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Letters reveal how 'fat-boy Goering was knocked off his perch' at trials
Ed Harris20 Mar 2009
BRITAIN'S prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials bragged he had knocked "fat boy" Hermann Goering "off his perch", previously unseen letters revealed today.
Correspondence between David Maxwell Fyfe, British deputy chief prosecutor at the historic trials of former Nazi leaders, and his wife Sylvia, have been donated to the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge University.
The 205 letters were written between October 1945 and August 1946 and were donated by the family of Maxwell Fyfe, who later became Lord Kilmuir.
They describe the prosecution of Nazis such as Goering, the Luftwaffe commander, Albert Speer and Karl Doenitz following the Second World War.
Maxwell Fyfe's cross-examination of Goering, which followed an exchange between the German and US chief prosecutor Robert H Jackson, is remembered as one of the most notable in history.
In a letter to his wife the next day, Maxwell Fyfe contrasted his own performance with that of Jackson. He wrote: "Friday morning, I think that my cross-examination of Goering went off all right. Everyone here was very pleased.
"Jackson had not only made no impression but actually built up the fat boy further. I think I knocked him reasonably off his perch." He had earlier written: "Goering has given his evidence quite well, except that he was too long and grossly egotistical."
Allen Packwood, director of the archives centre, said: "There is no doubt that Nuremberg was a pivotal moment in the development of international criminal law and these hitherto unseen private letters show this history in the making."
Reader views (1)
Goering took the rap from his own cronies for failure to defeat the RAF. Then Hitler finally fired him. And he still stood proud at Nuremberg, as some commentators noticed. Silly man, we can agree - but he did contrive to cheat the gallows, against all the odds in his prison.
- Steve, T Wells, 20/03/2009 14:58
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