In October 1946, Hermann Goering, Hitler’s deputy and one of the highest-ranking Nazi officials, died by suicide in his cell at Nuremberg Prison just hours before his scheduled execution by hanging. His death raised longstanding questions about how he procured the cyanide capsule that enabled him to avoid the gallows, generating intrigue and speculation that has persisted for more than eight decades.

Goering was a central figure in the Nazi regime, credited with founding the Gestapo, building the Luftwaffe, and orchestrating key elements of the Holocaust, including authorizing the "final solution to the Jewish question" in 1941. Following the conclusion of the International Military Tribunal, which prosecuted major war criminals, Goering was sentenced to death by hanging alongside ten others. However, shortly before the executions were to begin, he took his own life.

Historically, various theories have circulated regarding how Goering obtained the cyanide. Among the suspects were a U.S. Army guard named Herbert Lee Stivers, who claimed to have smuggled poison concealed in a fountain pen at the request of a German woman, and General Erich Bach-Zelewski, an imprisoned SS officer who asserted he passed Goering a capsule hidden in a bar of soap. Both accounts have been questioned due to credibility concerns and interpersonal animosities between the figures involved.

Recent research by author Paul Hooley presents a new perspective, implicating two respected British officers, Airey Neave and Wolfe Frank, in the chain of events leading to Goering’s access to cyanide. Neave, a former Colditz prisoner-of-war and later a prominent politician, and Frank, the British Army captain and chief interpreter at Nuremberg, were both tasked with informing the defendants of their charges. Frank, a German-born Jewish refugee and resistance member before joining the British Army, reportedly had unique access to Goering throughout the trials and later undertook operations to capture high-ranking Nazis.

Hooley uncovered testimony indicating that Goering’s possession of cyanide may have been facilitated with the implicit approval or knowledge of Allied personnel. A 2003 interview with Edwin Putzell, a former American OSS officer, claimed that the cyanide was provided to Goering on orders from OSS chief General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, with the agreement of British representatives, intending to secure his cooperation as a witness against other Nazi officials while offering him a measure of protection.

Theories suggest that Goering hoped to avoid hanging by cooperating with the Allies and requested the poison as an insurance policy should promises of leniency be broken. This scenario aligns with documented tensions between Donovan—who reportedly sought to use Goering as a star witness through plea bargaining—and the chief prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson, who favored a more document-based prosecution approach. Donovan and his aide Putzell were dismissed early in the trial, but British officers remained until its conclusion.

Frank’s later confessions to a woman close to him, revealed after his death in 1988, added another layer: he disclosed that a female concentration camp survivor, herself linked to a British war hero with Conservative Party connections, had passed the cyanide capsule to him, which he then provided to Goering. Hooley’s research has reportedly identified this woman and the circumstances of this transfer through newly available archival material.

Despite this emerging narrative, questions remain about the full extent of Allied complicity or strategy behind Goering’s suicide. The fact that Goering successfully concealed the capsule despite stringent prison searches, and the lack of intervention by those who might have known of his possession, has fueled speculation about a deliberate choice to allow the Reichsmarschall to dictate his own end. To his supporters, Goering’s death by suicide rather than hanging transformed him into a symbol and a martyr figure.

The mystery of how Hermann Goering obtained his cyanide capsule highlights the complex interplay of espionage, legal strategy, and moral ambiguity during the historic Nuremberg Trials, continuing to provoke debate and research into the final hours of the Third Reich’s leading figures.