The International Military Tribunal
At the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (German spelling: Nürnberg) that sat between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, 24 leading Nazis were tried for various crimes. Twelve were sentenced to death, including Martin Bormann, who was tried in absentia.
The indictments were:
- Count 1: Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace
- Count 2: Planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
- Count 3: War crimes
- Count 4: Crimes against humanity
Not all defendants were charged with all four crimes, and not all were found guilty as charged. Since the men who were condemned to hang are not all equally well known—especially after 75 years have passed—here is, for each of them, a brief description of their respective functions in the Nazi regime.
Hermann Göring
Göring held numerous positions: Marshal of the Reich, Commander-in-Chief of the German Air Force, Minister for Aviation, Prime Minister of Prussia, Reich Commissioner for the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, and Reich Master of Forest and Hunt.
He was the leading war aggressor after Hitler, directed the slave labour program, and created oppressive policies against Jews and other races. Göring was convicted on all four counts.
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Appointed Ambassador to England in 1936 (where he earned the nickname “Brickendrop” due to diplomatic ineptness), von Ribbentrop succeeded von Neurath as Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1938.
He supported aggressive policies and assisted in the extermination of Jews in occupied territories. He was convicted on all four counts.
Wilhelm Keitel
As Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces—effectively Hitler’s military staff—Keitel issued numerous criminal orders including the Commando and Commissar Orders.
Despite claiming obedience to “Superior Orders,” the Tribunal ruled this could not mitigate responsibility for crimes of such scope. He was convicted on all counts.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Leader of the SS in Austria from 1935, Kaltenbrunner became Chief of the Security Police and SD in 1943, and head of the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA). He orchestrated and directly ordered mass executions in concentration camps and was deeply involved in the Holocaust.
Kaltenbrunner was convicted on Counts 3 and 4. Count 2 was not proceeded with.
Alfred Rosenberg
Rosenberg was the ideological head of the Nazi Party. As head of the APA, he helped plan the attack on Norway and organized the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, responsible for looting property throughout Europe.
Appointed Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories in 1941, he bore major responsibility for atrocities in that region. He was convicted on all counts.
Hans Frank
Governor General of occupied Polish territory, Frank instituted a reign of terror, deported Jews, and transferred food to Germany causing starvation. While the slave labour program was under Sauckel and the SS under Himmler, Frank was a knowing and willing participant.
He was found guilty of Counts 3 and 4.
Wilhelm Frick
Frick served as Reich Minister of the Interior until 1943 and later as Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. He drafted legislation that enabled the Gestapo, concentration camps, suppression of opposition parties, and racial persecution.
He was largely responsible for legal frameworks that led to the Final Solution. Frick was convicted of Counts 2, 3, and 4.
Julius Streicher
Publisher of Der Stürmer, Streicher relentlessly incited the extermination of Jews, even after knowing mass murder was underway. His propaganda was deemed persecution on political and racial grounds, constituting a Crime against Humanity.
Streicher was convicted only on Count 4.
Fritz Sauckel
As Plenipotentiary General for the Utilization of Labour, Sauckel orchestrated the forced deportation and enslavement of five million people from occupied territories.
He was found guilty of Counts 3 and 4.
Alfred Jodl
Chief of Operations Staff under Hitler, Jodl was instrumental in military planning, including offensives against Norway, Greece, and others. He signed criminal orders and authorized scorched-earth tactics.
The Tribunal rejected his “Superior Orders” defense. Jodl was convicted on all four counts.
Arthur Seyß-Inquart
Instrumental in the Anschluss, Seyß-Inquart later held high offices in Austria, Poland, and the Netherlands. He oversaw Jewish deportations, political terror, and forced labour.
He was convicted of Counts 2, 3, and 4.
Planning the Executions
It was no surprise that death sentences were handed down at Nuremberg—the question was how many and on whom. The U.S. Army had planned for this. In August 1946, Colonel Philip Clayton tasked Lieutenant Stanley Tilles with preparing for the executions.
