
hang no one before they get their hands on him.” At half past
nine Dr. Pflücker came back to give him and Sauckel their
sleeping pills. He did not however want Göring to fall asleep
now of all times and admitted later that he had in fact filled
Göring’s (but not Sauckel’s) pills with baking soda. He ex-
plained in evidence a few days later that he had not wanted
Göring to have to be awakened for the execution.*
Be that as it may, as Pflücker entered, escorted by the duty
officer, First Lieutenant Arthur J. McLinden, Göring sat u p
immediately. The doctor spoke with him in a low voice for about
three minutes. He later testified for what it is worth that
Göring had told him that tonight was the night. The doctor was
seen to hand over something, which Göring put in his mouth
there and then. After a few more words Pflücker took the pulse
of the Reichsmarschall’s far (left) wrist, straightened up, shook
his right hand (“because, the last time, it was difficult for a doc-
tor not to shake hands”) and left, followed out of the cell by
McLinden.
- Most suspiciously, it was Dr. Pflücker who drew the attention of the Board
of Inquiry to the “toilet bowl” theory, which they subsequently adopted. “You
can hide poison in the toilet,” he testified. “The toilet has a rim and this i s
hollow.... But,” he continued, mentioning the obvious drawback to this the-
ory, “how could Göring know he would always have the same cell?” The de-
tailed testimony of the sentinels shows that Göring at no time on that final
day sat on the alcove toilet.