On the night of October 16, 1946, the execution of former leaders of the Third Reich, sentenced to death by the International Nuremberg Tribunal, took place in Germany. The Minister of Foreign Affairs ended up on the gallows, hastily cobbled together in the gymnasium of Nuremberg prison. Joachim von Ribbentrop; Head of the Main Directorate of Reich Security of the SS Ernst Kaltenbrunner; Chief of Staff of the Operational Command of the Wehrmacht High Command, Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories Alfred Rosenberg; Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht High Command Wilhelm Keitel; Governor General of Occupied Poland Hans Frank; Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia Wilhelm Frick; labor commissioner Fritz Sauckel; Gauleiter of Franconia Julius Streicher; Reich Commissioner of the Netherlands Arthur Seyss-Inquart.
In total, there were 12 names on the list of those sentenced to hang, but Martin Bormann, who managed to escape, was sentenced in absentia. Shortly before his execution, Hermann Goering committed suicide. Hearing the verdict in the courtroom, Goering said through clenched teeth: “Reichsmarshals are not hanged.” Two days before the execution, “Nazi number two” filed a petition to replace the shameful hanging with execution, but it was not granted.
The remaining 10 condemned were awakened at midnight, after which the warden, Colonel Andrews, read the sentence to each in the presence of a priest, and the execution began. The prison was located in the US occupation zone, so the executioners were chosen from among the American military. They were professional executioner John Woods and volunteer Joseph Malta. They built three gallows, but used two - while one was being hanged, the other was being taken down.
Accompanied by a convoy, each climbed the 13 steps of the scaffold with his hands tied behind his back. Woods threw a bag and his famous 13-knot noose over the condemned man's head, the priest read a prayer, and the criminal was asked to say the last word. The first was Ribbentrop: “God bless Germany! Have mercy on my soul! The defendants behaved with dignity. True, according to the former personal guard of Roman Rudenko (the main prosecutor from the USSR), Joseph Hoffman, everyone except Streicher, who had to be forcibly dragged to the scaffold.
“Two million of my soldiers died for their fatherland. I follow my sons. Thank you!" - said Keitel. “Now to God! The Bolsheviks will hang you too someday. Adele, my unfortunate wife,” said Streicher.
Either the executioners made a mistake, or did it on purpose, but the length of the ropes was incorrectly calculated. Falling into a cell fenced off on all sides under a scaffold with a noose around their necks, the convicts died not from broken cervical vertebrae, but from suffocation. In addition, the hole into which the hanged men fell was made too narrow. This explains the wounds on Keitel’s face, which can be seen in post-mortem photographs - falling, he severely hurt his head. There is evidence that Ribbentrop died for 10 minutes, Jodl for 18, Keitel for 24, and Streicher’s executioners actually had to strangle him - he was dying for too long.
On the first row from left to right: Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Keitel. On the second row: Doenitz, Raeder, Schirach and Sauckel. Photo: wikipedia.org
The execution was watched by 42 people: priests, military, doctors, journalists. The wives of the convicts were ordered to leave Nuremberg on September 29. When it was all over, a stretcher with Goering's body was brought into the hall. The hanged were examined by representatives of the allied countries, then they were photographed and placed in coffins - with a rope and a prison mattress. The secret cargo was transported for cremation to the Eastern Cemetery of Munich. According to other sources, the coffins were burned in the ovens of the Dachau concentration camp. On October 18, the ashes were scattered from the plane.
Woods carried out many more executions at Nuremberg and later in Japan. He returned to America as a hero and loved to talk about his work in Germany. In 1950, he died from electric shock while fixing the wiring in his house.
“I thought that the executioner was a ferocious, evil person,” Hoffman said in an interview with the Ukrainian portal Fakty. “And Woodd seemed kind-hearted to me.” He’s so healthy, his hands are strong, like a peasant’s. He said that he doesn’t have nerves, and with his work you can’t have them. At home in San Antonio, he carried out 347 death sentences against murderers and rapists. John Woodd really liked my red star on my cap. I gave it to him as a souvenir. Suddenly I see: he takes off his Swiss watch! I was stunned and began to refuse. John doesn’t mind: take it, otherwise I’ll be offended. I still have them."
During World War II, Nuremberg, which housed German military factories, was subjected to fierce bombing by British and American troops. During the most massive attack on January 2, 1945, 6,000 explosive bombs and a million incendiary bombs were dropped on the city. 2,000 people died and the old city was virtually destroyed. Nuremberg was occupied by American troops from April 1945 until 1949.