Tilles, who had supervised the hanging of 28 war criminals at Landsberg, was again chosen for the job. As incentive, he was promised a return to civilian life once the task was complete.
Secret Preparations
Tilles received no written orders; instead, all supplies and transport were to be provided through verbal commands. Three dismountable gallows were to be built at Landsberg prison by John Woods and five selected MPs.
Pfc Malta, speaking for his fellow MPs, assured Tilles they could handle the task. Construction was to take 25–30 days.
Woods also demonstrated a new latch mechanism to prevent injuries from the gallows’ trap door—based on a past incident.
Though some reports describe the gallows as black, Woods suggested painting them olive drab to avoid suspicion. Tilles successfully acquired the paint via verbal orders.
A Test Run
On 10 September 1946, Tilles oversaw a hanging at Landsberg. This time, he stood on the platform. When the body dropped, he noted that the trap door latch worked perfectly—Woods’ design had proven effective.
Execution Date Set
Two days after verdicts were announced, Clayton informed Tilles the execution date was likely October 16. Tilles and Woods confirmed that assembling all three gallows would take 11–12 hours.
On October 10, they packed 11 ropes (plus two spares), 11 black hoods, leather boot laces, and web belts.
Transport Delays
Tilles arranged for three trucks from Munich on October 13—but none arrived. After repeated calls and growing frustration, he finally convinced the depot to act. The trucks arrived late at night, and the convoy left at 1 a.m. on October 14.
Despite weather challenges and missed rendezvous, they arrived at Nuremberg later that morning.
Assembly and Soviet Inspection
That afternoon, Woods and team began assembling the gallows in the prison gymnasium, finishing in the early hours of October 15.
At 8 a.m., Tilles and Woods were informed that a Soviet delegation wanted to inspect the setup and witness a mock hanging. General Nikitchenko and three others arrived. Woods explained the details, and Malta dropped a sandbag to demonstrate. The Soviets were impressed, especially by the trap door latch.
Final Instructions and Göring’s Suicide
At 11 p.m. on October 15, Tilles received final instructions. Among 30 witnesses were eight international press representatives and two German officials: Dr. Wilhelm Hoegner and Dr. Friedrich Leistner.
At 11:30 p.m., Colonel Andrus entered and announced that Hermann Göring had committed suicide by ingesting cyanide.
An officer then briefed the team. At 12:25 a.m., they proceeded to the gymnasium to carry out the executions.
Tilles’ Role During the Executions
During the executions, Tilles had the following tasks: Every time a prisoner was brought in and led to the table where the representatives of the Tribunal were sitting, he was to bring up the rear of the procession.
And: “Besides escorting the prisoners, I was to record the time that each prisoner dropped through the trap door and the time that he was declared dead. After we escorted the condemned man to the steps, I would stand to the left of the gallows and would wait for the prisoner to drop. I would note the time on yellow lined paper and then rejoin the formation. When the doctors, one American and one Russian, declared the man dead, I would note the time again.”
There are some discrepancies between the times that Tilles gives in his memoirs and the times that Kingsbury-Smith gives in his well-known newspaper report. They will be discussed as they appear. For the moment, it should be noted that although printed in 1999, Tilles’ times are based on the original source, not on memory:
“I kept the times of death for each of the men, and I still have the original paper on which I recorded the times.”
The Executions Begin
At 1:10 a.m., Joachim von Ribbentrop was brought in. Colonel Andrus took off the shackles from his hands. With that, the prison’s responsibility for the prisoner ended, and he was in the hands of the execution team.
According to Tilles, the pinioning of the hands and feet occurred after Ribbentrop had already spoken his last words, simultaneously with the hood and noose being put on. Woods opened the trap upon a signal from the Provost Marshal’s officer, at 1:16 a.m.
The next to die, on the second gallows, was Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel. He dropped at 1:20 a.m.
