Brutal truth about botched hangings of Nuremberg… and mystery of the man behind them: How one Nazi suffocated for over 20 minutes, another smashed his face and died in agony, while a third was left kicking and wailing

When death came, it was grisly and undignified. The ten prisoners, Hitler’s followers, had tremendous power.

Yet they died like ordinary criminals, twitching at the end of a rope sent from this world by a heavy-fisted executioner whose incompetence ensured that some of them met with a gruesome and slow end.

At one point, American executioner Staff Sergeant John C. Woods had to bend under the scaffolding to finish off Nazi chief Julius Streicher by ‘pulling his legs’ when his neck did not break in the fall.

The executions of key members of the Nazi elite took place in the early hours of October 16, 1946, in a gymnasium where American security guards at the Nuremberg prison had been playing basketball three days earlier.

These were the culmination of what was heralded as a useful exercise in bringing justice to the perpetrators of the worst conflict in history.

Overseen by judges from Britain, America, the Soviet Union and France, the International Military Tribunal was designed to not only impose sentences but also to record the full depths of Nazi depravity for both the German people and the world at large to see, as well as to create a legal template to deter potential future Hitlers and their followers.

The trial began in November 1945 at the patchwork Palace of Justice in the heavily bombed city of Nuremberg, Bavaria. 22 political, military and economic leaders of the Hitler regime were on trial.

The Führer was already dead. But the evils of Nazism were vividly embodied in the flamboyant form of the drunken monster Hermann Goering, the second most powerful man in the Reich.

Russell Crowe plays Hermann Goering in the recently released film Nuremberg

His US army psychiatrist, Dr. Her relationship with Douglas Kelley was the focus of the film Nuremberg, which opened in theaters last week and stars Russell Crowe as the Reichsmarschall.

The self-imposed diet had melted Goering’s body fat, and after many years of drug addiction, he had to go cold turkey. But he remained charismatic and outspoken, and his defiant eloquence occasionally threatened to poke holes in the prosecution case.

Given the lack of precedent, it was inevitable that the process would be flawed and marred by black noncompliance; especially the intervention of the Soviet Union, which committed enormous crimes of its own during the war.

But worldwide revulsion at the Nazi record, sickeningly revealed by the images of the death camps at the trial, demanded that justice, however flawed, be served.

The decisions were announced on October 1, 1946. After long discussions among the judges, the three defendants were acquitted. Seven of them were sentenced to ten years to life imprisonment. Twelve people were sentenced to death, including Hitler’s private secretary Martin Bormann, who was tried in absentia and was mistakenly thought to be still alive.

The executions were scheduled for two weeks later. While inmates waited in their cells, carpenters demolished a makeshift death chamber in the prison’s dilapidated gymnasium.

The defendants are in the dock at the Nuremberg trial. Front row, left to right: Hermann Goering; Rudolf Hess, deputy leader of the Nazi Party; foreign minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop; Wilhelm Keitel, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and Gestapo chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner

It was 100 ft long and 33 ft wide. At one end stood three wooden piers painted black. The two would be used alternately; The third is backup.

Thirteen wooden steps led up to a platform 8 ft high and 8 ft square, from which emerged posts supporting a beam from which the rope was suspended. A new rope was to be used for each man.

A lever released the trap door, causing the victim to disappear. The area under the pier was boarded up on three sides. The fourth was covered with a dark canvas curtain, protecting it from about 30 officials and international press representatives who watched the prisoners suffer death.

Hanging is a delicate job that involves delicate calculations matching the victim’s weight to the length of the fall to ensure a clean spinal fracture and quick death.

The court had expertise at its disposal. A member of the famous family of British executioners, including his nephew Albert, Thomas Pierrepoint had executed American soldiers convicted of major crimes in Britain without any hitch on behalf of the US military, and was considered a master of his craft.

However, an American was chosen instead; Staff Sergeant John Clarence Woods, 35, whose qualification for the job is questionable. Kansas-born Woods was an ear-plugging drifter, gambler and heavy drinker; He had been discharged from the US Navy after going AWOL before the war.

Yet in 1943 he was called up and sent to England as a special with an engineer combat battalion. He responded to a call for volunteer executioners, claiming to have assisted in various executions in Texas and Oklahoma.

Hitler at the wedding of Hermann and Emmy Goering in 1935. Eleven years later, just hours before his execution, Goering would deprive many of his victims of the satisfaction of seeing him go to the gallows. He committed suicide by using a cyanide capsule in his cell

If the army had checked, their qualifications would have been found to be fake; By the time Woods claimed to have started his career as an executioner, both states had switched to the electric chair.