Mass psychosis
You may ask, what happened to the rest of the criminals? International tribunal sentences “Nazi number three” to life imprisonment Rudolf Hess, German Minister of Economics Walter Funk and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, by the age of 20 – Gauleiter of Vienna Baldur von Schirach and Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production Albert Speer. Diplomat and former Foreign Minister sentenced to 15 years Constantin von Neurath, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, who took the place of the President after the death of Hitler, Karl Doenitz- to 10 years in prison. Official of the Goebbels Ministry of Public Education and Propaganda Hans Fritsche, diplomat Franz von Papen and economist Yalmar Shakht were acquitted, despite the protest of the Soviet side, but were soon convicted by the denazification commission.
After the Nuremberg Tribunal, there were 12 more smaller-scale Nazi trials, including the Doctors' Trial, which tried Hertha Oberhäuser And Carl Gerbhardt. Many high-ranking officials of the Third Reich chose to commit suicide, taking their wives and children to the next world.
Among them was Adolf Gitler, committed suicide in a bunker under the Reich Chancellery with Eva Braun on April 30, 1945. The Fuhrer's greatest fear was that he would be euthanized with gas shells and taken to Moscow. Hitler ordered that the corpses then be taken out into the street, doused with gasoline and burned.
Nuremberg prison and Spandau prison, where Hess served his sentence.
On May 1, six children of the German Reich Minister of Public Education and Propaganda were killed. Joseph Goebbels: Heidruna, Hedwig, Holdina, Hildegard, Helga and Helmut. At that time they were from 5 to 13 years old. And a little later, the parents also committed suicide. This happened in the same “Führerbunker”.
Head of the German Labor Front Robert Ley committed suicide in Nuremberg prison before trial. In conversations with a prison psychologist, he admitted that he did not know about the crimes he was accused of and could no longer bear the feeling of shame. After this incident, surveillance of the prison inmate became around the clock (which, however, did not prevent Goering from passing away).
The fate of the Fuhrer's personal secretary Martin Borman unknown for certain. It is believed that soon after Hitler's death he followed suit. Bormann's remains were found in 1972.
The Reichsführer SS also committed suicide Heinrich Himmler, who tried to escape with someone else’s documents, but was arrested by two Russian soldiers - Vasily Gubarev and Ivan Sidorov. In May 1945, the head of the Office of the Head of the NSDAP committed suicide Philip Bowler and his wife.
Kukryniksy. Process. 1946
After the defeat of the Third Reich became obvious, a wave of suicides swept across the country - and not only among the top management. The most massive suicide in the history of the country was the suicide of residents of the town of Demmin in northeastern Germany, bordered by the rivers Peene and Tollensee. The madness began after Soviet troops approached the city. German authorities ordered the bridges to be blown up, and the residents were trapped. According to various sources, from 700 to 1,500 people committed suicide in a few days. Clearing the city of corpses continued from May to July 1945.
“There were corpses everywhere,” recalls eyewitness Karl Schlesser in an interview Deutsche Welle. “We, hungry kids, snooped around everywhere to steal something to eat, and saw bodies floating along the river.”
Accurate statistics on such cases have not been preserved; Germany had no time for that. It is believed that in 1945, 7,000 such deaths were recorded in Berlin alone, and between 10 and 100 thousand throughout the country.
What happened to Muller, Mengele and others
But even now not all the “big” names have been named. What happened to Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, the sadist “Doctor” Mengele, SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann and his comrade-in-arms Alois Brunner?
Adolf Eichmann , who today bears almost the main blame for the extermination of the Jews, fled to Argentina in 1950, and in ’52 he returned to Europe under an assumed name, married his own wife and took his family to Buenos Aires. However, in 1960, Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence; the tracking and capture operation was personally led by the head of the Mossad, Isser Harel. Nicholas Eichmann did a disservice to his father by boasting to the girl that his father had succeeded in the service of the Third Reich. The girl told her father about this, who realized what kind of Eichmann it could be and reported this to the appropriate place. Adolf Eichmann was brought to Israel, found guilty on 15 counts and sentenced to death. On the night of June 1, 1962, he was hanged. Eichmann's ashes were scattered over the Mediterranean Sea outside Israeli territorial waters.