Silence and Smoking
While Ribbentrop and Keitel were hanging, the Tribunal permitted smoking. No one spoke. There were ten minutes of eerie silence.
At 1:30 a.m., the doctors appeared from behind the curtain under the gallows platform and declared Ribbentrop dead. Malta cut him down, two MPs appeared with a stretcher and carried his body away, and Woods secured a new rope. Gallows #1 was ready for the next prisoner.
At 1:33 a.m., Keitel was pronounced dead, according to Tilles and according to Arthur Goeth in his broadcast for the US radio stations. Kingsbury-Smith, in his report for the newspapers, says it was at 1:44 a.m. It was this statement, repeated by many other newspaper reports, which led to the claim that Keitel had suffered for 24 minutes, that his execution was an inhumane one by slow strangulation, etc.
Further Executions
Ernst Kaltenbrunner entered the execution room at 1:36 a.m. and was dropped at 1:39 a.m. from the #1 gallows. This means that it had taken the hangmen six minutes to remove one body and prepare the gallows for the next execution (1:30 a.m.: Ribbentrop dead; 1:36 a.m.: entrance of Kaltenbrunner).
Alfred Rosenberg was hanged from the same gallows on which Keitel had died. He dropped, says Tilles as well as Kingsbury-Smith, at 1:49 a.m.
If Kingsbury-Smith is right with Keitel’s death time, there would be five minutes between Keitel’s death and Rosenberg’s drop. There were some formalities (identification, last words) between the entrance of each prisoner and his dropping through the trap doors which took up between two and three minutes (see Kaltenbrunner’s times). This would leave only two or three minutes for the removal of Keitel’s body and the preparing of gallows #2 – unlikely.
Resolving the Timing Discrepancy
The obvious solution is to assume that Tilles is right with Keitel’s death time and that Keitel was left hanging until Kaltenbrunner had dropped at 1:39 a.m. This would give ample time to prepare Keitel’s gallows until about 1:47 a.m., when Rosenberg entered the chamber. The consequence of this assumption is that Keitel must have been dead 13 minutes after dropping. Since Tilles writes that no prisoner took longer to die than Jodl (16 minutes), this is a further argument in favour of 1:33 a.m. as Keitel’s time of death.
The party present was again allowed to smoke. At 1:52 a.m., Kaltenbrunner was declared dead, after having been on the rope for 13 minutes. Woods and his men needed only four minutes until the next prisoner could be brought in: Hans Frank, at 1:56 a.m. He dropped at 1:58:30 a.m.
Tilles: “Seconds later Rosenberg was declared dead at 1:59 a.m.” (10 minutes after drop), “and a new rope was affixed for Wilhelm Frick.” Frick was dropped at 2:08 a.m.
One minute later, the doctors pronounced Hans Frank dead, and gallows #1 was made ready for Julius Streicher.
Julius Streicher’s Execution
The former editor of Der Stürmer made a real nuisance of himself, shouting “Heil Hitler” to the Tribunal, refusing to give his name, then shouting “Purim feast, 1946” (reference to a Jewish feast which commemorates the hanging of an anti-Semite, cf. Esther 7:10), and “the Bolsheviks will hang you one day.”
At 2:14 a.m., the trap door opened under his feet. Kingsbury-Smith: “He went down kicking.” He, as well as Tilles and Hoegner, reports that gasps and gurgles were heard after Streicher had dropped. Again Kingsbury-Smith:
“Finally, the hangman, who had descended from the gallows platform, lifted the black canvas curtain and went inside. Something happened that put a stop to the groans and brought the rope to a standstill… I assume that he grabbed the swinging body of Streicher and pulled down on it.”
Tilles, however, in his memoirs is positive that:
“Woods never left the platform of the gallows… The only persons who went behind the curtain were the doctors who pronounced the men dead and Malta who cut them down.”