But they did not do so, and he was sent to France; here he hanged nearly 50 US soldiers for espionage, murder, and rape, and a number of German war criminals, before arriving at Nuremberg.

According to an authoritative biography, American Hangman by Colonel French L. MacLean, Woods and his assistants frequently botched the job.

The symbolic importance given to the court required that the final go smoothly. But a few hours before his execution, Goering deprived his many victims of the satisfaction of seeing him on his way to the gallows.

His guards found him lifeless in his prison bed; He committed suicide with a cyanide capsule hidden in a cartridge case. It has never been fully explained how he obtained the poison.

With the death of the Reichsmarschall, the finale of an unprecedented legal drama watched by the whole world was deprived of its star actor. He was replaced as the first candidate for relegation by Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.

The execution row was described in a classic report by American journalist Howard K. Smith. He wrote: ‘von Ribbentrop entered the execution chamber at 1.11am Nuremberg time.

‘He was stopped inside the door by two army sergeants who approached him on either side and held him by the arms, while another sergeant, who followed him, removed the handcuffs from his hands and replaced them with a leather strap.

‘[He] He managed to maintain his obvious fortitude until the end. He walked steadily towards the gallows between his two guards, but did not answer at first when an officer standing at the foot of the gallows went through the formality of asking his name.

Field Marshal Wilhem Keitel with Hitler in Munich in 1938. Execution of German High Command chief botched by Woods and took more than 20 minutes to die

‘When the query was repeated he almost shouted “Joachim von Ribbentrop!” he shouted. and then I went up the stairs without hesitation.

‘When he turned around to face the witnesses, he appeared to grit his teeth and look up with his old arrogance. When asked if he had a final message, he said “God bless Germany” in German…

‘As the black hood was placed on his head, von Ribbentrop looked straight ahead. Then the executioner adjusted the rope, pulled the lever, and von Ribbentrop was abandoned to his fate.’

Smith went on to describe how others went to their deaths with varying degrees of dignity and fortitude. The most dramatic and horrific end was that of Julius Streicher, who directed the Reich’s anti-Semitic propaganda campaigns that paved the way for the Holocaust.

‘Ugly and dwarf’ and wearing ‘a worn-out suit’, he ‘walked orderly’ towards the gallows… but his face was twitching. When the guards stopped him at the bottom of the stairs for identification, he uttered the shrill cry: “Heil Hitler!”

The scream sent a shiver down Smith’s spine. Streicher had to be pushed into the trap door. Then he turned and shouted to the assembled witnesses: ‘Purim festival 1946’ – a reference to the Jewish holiday celebrating the fall of Haman, the Old Testament enemy of the Israelites.

Smith continued: ‘At that moment the trap opened with a loud crash. He went down kicking. Groans could be heard from the hidden interior of the dock as the rope snapped taut as the body swayed wildly.’

Finally, Sergeant Woods came down from the gallows and ‘lifted the black canvas curtain’ [beneath the platform] and I went in. Something happened that stopped the moans and brought the rope to a halt. I wasn’t in the mood to ask what he was doing after it was over, but I assume he grabbed the swaying body and pulled it down. We were all of the opinion that Streicher strangled him.’

Colonel MacLean said Sergeant Woods also botched the execution of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German High Command, whose death struggle lasted more than 20 minutes.

Julius Streicher, who organized the Reich’s anti-Semitic propaganda campaigns that paved the way for the Holocaust

Photographs of his body and that of former Nazi interior minister Wilhelm Frick show that their faces were severely injured as they fell from the trap.

So were these errors coincidence or design?

Lieutenant Stanley Tilles, who helped organize the executions, later claimed that Sergeant Woods deliberately tied Streicher’s noose off-center so that his death would be slow.

He also made no secret of his hatred of the Germans and enjoyed his fame as Nuremberg’s executioner, declaring himself ‘proud’ of his work and posing for a photo with the noose.

He claimed that he was the target of two assassination attempts by Nazi sympathizers who tried to poison and shoot him.

He died in 1950 while serving at Enewetak, a US nuclear testing range in the Pacific. His death left its own unanswered questions.

He had apparently been electrocuted while repairing a power cable, but the area was now home to many German scientists working for the Americans, and rumors insisted that this was no accident, but rather revenge for his role at Nuremberg four years earlier.

• Patrick Bishop is a historian and co-host of the Battleground podcast.