Sentencing. Although everyone knows what the verdict will be (and the rationale for it will be much more important for the significance of the proceedings), tension is at a peak. All security precautions have been doubled. Every entrance and exit to the Fürth courthouse is being guarded by heavily armed units. Fürth’s Palace of Justice is bristling with weapons as a bulwark against an attack by unarmed, edematous Germans. The nucleus of the place, the small hearing room in the center of the gigantic hive, is full to capacity with VIPs from every faction. The accused are fetched from their cells individually and led in through a barred walkway like big cats into the caged ring of a big top. First comes Göring. He’s wearing the togs of demobbed camp kapos and Gestapos: a civilian jacket, jodhpurs, and high boots—but the jacket’s a festive silver-gray. The general field marshal’s trouser stripe on his jodhpurs is a bloody red. If it were not so full to bursting, his double-breasted jacket would look as elegant as a gigolo’s. His boots are as soft as a Krakowiak dancer’s. (Eerily enough, it’ll become the standard getup of the black marketeers who survived the death camps.) Göring enters the room as self-confidently as ever, emanating unmistakable irony. Relaxed and in mocking expectation, he looks toward the judicial bench across the room where Englishmen and Americans in carelessly donned robes, Frenchmen in the bat-wing sleeves of Daumier’s lawyers, and Russians in field jackets with epaulets stiff as ironingboards are staring at him as if he were a poisonous insect. Lord Justice Lawrence rises to read the sentence. Göring puts on the headphones that connect him to the glass-enclosed chatterbox of simultaneous interpreters. Lord Justice Lawrence reads a long, formulaic sentence that ends with the words “. . . condemned to death by hanging.” The last word “hanging” rings out in the deathly stillness like the crack of a whip. Göring shrugs his shoulders and points to the headphones. Some disturbance in the line: the sentence has not gotten through to him. One of the guards standing next to the defendants’ benches in a mirror-bright helmet and parade uniform hurries to fix the defect with his praetorian mitts sheathed in white cotton gloves. After some fumbling around he roughly prompts Göring to listen better through the headphones. Lord Justice Lawrence repeats the sentence. Again, the words “death by hanging” snap through the packed room where everyone is holding their breath, and Göring—by now obviously amused—again shrugs his shoulders: he still can’t hear anything. With a grin, he hands the headphones to the praetorian guard. The hulking fellow kneels down, red in the face, and fiddles with the cords under the bench, then gives the headphones back to the recalcitrant Göring, still deaf to his death sentence. For the third time, Justice Lawrence repeats the sentence, “. . . condemned to death by hanging.” Now Göring dispenses with his irony. The equipment is still not working and as a former pilot, he’s interested in finding the problem; he kneels down next to the perturbed guard and fiddles with the connections himself. As the nerves of all those present are just about to snap, with the patience of Job Lord Justice Lawrence reads once more, “. . . condemned to death by hanging!”—and behold, Göring’s intervention has worked. The connection is restored. The news has reached him, the headphones have functioned. And Göring beams. The news has reached him: “condemned to death by hanging!” He pulls off the headphones, slams them onto the bench, turns on his heel, and disappears down the walkway. Next, please.