Eichmann's comrade-in-arms hid in Syria until the end of his days. After the war, the former head of the SS special forces responsible for the deportation of Jews from Vienna, Berlin, Greece, France and Slovakia to death camps, hid under an assumed name. In 1954, he fled to Syria, where he collaborated with the Syrian intelligence services and, according to some sources, was involved in training armed units of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The Mossad tried more than once to destroy Brunner - when he received the bombed packages, he lost an eye and four fingers. In 1985, in an interview with a German newspaper, Brunner said that he was ready to appear before a tribunal, but not before an Israeli court. “I don’t want to become another Eichmann,” he said. The Syrian government has never confirmed the presence of a fugitive Nazi criminal in the country. There is no reliable information about when and where he died. According to some sources, this happened in 1996, according to others - in 2010.
The fate of the Gestapo chief is mysterious Heinrich Müller . The circumstances of his life after April 29, 1945, when he interrogated SS Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein in the “Hitler bunker,” are not precisely known. In August 1945, on the territory of the German Aviation Ministry, a corpse was found in a general’s uniform, with an identity card and a photograph of Müller. Of course, it was not him, as scientists later proved. There is a version according to which Muller was recruited by the NKVD and lived in Russia until his death in 1948. According to another version, the former secret police leaders were recruited by the CIA, and he died in the United States. It was believed that he was hiding in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, and Bolivia.
In 2013, Johannes Tuchel, a professor at the University of Berlin and director of the German Resistance Memorial, told the newspaper Bild about his investigation, the results of which coincide with the official version of the CIA. According to Tuchel, Müller died in the Reich Chancellery building in Berlin in 1945 and was buried in a mass grave in the Jewish cemetery.
Head of Foreign Intelligence of the Security Service (at the end of the war - head of military intelligence of the Third Reich) Walter Schellenberg from May 3, 1945 he lived in Sweden, but the allied countries achieved his extradition. Schellenberg stood trial in the last, 12th trial that followed the Nuremberg Tribunal. This was the Wilhelmstrasse affair, the affair of major officials, heads of ministries and departments in Germany. Schellenberg was acquitted on all counts except membership in criminal organizations. On April 11, 1949, he was sentenced to six years in prison, but was released in 1950 due to poor health. After this, Walter Schellenberg lived in Switzerland and Italy, and died at the age of 43 in a Turin hospital from illness.
Amazingly, the man who personified the inhumane experiments on concentration camp prisoners - Joseph Mengele - lived calmly to old age and died at sea from a heart attack. After the surrender of Germany, Mengele’s disgust played into his hands. At one time, the “Angel of Death” (as the prisoners of Auschwitz called him) did not get an SS tattoo, which helped him hide in the country until 1949. Then he fled to Argentina, lived in Brazil and Paraguay. The doctor was afraid for good reason - the Mossad was really hunting him, but they could not find the criminal. Mengele ended his days in the Brazilian town of Candido Godoi and died in 1979 while swimming in the sea, leaving behind a mystery. According to some researchers, the Nazi conducted experiments on artificial insemination among Brazilian women, which is associated with the surprisingly frequent births of twins.
Note that after the Second World War, such a phenomenon as “Nazi hunters” appeared in the world. These people were searching for escaped figures of the Third Reich and actively collaborated with the Mossad, as a result of this cooperation Adolf Eichmann was captured.
Maria Al-Salkhani
On January 5, 1946, a public execution took place in our city. The only one on the banks of the Neva in the entire 20th century. On the current Kalinin Square, not far from the place where the Gigant cinema stood, and now there is the Gigant Hall concert hall, eight German war criminals, who committed their atrocities mainly in the Pskov region, were hanged.
The Germans held on bravely
In the morning of that day, almost the entire square was filled with people. This is how one of the eyewitnesses describes what he saw: “The cars, in the backs of which there were Germans, drove in reverse under the gallows. Our guard soldiers deftly, but without haste, put the nooses around their necks. The cars slowly drove forward. The Nazis swayed in the air. The people began to disperse, and a guard was posted at the gallows.”
The newspapers didn’t write about where and when the execution would take place and they didn’t talk about it on the radio,” People’s Artist of Russia Ivan Krasko recalled in a conversation with Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondents. - But thanks to rumors, Leningraders knew everything. I was fifteen years old at the time, and this sight attracted me. They brought criminals, people gathered in the square shouted curses at them - many of them had loved ones killed by the Nazis. I was amazed that the Germans behaved courageously. Only one began to scream heart-rendingly before execution. Another tried to calm him down, and the third looked at them with undisguised contempt.
But when the support was knocked out from under the feet of the executed, the mood of the crowd changed, continues Ivan Ivanovich. - Some seemed numb, some lowered their heads, some fainted. I also felt unwell, I quickly left the square and went home. What I saw then will be remembered for the rest of my life. And even now, when some movie shows an execution, I turn off the TV.
