On November 20, 1945, one of the most important trials in history began: the Nuremberg Trials. Their purpose was to try Nazi leaders and, through the trials of each defendant, rewrite international law. The purpose of the Nuremberg Trials was not only to prosecute, but also to deliver true justice through a fair trial (with charges, defence, and sentences) and not through brutal summary executions, so as not to allow Nazi leaders to be seen as martyrs by the German people and international public opinion. All of this was heard and seen worldwide.

Among the twenty or so Third Reich leaders sitting in the dock, 11 would be sentenced to death, including the man who, upon Hitler's death, found himself the most important man in the Reich: Hermann Göring. A former war hero during World War I, later resurrected by Hitler, Hermann was a classic example of how a decorated soldier, hailed as a national hero for his military exploits, could fall into oblivion after the war, becoming a burden to society and then one of the cruellest and most authoritarian Nazi leaders.

Göring was the only Nazi leader on trial at Nuremberg (some feigned amnesia, others dejection and silence at the knowledge of defeat) to hold his own—through articulated and astute retorts and wordplay—against the pleadings of British, American, and Soviet lawyers, attracting the full attention of the media and the officers and lawyers present in the courtroom. This was called the "Göring Paradox": the only defendant capable of undermining a seemingly unrefutable system of accusations and raising further ethical (two atomic bombs on Japan, etc.), moral, and wartime questions that are invaluable in hindsight for attempting to draw that fine line between good and evil, between victors and vanquished, and between which of these two categories holds the presumptuous right to commit atrocities in the name of supposed peace or justice.

Göring, after nearly a year of trial and back-and-forth with Allied lawyers, failed to betray the man who had saved him from oblivion (Hitler), and, confessing himself a loyal follower of the regime, was sentenced to death. His final "trick" was to escape on his own terms, swallowing a cyanide capsule so as not to give the media the satisfaction of seeing him hanged publicly.