Mission at Nuremberg (29 page)

The World Series was on the radio that night, and Gerecke's St. Louis Cardinals were playing. In between visiting the prisoners in their cells, Gerecke and O'Connor hurried to the guard booth to get caught up on the score. There was ten dollars at stake between the two chaplains.

At about 3:15
P.M.
, Otto, the prison's German librarian, had brought Goering a book and some writing paper. A kitchen worker brought Goering tea fifteen minutes later, and he began writing a letter. Around 7:30
P.M.
, Gerecke returned to Goering's cell, number 5, in a final attempt to get him to accept Christ. Goering had been a regular at the prison chapel, but he had resisted Gerecke's efforts to bring him more seriously into the fold of the church. Gerecke told Goering he'd written a special devotional for him. Goering told the chaplain to leave it on his table. He'd read it later. What he really wanted to discuss was the executions.

Gerecke tried again to steer the conversation toward how a man prepares his soul for death. He asked Goering to join him in prayer. No, Goering said. He would watch Gerecke pray from his cot.

Gerecke thought Goering seemed more depressed than he had earlier, which was not surprising given what was coming. Goering asked how the other men were doing. In particular, he was concerned about Sauckel, whom he could hear crying and moaning with fear. He asked Gerecke if he might be able to see Sauckel to help him get through this.

Then he started in on the method of execution again. Hanging, Goering said, was a most dishonorable way for him to die, given his former position with the German people.

Gerecke didn't respond. He'd heard this same complaint dozens of times from Goering since the sentencing. Silence fell between them.

Somewhat desperately now, Gerecke tried one last time to engage Goering on the “eternal values and how a man can be prepared to die, to meet his God.”

“Surrender your heart and soul completely to your savior, Herr Reichsmarshal,” he said.

Goering was in no mood to listen. For the last time, Goering told Gerecke that he was a member of the Christian church, but that he couldn't accept the teachings of the Christian faith. He began to make fun of the creation story in the Old Testament. He ridiculed the idea that the Bible was written by scribes divinely inspired by God. He refused the fundamental Christian doctrine of atonement—that Jesus, through his suffering and resurrection, died for the forgiveness of man's sin and to reconcile God and his creation.

Gerecke pleaded with Goering. “This is what Jesus said,” Gerecke told him. “This isn't what Gerecke is saying, but this is God speaking to you. Won't you accept this? Just say, ‘Jesus, save me.' ”

“No!” Goering barked. “I can't do that. This Jesus you always speak of—to me he's just another smart Jew.”

“Herr Reichsmarshal,” Gerecke said. “This Jesus is my savior who suffered, bled and died that I may go to heaven some day. He paid for my sins.”

“Ach!” Goering yelled. “You don't believe that yourself. When one is dead, that's the end of everything.”

In a softer tone, he continued, “Pastor, I believe in God. I believe he watches over the affairs of men, but only the big ones. He is too great to bother about little matters like what becomes of Hermann Goering.”

He fell silent for a moment. Then he looked at Gerecke.

Pastor, he said finally, “how do you celebrate the Lord's Supper?”

Gerecke was astonished. “You claim membership in the church,” Gerecke said. “You must be familiar with its sacraments.”

 

THE LORD'S SUPPER—THE CHRISTIAN
sacrament of Holy Communion—was particularly meaningful for Gerecke. As a Lutheran, the chaplain believed that when Christ offered bread to his apostles at the Last Supper, telling them it was his body, it actually became his body. When bread and wine were consecrated in Gerecke's Lutheran church, those in the pews had been taught to believe the body of Christ was “truly present . . . in, with, and under” the elements of bread and wine.

In Holy Communion, some Christians believe God is mitigating their suffering through the sacrifice of Christ, his son. Their sins disappear each time they receive Communion and they grow a little closer to God. These convictions stem from Christianity's central belief in atonement.

After Christ's death, his apostles continued to meet together, and early Christian believers received Communion in their homes on Sundays. The tradition of Sunday Mass—indeed the idea of “church”—grew directly out of Holy Communion, or the Eucharist, which derives from the Greek word
eucharistia,
meaning “thanksgiving.” Eucharistic traditions are mentioned in an early-second-century Christian instruction manual called
The Lord's Teaching to the Heathen by the Twelve Apostles,
or simply the
Didache
—the
Teaching
. The pages of the manual lay out how Christians should organize their churches and worship services.

The
Didache
echoes the New Testament with a warning: “You must not let anyone eat or drink of your Eucharist except those baptized in the Lord's name. For in reference to this the Lord said, ‘Do not give what is sacred to dogs.' ” Similarly, in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that “whoever . . . eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all those who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.”

The church waited one thousand years to debate formally the theology of the Eucharist. Was it actually Christ's body and blood? In the thirteenth century, the fourth Lateran Council answered that question in the affirmative and the term
transubstantiation
entered the Christian lexicon. The council's conclusions followed from a long line of tradition still practiced in the Roman Catholic Church today. Christ's followers believed that those who consumed his flesh would receive grace and become united with him, and that the living bread of Christ would keep them supernaturally alive forever. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says in the Gospel of John. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die . . . the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

In the Roman Catholic tradition, “when a priest consecrates the elements of bread and wine, the accidents of bread remain the same but the substance is miraculously changed by the power of God into the body and blood of Christ,” writes historian of Christianity David Steinmetz. “The bread and wine still feel, smell, taste, and look like bread and wine, but appearances in this case are deceiving. The reality which is present is Christ himself.”

The nature of the Eucharist was central to Martin Luther's idea of church reform, and in the early sixteenth century he rejected the concept of transubstantiation. He argued that the church had invented transubstantiation to give priests the power to perform a miracle by changing bread into the substance of Christ. Yet, he also disagreed with other reformers who said Christ's substance was completely absent from the Eucharist and that bread and wine only symbolically represented Christ's body and blood.