And here’s what siege survivor Nina Yarovtseva, who lived near Kalinin Square in 1946, remembers:
On the day this happened, my mother had a shift at the plant. But Aunt Tanya, our neighbor, went to watch the execution and took me with her. I was eleven years old then. We arrived early, but there were a lot of people. I remember the crowd making a strange noise, as if everyone was worried for some reason. When the truck with the gallows drove off, the Germans hung and fluttered, for some reason I suddenly got scared and hid behind Aunt Tanya. Although she hated the Nazis terribly and throughout the war she wanted them all to be killed. Having found out where we were, my mother attacked Aunt Tanya: “Why did you drag the child there?!” If you like it, see for yourself!” Then for several nights in a row I hardly slept: I had nightmares and woke up. A few years later, my mother admitted that she dripped valerian into my tea in the evenings.
Interesting detail. According to one of the eyewitnesses, when the sentry was removed from the square, unknown persons removed the boots from the hanged men.
An eye for an eye?
On April 19, 1943, when a turning point was outlined in the course of the Great Patriotic War, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR appeared with a long title “On punitive measures for Nazi villains guilty of murder and torture of the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices." According to the decree, “fascist villains convicted of murdering and torturing civilians and captured Red Army soldiers, as well as spies and traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens, are punishable by death by hanging.” And further: “The execution of sentences should be carried out publicly, in front of the people, and the bodies of those hanged should be left on the gallows for several days, so that everyone knows how they are punished and what retribution will befall anyone who commits violence and reprisals against the civilian population and who betrays their homeland "
The essence of the decree is to treat the fascists the way they treat our people, says Viktor Ivanov, professor at the Institute of History of St. Petersburg State University. “It was reminiscent of revenge, but in the harsh conditions of wartime, such a position of the Soviet authorities was completely justified.
Although there are some nuances here. According to the professor, the German invaders publicly executed the partisans and those who helped them. However, from the point of view of international law, partisans, in modern terms, are illegal armed groups. As for captured Red Army soldiers, they were usually not killed, although many died from hunger, disease, and unbearable working conditions. The German command believed that they did not exist, because, unlike Germany, the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention of 1929, regulating how prisoners of war should be treated. Joseph Stalin is credited with the following phrase: “We have no prisoners, but only traitors and traitors to the motherland.” Therefore, the Nazis treated the captured British, Americans and French more humanely than Soviet citizens.
Understanding all this, the Soviet authorities sought to ensure that people who had not committed serious crimes did not fall under the decree: enemy soldiers and officers who were only fulfilling their military duty, says Viktor Ivanov. - Investigators, prosecutors, judges have been instructed to prepare these trials very carefully.
After the decree was issued, Smersh investigators began working in the liberated territories. They tried to identify the perpetrators of terrible crimes. Then this information was sent to the camps where German prisoners of war were held. The suspects were detained.
During the preparation of the Leningrad trial, more than a hundred witnesses from among Soviet citizens were questioned, but only eighteen were summoned to court, the professor emphasizes. - Only those whose testimony did not raise any doubts.
Why did the trial take place in Leningrad, although from a legal point of view it should have been held in Pskov? After all, the defendants mainly committed their atrocities on the territory of this region.
Apparently, the goal was to show Leningraders firsthand who was the cause of their incredible suffering during the siege, says Viktor Ivanov.
Among the defendants was Major General
St. Petersburg residents are well aware of the Vyborg Palace of Culture, located not far from the Finlyandsky Station, where, in particular, theater troupes touring our city show performances. This building was built in 1927, on the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. It was here that the trial of eleven German war criminals began at the end of December 1945.
The trial was widely covered in newspapers. For example, large materials appeared in Leningradskaya Pravda every day, including January 1. There was a translator in the hall, a German by nationality. He gave a receipt that he would translate from Russian into German and vice versa with utmost accuracy.
The most prominent figure among them was Major General Heinrich Remlinger, who was 63 years old at the time of his execution. His military career began in 1902. He was the military commandant of Pskov and at the same time supervised the district commandant’s offices subordinate to him, as well as “special purpose units.” In February 1945 he was captured.
The materials of the trial proved that Remlinger organized fourteen punitive expeditions, during which several villages were burned and about eight thousand people were killed, mostly women and children, says Doctor of Historical Sciences Nikita Lomagin.
During the court hearings, the major general tried to justify himself by saying that he was only following the orders of his superiors.
Among the defendants was 26-year-old Chief Corporal Erwin Skotki. A native of the city of Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, the son of a policeman, a member of Hitler's Youth Union since 1935.
