WWII vet tells tale
Debbie Pfeiffer Trunnell, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 04/23/2008 10:35:42 PM PDT
Photo Gallery: U.S. Army WWII vet, Herbert Stivers
It was going to be the secret he carried to his grave.
But about 15 years ago, World War II veteran Herbert Lee Stivers broke his silence when his daughter urged him to share his war experiences.
The Hesperia resident's shocking revelation: He believed he delivered the cyanide that war criminal Hermann Goering, second in command of the Third Reich, used to kill himself in his cell hours before he was due to hang for his crimes.
At the time, Stivers, now 81, was guarding prisoners at the Nuremberg Trials. "Without a shadow of a
Herbert Lee Stivers, 81, of Hesperia, a World War II veteran of the Army, speaks of his involvement as a guard in the courtroom and prison during the Nuremberg Trials in Germany, where high-ranking Nazi officials were tried as war criminals. He believes he delivered the cyanide Hermann Goering used to kill himself. (Eric Reed/Staff Photographer)
doubt, in my heart, I believe I delivered it," he said. "It was something I never forgot about, something I always thought about, a burden that I carried."
Stivers' story starts in the small Kentucky town where he spent his boyhood.
At 17, he joined the Army because he thought he was doing a patriotic deed for his country and would get special training.
After basic training, he was shipped overseas and ended up in Belgium with the 1st Infantry Division, 26th Regiment, Company D, also known as "The Big Red One."
He was soon fighting in freezing temperatures and snow in the Battle of the Bulge, the largest land battle of World War II.
"It was a time when we didn't have time to think," he said. "The enemy was confronting us, and guys by the hundreds were dropping dead all around me.
"We were digging fox holes while artillery shells hit the ground and bullets flew through the air."
When the battle ended, he and his fellow soldiers walked across Germany before receiving news on May 8, 1945, that the war was over.
"We rejoiced, but we felt more emotions when President Roosevelt died in April because he was like a father figure to us young soldiers," he said.
After the war, Stivers' Company D was assigned to serve as the honor guard at the Nuremberg Trials at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany.
He was a guard inside the courtroom as well as inside the prison, and guarded all 21 condemned Nazis as they awaited their fate for crimes against humanity.
His military papers and black-and-white pictures from the courtroom, showing the guards standing behind prisoners, prove he was indeed there, said his daughter.
Many of the prisoners spoke fluent English, and he engaged in conversations with them.
He especially remembers his talks with Goering.
"We never talked about the trial. We mostly talked about what a great pilot Charles Lindbergh was ... and baseball," he said.
It got to the point where he even felt sorry for the Nazi prisoner and took him candy bars.
A chance meeting with a girl named Mona, who was flirtatious and dressed like an American, led to his delivery of the cyanide, he said.
Initially she was interested in an autograph he had received from defendant Baldur von Schirach.
The next day, he met her and gave her an autograph from Goering. She then took him to a house, where there were two men named Erich and Mathias.
They said they were friends of the Goering family and that he was a sick man who was not getting the medication he needed. Initially, he took notes hidden by Erich in a fountain pen to Goering. But a
Stivers is pictured top right at the Nuremberg Trials. He believes he played a major role in the suicide of war criminal Hermann Goering, second in command of the Third Reich. (Eric Reed/Staff Photographer)
third time they put a capsule in the pen and he took it to Goering, who then took the capsule out of it.
Two weeks later, on Oct. 15, 1946, Goering was found dead of cyanide poisoning.
After Goering's death, Stivers and other guards were interrogated, but he never said a word.
Later, when he first told his story, he admitted that if he had known the capsule contained poison, he would never have done it.
"I was just this 19-year-old from the Kentucky hills who kind of felt sorry for the Nazis," he said.
Stivers is not the first to claim involvement in Goering's death. Several others have over the years.
Aaron Breitbart, senior researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said the only person who really knows who gave Goering the cyanide is the person who did it.
But Stivers' story is crazy enough to be true, Breitbart said.
"Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction," he said.
Stivers returned to Kentucky after the trials and got a job as a sheet metal worker, moving from town to town with his wife and nine children.
He didn't talk much about the war until his daughter, Linda Dadey of Hesperia, started asking him questions.
"He talked about the honor guard, and I thought it was interesting, but when he told me the cyanide story, I was blown away," she said.
At first she was reluctant to share his story with anyone, fearing that Stivers, then in his 70s, would be arrested.
But when a Los Angeles Times reporter showed an interest in 2005, Stivers told his story.
The article led to calls from media outlets all over the world.
Now that her dad is 81 - and because World War II veterans are dying at a rate of 2,000 a day - Dadey wanted him to tell his story one last time to a local newspaper.
Sharing the secret has brought relief and happiness to Stivers. "I believe to this day that I delivered the cyanide Goering used to commit suicide," he said. "And what meant more to me than any interviews was getting a letter from a young kid in Sydney, Australia, asking for my autograph."
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