Göring (by the time of the trial weaned off the morphine and considerably lighter, also the darling of his American guards) wasn't so much forgetful as unrepentant. His best bit was when a prosecutor attacked him for having known that Germany had mobilized its military in secret for war to which Göring replied dryly: "
I have no recollection of reading about Allied mobilisation plans in the Western press." Prosecutors wanted that answer struck off the record, the Nürnberg court kept it in.
All the other accused presented themselves rather poorly throughout. Given that Göring had become laughing stock and a baroque figure in the latter days of the war plus suffered a considerable relegation of his political and military role in Nazi Germany, he went out in Nürnberg with a bang rather than a whimper. Even his suicide was pre-announced by him. He declared that he would rather kill himself if his wish to be shot in military style by a firing squad rather than hung was not granted. He then did.
An interesting figure. Among all the darkness tiny points of light: He refused pressure from Adolf Hitler to have Allied airmen shot at their parachutes, declaring it unsoldierly for his Luftwaffe. And while his resistance (younger) brother Albert
![](http://cdn2.spiegel.de/images/image-637219-860_poster_16x9-hgvs-637219.jpg)
protected and saved hundreds of jews (and the brothers never discussed politics when they seldomly met at family events), he intervened everytime when the Gestapo (which had Albert under surveillance) took steps to arrest him.
A man with a gargantuan appetite for embezzlement and corruption, Göring wasn't so much wed to Nazi ideology (his own antisemitism was often of perfunctory nature and he protected a few Jewish acquaintances) as he decided to profit from the "New Order": He was in for that 1,000 year ride that ultimately only lasted 12.