At the initial stage of the Great Patriotic War, Skotki was involved in issuing uniforms to military personnel of one of the Wehrmacht units, says Viktor Ivanov. - However, he was not satisfied with the small salary: not everyone knows this, but during the war, German soldiers received a salary in hand. And then he was offered a promotion and a higher salary, but in a punitive detachment. Skotki agreed without hesitation. At the trial, he pretended to be a fool: he didn’t know that he would have to burn villages and shoot people. Allegedly he thought that he would only guard cargo and prisoners of war. Skotki was identified by several witnesses at once.
Let us note that the three defendants managed to avoid the gallows. Their guilt was not so great, and therefore they received various terms of hard labor.
The death penalty was abolished
In 1945-1946, trials of war criminals followed by public executions took place in various regions of the country - in Crimea, Krasnodar Territory, Ukraine, Belarus. 88 people were hanged, eighteen of them were generals. Work to identify such criminals continued in the future, but they soon stopped executing convicts.
The fact is that in May 1947, the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the abolition of the death penalty” was published. Paragraph 2 read: “for crimes punishable by death penalty under current laws, imprisonment in forced labor camps for a period of 25 years shall be applied in peacetime.”
An interesting fact: after the end of the Great Patriotic War, there were 66 thousand German prisoners of war on the territory of our city and region. Almost 59 thousand of them subsequently returned to their homeland.
BY THE WAY
In addition to the fascist invaders, terrible atrocities were committed in the Leningrad region by traitors who came over to their side. In the forties, fifties and even sixties, trials of these people took place in various cities in the region. As a rule, they were sentenced to long prison terms. There were no cases of public executions.
In June 1970, in Leningrad, if not the very first, then one of the first attempts to hijack an airplane abroad was made. She was unsuccessful. One of those convicted in this case, Eduard Kuznetsov, subsequently wrote the book “Step to the Left, Step to the Right.” The author recalls that in the camps he met people who were serving sentences for collaborating with the occupiers. According to Kuznetsov, they all unanimously denied that they had participated in terrible actions against civilians.
OPINION OF A PSYCHOLOGIST
Dangerous sight
Such a crowd instinct is a kind of atavism, a relic deeply rooted in our nature, says psychologist Evgeniy Krainev. “But if after such a spectacle you conduct a survey among the “spectators,” very few will say that they experienced positive emotions. Most simply tickle their nerves, people try in such a strange way to suppress the fear of death in their souls. In any case, this does not bring anything positive either for an individual person or for the crowd. Such spectacles are especially dangerous for children and teenagers. Even in the case when fair punishment overtakes the obviously guilty.
WHAT ABOUT THEM?
There are still public executions around the world.
In the twentieth century, more and more countries began to abandon the death penalty. Today this penalty is not applied in 130 states. However, there are 68 countries in the world that retain the death penalty. In some of them, people are still being killed in public. These are, in particular, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, North Korea, Somalia.
Execution of German war criminals in Leningrad in 1946.
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With the Nazis coming to power in Germany, their new fascist ideology was reinforced by official legislation. The criminal law was constantly changing in the direction of increasing repression and expanding the offenses punishable by death, especially on racial, political and religious grounds.
So the atrocities of the fascists during the Second World War were placed on an ideological and legislative basis. And the concentration camps they organized became real death factories. For example, on some days from 10 to 12 thousand people were exterminated in Auschwitz. They were shot, killed using the poisonous gas “Cyclone-5” in gas chambers and destroyed in other ways. The corpses were burned in crematoria that worked day and night. The Nazis did not even spare children. Former prisoner Yanov Gerron said at the Nuremberg trials: “In July 1943, 164 boys were selected from the Birkenau camp and taken to the hospital, where they were all killed using carboxylic acid injections into the heart!”
In the occupied territories, the Nazis used a technique popular in the Ancient World, when conquerors ensured their immunity with the lives of hostages. And if this did not help, then in retaliation for the attack, a massacre of local residents was simply carried out. Sometimes entire settlements were subjected to reprisals.
For example, on October 21, 1941, 2,300 residents of Kragujevic were executed by the Nazis for attacks by Yugoslav partisans.
On May 27, 1942, the chief of the SS, the “Imperial Protector” of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed “The Hanged Man,” was killed. In retaliation, by personal order of Hitler, hundreds of members of the Czechoslovak resistance were shot and two settlements were destroyed - Lidice and Lezaki, in which all the inhabitants were killed.