Luther's compromise was a 1527 tract called
That These Words of Christ, “This Is My Body,” etc., Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics,
in which he argued for an idea that combined his own beliefs about the sacraments with a theory about the promises between God and men. According to Luther, in the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, God promises to be present for each of his children. “It is one thing if God is present, and another if he is present for you,” Luther wrote. “He is there for you when he adds his Word and binds himself saying, ‘Here you are to find me.' ” Those who follow the Lutheran doctrine believe that Christ was making a promise to his apostles when he said, “This is my body.” For Lutherans, this promise, or covenant, ran through Christ's apostles to all believers and bound them to a promise that they would remember him in return for his body.

In many ways, Lutherans tried to simplify the logic of the sacrament: here's what Christ said. We trust Christ. The rest is a mystery. For instance, Lutherans speak of “partaking” of Holy Communion because in doing so, Christians trust Christ's promise that their sins are forgiven. When Lutherans say it is a “means of grace” that God uses to pour out grace upon those who received the sacrament, they are alluding to Christ's exercise of grace in establishing the covenant with his followers to forgive all of man's sins.

This philosophy also informs the Lutheran understanding of the sacraments. The church reformers who crafted the Augsburg Confession, the sixteenth-century foundational document of the Lutheran Church, wrote that in “the Holy Supper the two essences, the natural bread and the true, natural body of Christ, are present together here on earth in the ordered action of the sacrament, though the union of the body and blood of Christ with the bread and wine is not a personal union, like that of the two natures of Christ, but a sacramental union.”

The wording “in, with, and under,” is crucial for Lutherans because the phrase means that the bread is simultaneously both bread and body, and that wine is both wine and blood.

 

IN GOERING'S CELL, GERECKE
reminded Goering of the church doctrines, emphasizing that only the truly penitent should partake. He had administered communion to Keitel, Ribbentrop, Sauckel, Raeder, Speer, Fritzsche, and Schirach because they had requested it and had suffered through a great deal of self-examination under Gerecke's guidance.

“Herr Reichsmarshal,” Gerecke said. “This is the way it is: Only those who believe that Jesus is really their savior, who believe in him who instituted the supper should be permitted to attend the Lord's Supper. The others are unfit.”

“I have never been refused the Lord's Supper by a German pastor,” Goering said. “Never.”

Gerecke had been afraid of this moment. A committed member of his congregation was asking for the most central sacrament of the church with his final wish. Yet Goering had just disparaged the foundations of the Christian faith. Gerecke knew Goering was, like Rosenberg,
Gottgläubig
. As a rationalist Goering wanted to go through the motions, believing none of the mysteries of the Church while retaining some insurance in case Christianity really represented the truth.

“I cannot with a clear conscience commune you because you deny the very Christ who instituted the sacrament,” Gerecke said. “You may be on the church roll, but you do not have faith in Christ and have not accepted him as your savior. Therefore, you are not a Christian, and as a Christian pastor I cannot commune you.”

Then Gerecke revealed his last card. “Herr Goering, your little girl said she wants to meet you in heaven.”

“Yes,” Goering said slowly. “She believes in your savior. But I don't. I'll just take my chances, my own way.”

Gerecke thought at that moment Goering would request a German pastor, but Goering said nothing more. Defeated, Gerecke left the cell and moved on.

Goering read in bed for thirty minutes before getting up and walking to the toilet in the corner of his cell, out of view of his guards. He urinated and then he sat back down on his bed to take off his boots and put on his slippers. He was agitated and restless. He picked up his book, walked to the table in his cell with it, and picked up his reading glasses and then put them down. He moved his suspenders and some writing utensils, placing them on a nearby chair.

At 9:15
P.M.
, Goering changed into his silk pajamas and got into bed, covering his chest with his hands. His left hand kept moving between his body and the cell wall while he massaged his forehead with his right hand. As usual, the prison lights were turned down at 9:30
P.M.
The cell lights dimmed and the overhead corridor lights were turned out.

At 10:40
P.M.
, Goering turned his head to the wall and lay that way for a few minutes. Then he placed his hands at his sides again, and clenched his jaw hard, breaking the glass vial of potassium cyanide he'd placed in his cheek moments before. His guard, Private Harold Johnson, saw Goering stiffen and make a blowing, choking sound through his lips. Goering began grabbing at his throat and gurgling.

The Cardinals had tied the Red Sox, and the chaplains and a handful of guards were waiting impatiently in the guard office for the next call when they heard Johnson's voice.

“Goering's having some kind of spell!” Johnson yelled. He began unbolting the door as the acrid smell of bitter almonds wafted out of the cell.

Gerecke and prison officer Lieutenant Norwood Croner arrived within seconds. The chaplain pushed past Johnson and moved toward the cot. Goering, froth coming from his mouth, was “gurgling into death,” Gerecke thought. His heart was still beating, but his eyes had rolled back in his head and the gurgling sound continued. His right arm dangled over the side of the cot. Gerecke picked up Goering's hand and felt for a pulse.

“Get the doctor, this man's dying!” Gerecke yelled at Croner.

Goering was turning green, and his gasping was growing fainter. His toes were beginning to curl toward the soles of his feet. Gerecke leaned down to Goering's ear. “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all our sins,” he said.

The prison doctor, a German POW named Ludwig Pfluecker arrived, and Gerecke stepped back to let him take Goering's pulse. It was fading.

“He's dying,” Pfluecker said.

He realized Goering was not having a heart attack, but had swallowed poison, something he had no experience dealing with. Pfluecker yelled for someone to wake Charles Roska, the prison's American doctor.