While the gallows were being built, drama unfolded in the prison. Göring had requested death by firing squad instead of hanging—to be hanged was something he considered beneath him. His plea was considered by the Allied Control Commission and rejected. The night before he was to be hanged, Göring swallowed a brass-and-glass vial of potassium cyanide that he had skillfully managed to keep hidden for eighteen months. In a suicide note, he explained how he had managed to keep the vial hidden from guards by alternating its hiding place, from his anus to his flabby navel. War crimes investigator
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