But the Nazis committed especially atrocities in the occupied territories of the USSR. In the village of Pochinok, the Germans drove all the old people and children into the collective farm boardroom, closed the doors and burned everyone. On August 29, 1941, about 11 thousand people were executed by the Nazis in Kamenets-Podolsk. On October 27, 1941, in the Lithuanian city of Kovno, the Nazis executed 9 thousand people, including more than 4 thousand children. They carried out a terrible massacre of the population of captured Kyiv, where they killed 52 thousand people.
For the mass extermination of people in fascist camps and prisons, the Nazis used both wild medieval executions and torture, and the latest inventions for killing people.
Here are just a few examples of their recreations of medieval executions:
Boiled alive. In 1943, at the Treblinka concentration camp, the Nazis threw two tied up girls accused of participating in the Resistance into barrels filled with water and lit fires around them.
Burning alive. In the village of Donets, Oryol region, the Nazis, having tied up 17-year-old Nadezhda Maltseva, ordered her mother, Maria Maltseva, to cover her daughter with straw and set her on fire. The mother fainted. Then the Nazis themselves covered the girl with straw and set her on fire. The mother, who woke up from fainting, rushed into the fire and pulled her daughter out of it. The Nazis killed the mother with a butt blow, and shot the daughter and threw her into the fire.
Tearing apart. If in France the murderers of kings were torn to pieces with the help of horses, then the Nazis did this with captured Soviet soldiers with the help of tanks.
Pouring cold water in the cold. This is exactly how the Nazis executed the Soviet General Karbyshev.
Guillotining. Although the guillotine was already a thing of the past throughout the rest of Europe, in Nazi Germany it was experiencing its second youth. About 40 thousand people were beheaded in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945.
The guillotine was used especially often in the Berlin prison of Plötzensee. There she beheaded the Czech writer Julius Fucik, the author of “Report with a Noose Around the Neck,” the Russian princess, heroine of the Resistance Movement in France Vera Obolenskaya and the Tatar Soviet poet and underground fighter Moussa Jalill.
The massacre, outrageous in its medieval cruelty, took place in the small Hungarian village of Verebe. The Nazis occupied the village, captured the inhabitants, brought them to the forge and began to torture them - they pulled out their nails with pliers, broke their ribs, burned them with a hot iron. And then, one by one, they dragged him to the anvil, placed the head of their victim on it and smashed the skull with a sledgehammer.
The documents available at the Nuremberg Tribunal mentioned the fact that Nazi punitive forces sawed up 918 people in the occupied territories of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
However, individual executions required time and effort. The Nazis, considering themselves a superior race, constantly tried to create new types of mass executions.
For the disabled and mentally ill, they created an entire euthanasia program “T-4” (“Action Tiergartenstrasse 4”) to kill them. It was enough for a person to be ill for more than five years, and he already became an object for this death program. But the Nazis considered gas chambers to be the most effective murder weapon, and therefore used them widely. For example, on October 25, 1943 alone, about two thousand Greek women were executed by the Nazis in the gas chamber of Auschwitz.
The German Nazis also looked for new colors in old executions. The good old hanging seemed too “bland” to them. Unlike traditional hanging, when the condemned man fell in a noose under the influence of his own weight, the Nazis pulled the condemned up, doing work against the direction of gravity. Instead of a quick fracture of the cervical vertebrae and larynx, they were slowly broken out of the spine. This is how 31 members of the intelligence network operating in the interests of the Soviet Union and known as the “Red Chapel” were executed.
Subsequently, the Nazis further improved the method of hanging. Instead of ropes, they began using thick metal piano strings. This increased the suffering of their victims. This is how eight German officers who tried to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944 were executed.
In the end, retribution overtook the leaders of Nazi Germany. According to the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal, they were also hanged. True, on ropes and in the traditional “humane” way.
Prison in Nuremberg, Germany
October 1, 1946 The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, after 216 sessions, sentenced the main Nazi criminals. Of the 24 defendants, 12, including M. Bormann, who was tried in absentia, were sentenced to hang. The editor-in-chief of the Hearst concern, G. Kingsbury Smith, represented the American press there.
2 hours before his execution, in an effort to avoid the gallows, Hermann Wilhelm Goering, man No. 2 in the Nazi hierarchy, took potassium cyanide hidden in a copper cartridge in his cell. The gallows were placed in a small but well-lit hall in the prison yard.
Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, went first in Göring's place. 2 hours later, the last to pass away was Arthur Seys-Inquart, the former Gauleiter of Holland and Austria. Hanged between these once all-powerful bosses were Field Marshal William Keitel, former chief of the secret police Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the main distributor of Nazi culture in other countries Alfred Rosenberg, Gauleiter of Poland Hans Frank, Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, head of the department involved in the enslavement of people Fritz Sauckel, Colonel General Alfred Jodl and the main engine of anti-Semitism in Hitler's Reich, Julius Streicher.
Going to the gallows, most of them tried to appear brave. Some behaved defiantly, others resigned themselves to their fate, but there were also those who cried out for God's mercy. All but Rosenberg made short statements at the last minute. And only Julius Streicher mentioned Hitler. In the gym, where American guards were playing basketball just 3 days ago, there were three black gallows, two of which were used. They hanged one at a time, but in order to finish it quickly, the next Nazi was brought into the hall while the previous one was still hanging on the gallows.
The leaders of Hitler's thousand-year-old Reich climbed 13 wooden steps to an 8-foot-high platform. Ropes hung from beams supported by two posts. The hanged man fell into the interior of the gallows, the bottom of which was covered with dark curtains on one side and covered with wood on three sides so that no one could see the death throes of the hanged.
Von Ribbentrop entered the hall at 1:11 a.m. Nuremberg time. Two American sergeants held his hands, while a third removed the handcuffs and replaced them with a leather belt. At first they thought to allow the condemned to go to the gallows with their hands untied, but after Goering’s suicide, everyone was handcuffed. Von Ribbentrop stood stoically, walking evenly between the two guards, but did not answer the question about his name. When asked again, he almost shouted his name. After that, without thinking, he climbed the steps, and with his characteristic arrogance, with high
with his head raised and his teeth clenched, he turned to the witnesses. In the last word he
he said in German: “God protect Germany.” And then he asked: “Can I do something else?
add?" The translator nodded and the former diplomatic wizard of the Nazi kingdom loudly and firmly said his last words: “My last wish is that Germany becomes united and that mutual understanding is established between the West and the East. I wish peace in the world." When the black hood was placed over his head, he continued to look straight ahead.
Field Marshal Keitel, who immediately followed Ribbentrop, was the first military man to be executed according to the new concept of international law: a professional military man cannot escape punishment for unleashed aggression and war crimes against humanity, citing the fact that he was only following the orders of his superiors. Keitel entered the hall 2 minutes after the execution of Ribbentrop, who was still hanging on the gallows. Holding his head high, marching with military bearing, he walked towards the gallows. The person asked said his name and climbed onto the platform without the help of guards, as if on a podium for receiving a parade. Turning to the crowd, he looked at the people with the brazen arrogance of a Prussian officer: “I call upon Almighty God to show pity on the German people. More than 2 million German soldiers died for the fatherland before me. I follow my sons. Everything for Germany!” After the uniformed body fell into the hole, witnesses agreed that Keitel showed more courage on the gallows than in court, where he tried to blame everything on Hitler, arguing that he was only following orders and was not responsible for it.
After this a break was announced. Officers and soldiers walked around nervously and talked quietly, while correspondents feverishly scribbled in their notebooks. A few minutes later, military doctors from the United States and Russia with stethoscopes disappeared inside the first gallows. At 1:30 both came out and the American colonel announced to the official witnesses: “They are dead.” Ribbentrop's body with a black hood was carried to the end of the room behind a black curtain. All this took less than 10 minutes.
The colonel turned to the witnesses: “Stop smoking, gentlemen.” Ernst Kaltenbrunner entered the hall at 1:36. in a sweater under a blue double-breasted coat. The deep scars on the thin, haggard face of this disgusting successor of Heydrich, supposedly received in student duels, but in fact the result of a drunken car accident, made him even more terrible.
Licking his lips nervously, he walked towards the gallows, calmly said his name and turned to the audience to see a Roman Catholic priest dressed as a Franciscan monk. Asked to make a farewell statement, he replied: “I loved the German people and my homeland. From the heart. I performed my duties according to the laws of my people and I am sorry that crimes were committed that I did not know about.” This was said by a man, one of whose subordinates, Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, admitted in court that it was on Kaltenbrunner’s orders that he sent more than 3 million people to the gas chamber!
As the black hood was placed over his head, he said, “Be happy, Germany!”
