The Allies struggled to choose whom to accuse once they decided to bring prominent Nazi officials before trial. Top Nazi officials Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels had taken their own lives, leaving less strong subordinates to answer for it.
The most significant defendant in the trial, Hermann Göring, had been director of the Four Year Plan, president of the Reichstag, Luftwaffe commander in chief, and Hitler's acknowledged successor at war's start. After turning himself in to Allied forces, he arrived in Austria with four aides, a nurse, two chauffeurs, a five-member kitchen crew, and his family; but he left behind a train loaded with pilfers and enough caviar and champagne for lifetime. Arriving in Nuremberg, he handed an autographed picture to an American general bearing the inscription "War is like a football game, whoever loses gives his opponent his hand, and everything is forgotten." Göring couldn have been more mistaken. On all four counts, the tribunal declared him guilty; he was sentenced to hanging death. Before his planned execution, he would take his own life.
On the Witness Stand
But Göring would have one last moment in the public eye on the witness stand at Nuremberg before his reckoning. He started sweating as he sat down. His hands shivered. When he recovered, though, he embraced the limelight and asserted a position next to Hitler as a potent Nazi movement leader. Göring's account grabbed people's attention everywhere. Two weeks of defense, "arrogant, crafty and intelligent... Göring obviously enjoyed himself as he kept the courtroom spellbound for days... Göring was anxious, whatever his fate, that history record him as an important world figure and as a German hero." Life magazine said.