Nuremburg executions

4,726 Views | 24 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by Ag_EQ12
lespaul
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As we all know, all the guilty Nazis practically begged for a firing squad. Instead, we hung them (except Goring who somehow got a poison pill when the firing squad request was denied). How this went is up for debate. If you look at some of the photos (Keitel especially), it is pretty brutal - lots of blood. It seems the floor door might've been too small and people might've hit their head on the way down (the door might've snapped back as well).

Also, the drop might not have been large enough and some might have slowly died without air as opposed to cracking their necks quickly. Of note is Streicher who dropped a 'heil hitler' during the process. Rumor is the executioner (John Woods) possibly adjusted the knot to assure payback for this (again, the facts are all fuzzy). At one point, he had to go to the hidden area under the trap door because you could hear moaning. People think he grabbed the hanging guy and pulled on him to expedite.

Sounds like John Woods was an interesting guy - how do you get that job? Ironically, he was electrocuted a few years later. His life would make an interesting movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Woods

Looking at the Keitel picture I am torn. On one hand, I say he was a Nazi and responsible for countless deaths so who cares how he died. On the other hand, I want to say America is better than this (which is why we had a trial in the first place) and we should've granted the firing squad request. What say you?

Note: the images below are of dead people and are graphic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_executions

http://www.historynet.com/hanging-offense-american-hangman-nuremberg.htm
Aggies Revenge
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If I had been on the selected firing squad, I probably would have dropped my shot just a little.

Just saying....
Aggies Revenge
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I seem to recall the origins of the firing squad being a military person paying for their crimes facing fire, thus somewhat honorable. Hanging was for common criminals. I cannot quote the source as I only saw it one time years ago and it came about during the American Revolution.
RPag
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With the benefit of over 70 years of hindsight, I don't think they should have been executed at all. Imagine the knowledge that could have been gained from a few more decades of interviews with these top Nazis. As for the trials themselves, I think it is agreed that they were, to some degree, sham trials. This is not to say that they were not guilty and possibly deserved death. Since you mention Keitel, he was the author of several orders in the East that led to the murder of millions of civilians and Soviet POWs. On thr other hand, the Soviets tried to accuse the defendants of the Katyn massacre; the murder of Polish officers by Soviet NKVD. I guess you can't expect pure justice from the Soviets.
The Original AG 76
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RPag said:

With the benefit of over 70 years of hindsight, I don't think they should have been executed at all. Imagine the knowledge that could have been gained from a few more decades of interviews with these top Nazis. As for the trials themselves, I think it is agreed that they were, to some degree, sham trials. This is not to say that they were not guilty and possibly deserved death. Since you mention Keitel, he was the author of several orders in the East that led to the murder of millions of civilians and Soviet POWs. On thr other hand, the Soviets tried to accuse the defendants of the Katyn massacre; the murder of Polish officers by Soviet NKVD. I guess you can't expect pure justice from the Soviets.
Sham trials !!!
Beg to differ with you on that ! They were actually very well done with very strict rules of evidence, cross examination , defendants rights, etc. The fact that many resulted in a less than death and even acquittal is proof of their legitimacy. The Us and Great Britain wanted these to be show trials upholding our traditions of fairness and devotion to LAW. There is absolutely no doubt that the death verdicts were fair by ANY examination of the trials. Their guilt in crimes against humanity was proven beyond ANY doubt. The truth is that we let thousands of guilty and deserving death nazis OFF , such as the SS commander at Malmedy , in order to begin the rebuilding of Germany.
The trials are one of the greatest shining examples of the western legal systems superiority and greatness. We should ALL be proud.
Regarding letting them live ? They were fully interrogated and really had no useful information. What possibly could be learned from Julius Streicher ? How too better write defamatory lies ! ( CNN has proven that you don't need a nazi to do that) What could Georing offer ? How to misuse a great air force and be a fat slovenly drug infested master of the hunt ? The General Staff officers already filled in the history books with their background info. German paper trails were fabulous. We really didn't need instructions of how to be a Prussian militarist.
They needed to die and the use of botched hanging is fitting. They forfeited their humanity in service to their god and HAD to pay. The Germans had to see the punishment as without ANY honor and as demeaning as possible. We were fighting an inbred master race theology that had to be shamed, denigrated, ridiculed and destroyed.
74OA
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Sham trials? The mountain of evidence offered at trial was overwhelming proof of their guilt and was presented in front of the world press for all to bear witness. Any remotely objective court on the planet would have convicted them.