Next was Adolf Rosenberg. A pale and dull man with sunken cheeks calmly walked to the gallows, said his name and refused the last word. Despite his ostentatious atheism, he was accompanied by a Protestant priest, who, already standing next to him at the gallows, continued to pray. Rosenberg looked at him without any expression and 90 seconds later his body was already dangling in a noose. Next in the death parade was Hans Frank. He was the only one of those executed whose face never left the smile. Despite his nervousness and constant swallowing, Frank, who became a Roman Catholic after his arrest, clearly felt relief in anticipation of the upcoming punishment, which would be atonement for the crimes he had committed. He quietly said his name and almost whispered his last words: “I am grateful for the good treatment during my imprisonment and ask G-d to accept me with mercy.”
The sixth in a row was 69-year-old Wilhelm Frick. He entered the room 6 minutes after Rosenberg was pronounced dead. On the way to the gallows he swayed and stumbled. His only words were: “Long live eternal Germany!”
At 2:12 a.m. came the melodramatic entrance of Julius Streicher. With his hands tied in front, this ugly dwarf in a shabby suit and an old bluish shirt buttoned to the throat, but without a tie (everyone knew his passion for flashy clothes), peered at three frightening wooden gallows.
Looking around, his gaze lingered for a moment on the small group of witnesses. Now his hands were tied tightly behind his back. Two guards led him to the left gallows. He walked smoothly, but his face twitched. When a guard stopped him on the steps for formal identification, he let out a piercing scream that sent chills down my spine: “Heil Hitler!”
An American colonel standing on the steps said sharply: “Ask his name.” In response to the translator's question, Streicher shouted: “You know my name!” When asked again, the condemned man shouted: “Julius Streicher!” Reaching the platform, Streicher shouted: “Now it goes to G-d!” On the last two steps he was pushed to a place under the rope. Suddenly Streicher turned to the witnesses and stared at them. And suddenly he shouted: “Purim Fest 1946!” (“Purim holiday 1946!”)
Instead of the last word, Streicher shouted: “The Bolsheviks will hang you someday!”
When the black hood was put on him, Streicher said in a subdued voice: “Adele, my dear wife,” and instantly hung on the rope. The body was spinning and groans began to be heard from under the hidden interior of the gallows. The performer went inside and did something. The moaning stopped and the rope stopped. I didn't want to ask, but I think he grabbed the spinning body and pulled it down, i.e. Streicher was eventually strangled.
After Frick's body was removed, Fritz Sauckel was brought into the hall. In one sweater, he looked wild and behaved more defiantly than everyone else, with the exception of Streicher. This person
with unprecedented speed since the pre-Christian era, he managed to convert millions of people into slavery. Standing under the gallows and peering into the hall, he suddenly shouted: “I am dying innocent. The verdict is unfair. God protect Germany and make it great again. Long live Germany! God protect my family!” His body fell into the inside of the gallows and from there, just as in the case of Streicher, groans began to be heard.
Ninth in the death procession was Alfred Jodl. Wearing an ill-fitting Wehrmacht uniform with the collar rolled up at the back, he entered the dreary death house and was clearly in a nervous state. Exhausted and haggard, he endlessly licked his lips, and, unlike Keitel, barely climbed the steps of the gallows. However, he calmly said his last words: “Greetings, Germany.”
Czechoslovakian-born Seyss-Inquart, whom Hitler made Gauleiter of Holland and Austria, was the last actor in this unique theater of death. He entered the hall at 2:38 am. His glasses made his face an unforgettable caricature. Leaping on his lame leg, he looked around uncertainly. Having risen with the help of guards to the steps of the gallows, he said in a quiet, tense voice: “I hope that this execution will be the last tragedy of the Second World War and that what happened will serve as a lesson: peace and mutual understanding must exist between peoples. I believe in Germany." At 2:45 his body was already hanging on the gallows next to Yodel.
And then the doors of the hall opened again to let in the guards carrying Goering’s body on a stretcher. He managed to get out of the main role in the death parade prepared for him by the Allies. But despite this, it was decided that Goering would still take his place under the gallows. The stretcher with his body was placed between the first and second gallows. His huge bare legs stuck out from under the American Army blanket and his silk pajama-clad arm dangled from the stretcher.
After removing the blanket, Goering's body appeared to the eyes of those present, dressed in black silk pajamas with a blue top, from which water continued to flow after failed attempts to bring him back to life. The army wanted to prevent the possible spread of rumors about Goering's escape and journalists were able to verify that he was really dead. The face of this twentieth-century pirate and political swindler was still contorted from the pain of the last agonizing moments of his final challenge.
The body was quickly covered, and this Nazi boss, bathed in blood and luxury, like a character from the era of the Borgia family, was transferred to a space closed with black curtains, and from there moved to the black pages of history.
Abridged translation by N.S. Shvarts