As for the hangings, I've read that the executioner neglected to reweigh the condemned shortly beforehand and as some had apparently lost a lot of weight during their extended incarceration the rope length wasn't calculated correctly to cleanly snap their necks, leaving them to strangle.
SWCBonfire
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I believe that's the other way around - gaining weight requires you to shorten the rope needed to generate the force required to break their neck. Too long for too much weight and things get messy. I think there was an old west hanging that the prisoner gained too much weight and lost his head.
JABQ04
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SWCBonfire said:

I believe that's the other way around - gaining weight requires you to shorten the rope needed to generate the force required to break their neck. Too long for too much weight and things get messy. I think there was an old west hanging that the prisoner gained too much weight and lost his head.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Ketchum

Gruesome photo but this is the guy you're thinking of
dcbowers
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If you are going to label the Neurenberg Trials as a sham, please cite specific examples and details of the sham trials.
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JaneDoe02
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There's a lot of video out there of the trials. I have a distant relative that was executed after the war by hanging. I've seen video of his trial and it's eerie.

I'd like to think that the US took the high road and everything was done well. But he needed to die, one way or another.
cbr
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Sham you mean like saddam or bin Ladin? I mean who actually even knows if these bozos are actually even dead much less whether they had a real trial or confirmation of the body.
Rabid Cougar
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Yes Saddam is dead because the Iraqis botched his hanging. And OBL is sleeping with the fishes. Both got exactly what they deserved.
Stive
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cbr said:

Sham you mean like saddam or bin Ladin? I mean who actually even knows if these bozos are actually even dead much less whether they had a real trial or confirmation of the body.

Troll troll troll your boat, gently down the stream.....
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terata
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The verdicts were in before deliberations started.
Sapper Redux
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JJMt said:

Sham in the sense that what actual crime did they commit? What statute did they violate? We had to make up crimes in order to convict them.

I'm not saying that they weren't despicable scum that deserved death. However, we had to twist the rule of law beyond recognition in order to convict and execute them.


The scope of their crimes was also something unique in human history. It's a bit disingenuous to say they "made up crimes." They had to adapt the language and nature of the existing laws just to begin to encompass what had happened.
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Rabid Cougar
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coconutED
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dcbowers said:

If you are going to label the Neurenberg Trials as a sham, please cite specific examples and details of the sham trials.
Off the top of my head:

Julius Streicher: Convicted and hanged for writing a propaganda newspaper. Yes, it was vile, hateful stuff, but we supposedly believe in free speech...

Karl Donitz: Head of the German Navy; convicted and imprisoned for conducting submarine warfare in the exact same way as the US did with their subs.

Hjalmar Schacht: Involved in anti-Nazi resistance since before the war began and spent the last year of it in a concentration camp. Was rightly acquitted, but the fact that he was even arrested brought to trial reeks of victors' justice. If I were being cynical, I would say that he was put on trial so as to be a token acquittal.

In a more general sense, this is the trial from which the "I was following orders" defense gained notoriety. The casual dismissal of said defense without any consideration for what would have happened to those that disobeyed (and their families) is just flat out wrong.
RPag
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Germans were generally not punished for refusing to murder jews or commit other war crimes. For instance, although a huge majority of the SS engaged in the mass shootings and gassings, those few who refused were assigned different tasks. This is true as well for the few soldiers and chaplains who questioned the final solution in the East. In fact, I cannot think of an instance where soldier or a member of the SS was punished for refusing to kill unarmed civilians. Nor did any of the Nuremburg defendants from what I recall.
Sapper Redux
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The first amendment is not absolute. And Streicher was not just publishing his opinion in the open market but acting as a sanctioned propagandist for the Nazis. Donitz was not given any prison time for unrestricted submarine warfare because the tribunal recognized that the Allies had done the same. Of course Hjalmar Schacht was tried. He was a leading German official during Hitler's consolidation of power and helped engineer the Nazi economy. He was acquitted because of his actions and because of the evidence. But to suggest he was a token acquittal minimizes his role in the rise of the Third Reich.
Ag_EQ12
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Your characterization of Julius Streicher is a bit dismissive. Streicher was convicted and hanged for his central role in inciting the extermination of the Jewish people. Der Stuermer was hugely influential, particularly in the 1930s, in the marginalization and dehumanization of Jews in German society. Free speech generally doesn't cover inciting violence. The Tribunal basically considered him an accessory to murder.

Doenitz was not executed, though his case may have been one of the closest to victor's justice at Nuremberg.

Hjalmar Schacht is a bit more complicated than you let on. He supported Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933 and was part of Hitler's government from 1933-1939. Yes he was acquitted, but he also wasn't brought up on war crimes.

Nuremberg has a complicated legacy. Mostly from a legal standpoint - I doubt many would argue that justice was not served at Nuremberg. If anything, the trials were much too limited in scope. Men in their 90s are being tried today who would have never been brought to trial at Nuremberg. The vast majority of the perpetrators who survived the war most likely never brought to justice.

As RPag pointed out, there is no evidence that any German soldier was punished for not "following orders" in committing war crimes. Christopher Browning's book Ordinary Men covers this pretty well.
RPag
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Ag_EQ12 said:

Nuremberg has a complicated legacy. Mostly from a legal standpoint - I doubt many would argue that justice was not served at Nuremberg. If anything, the trials were much too limited in scope. Men in their 90s are being tried today who would have never been brought to trial at Nuremberg. The vast majority of the perpetrators who survived the war most likely never brought to justice.

Adding to this, men who were fundamentally involved in the Holocaust, people who shot thousands of jews face to face or forced them into the gas chambers or beat them to death in concentration camps, either served no jail time or were not given life sentences. Most were granted amnesty in the 1950s. 90% of the SS at Auschwitz were never charged. That is the shame of the West; an injustice that dwarfs whatever gains were made at Nuremburg.
VanZandt92
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Why in the world would we grant their request?
coupland boy
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Quote:


Adding to this, men who were fundamentally involved in the Holocaust, people who shot thousands of jews face to face or forced them into the gas chambers or beat them to death in concentration camps, either served no jail time or were not given life sentences. Most were granted amnesty in the 1950s. 90% of the SS at Auschwitz were never charged. That is the shame of the West; an injustice that dwarfs whatever gains were made at Nuremburg.


I suspect if the cold war hadn't taken up our resources and attention we could have pursued this better.
Ag_EQ12
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coupland boy said:

Quote:


Adding to this, men who were fundamentally involved in the Holocaust, people who shot thousands of jews face to face or forced them into the gas chambers or beat them to death in concentration camps, either served no jail time or were not given life sentences. Most were granted amnesty in the 1950s. 90% of the SS at Auschwitz were never charged. That is the shame of the West; an injustice that dwarfs whatever gains were made at Nuremburg.


I suspect if the cold war hadn't taken up our resources and attention we could have pursued this better.
I think the Allies pursued it about as much as they wanted in the immediate postwar period. They were generally satisfied with how justice was carried out.

There are a number of reasons the Western Allies only dealt with the very top of the Nazi hierarchy. First and foremost was that they needed experienced German bureaucrats to run the city and state governments. If they went after every Nazi, there wouldn't be many left who had any administrative experience. Also, what to do with all those who perpetrated crimes? Massive prisons? That would make for a long and manpower intensive occupation. Their answer was a combination of high profile trials (Nuremberg) and a process known as Denazification.

Denazification basically involved people who had been involved with the Nazi regime and/or party going before a review board and proving their innocence. They were required to provide statements about what they did during the regime and if they could get statements from people who could corroborate their story. There were 5 categories 1. Major offender, 2. Offender, 3. Lesser offender, 4. Followers, 5. Persons exonerated. Only the first 2 carried any jail time. Only about 10% were in the first 2 categories. It was a whitewashing of German society - people would vouch for one another and true war criminals probably slipped through the cracks. Plus the committees were locally run by Germans (with oversight by the Occupation Authorities) so they were essentially judging themselves. But it did allow the Allies to say they had dealt with Nazism and West Germany could move on.

In the end the Allies had to build a viable postwar German state. They needed the expertise and experience of the thousands of former Nazi government bureaucrats to run things. Denazification, unlike the similar process in postwar Iraq, may have been a travesty of justice, but it did provide a foundation for a viable, democratic West German state after the war. Postwar West Germany was one of the most successful post-conflict state reconstruction efforts every undertaken by the US (Japan is the other).

The Cold War played a major role in the rehabilitation of the German soldier after 1945. For the most part the US wasn't concerned with a West German defense contribution until around 1950 with the advent of the Korean War. Then the US started making a serious effort to rehabilitate the German soldier - Eisenhower went so far as to say that the German soldier in WWII just fighting for his country, just like all the other soldiers in the war. We needed a West German road block in the event of a war with the Soviet Union so by 1955 West German was a sovereign state and a member of NATO. Quite the turnaround in just 10 years.
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