Woods’ Intent and Technique
It is odd to see that Tilles, who on the whole seems to have liked Woods, thus tries to exonerate him from having done what would merely amount to mercy killing (and which is precisely what William Calcraft, British hangman 1829–1874, routinely did), but does not hesitate to impute a far nastier act to him, namely the intentional bungling of the execution in order to make Streicher suffer:
“Woods adjusted the noose but placed its coils off center, would not snap Streicher’s neck, and he’d strangle. I realized instantly that this was Woods’ intent, and I saw a small smile cross his lips as he pulled the hangman’s handle.”
Tilles never says that he heard Woods speak about his intentions—he just inferred them from what he saw, but he cannot have known about hanging except what Woods told him. Tilles is not an expert in his own right who could say what will be the consequence of the coils being off centre.
Now it is simply untrue that this noose position would make a man strangle. On the contrary, quite a number of executioners chose this position in the belief that it was the right one to break the neck.
Joseph Malta, who had been trained by Woods, said in an interview shortly before his death (i.e., in 1998/99) that “to the side” was the right spot:
“We had to make sure that the noose was in the back of the neck, precisely along the ear. It was important that the coils were to the side of the neck.”
From films shot by the Army during the Landsberg hangings on 28/29 May, 1946, it can be seen that the German executioner Reichhart placed the coils behind the ear of the prisoner, sometimes even on their left shoulder. “Just behind the ear” or the “subaural position,” as the prison doctors called it, was the approved spot for British hangman James Berry (in office 1884–1892), and as recently as 1993 Wesley A. Dodd was hanged at Walla Walla (Washington) with a subaural knot—and his heartbeat ceased after one minute.
Streicher’s Suffering
We come to the conclusion that if Woods placed the knot off centre in Streicher’s case, this was probably not the cause of his suffering. It cannot be in doubt that he did suffer, but the cause may have been something else—for instance, his going down “kicking.”
We do not believe that Kingsbury-Smith went so far as to completely invent the hangman’s intervention “behind the curtain.” We rather believe that Streicher’s case was one of those where Malta used his method of “helping along” by adding his weight to that of the hanging man, and perhaps even breaking his neck manually (see above in the paragraph on Malta, Chapter 3).
At any rate, Streicher’s death was pronounced at 2:23 a.m. (Tilles) or 2:28 a.m. (Kingsbury-Smith), which gives 14 minutes at the outside for the time it took him to die—not longer than the others.
Several minutes before Streicher was declared dead, Wilhelm Frick’s death was recorded—Kingsbury-Smith says it was at 2:20 a.m.
Final Executions
Fritz Sauckel, who was to replace him on gallows #2, entered the chamber at 2:24 a.m. and was dropped two minutes later. Within the next four minutes, Woods and his team probably removed Streicher’s body and prepared gallows #1 for General Alfred Jodl, who was led in at 2:30 a.m. and was dropped four minutes later.
Again there’s a discrepancy, this time about when Sauckel died: The Gloucester Citizen of October 16, 1946 says it was 2:40 a.m. However, Tilles says that already at 2:38:30 a.m., Arthur Seyß-Inquart, the last prisoner, was brought in—and he was hanged on Sauckel’s gallows.
It is reasonable to assume that again about four minutes passed between Sauckel’s death and the entrance of Seyß-Inquart. In this case, Sauckel’s death must have occurred at about 2:34:30 a.m.—rather fast.
Arthur Seyß-Inquart fell through the trap door at 2:45 a.m. Five minutes later, the doctors declared Jodl dead. There is no death time for Seyß-Inquart in the reports, but we know that it was 2:57 a.m. when the Tribunal announced: “These proceedings are closed.” If Seyß-Inquart was dead by now—which it is logical to assume—it would have taken him 12 minutes to die, a not unlikely span of time.
While Jodl and Seyß-Inquart were hanging, a stretcher with Göring’s body was brought in and shown to the assembled witnesses. Nobody should be left in doubt that he, too, was no more.
The Aftermath in the Gymnasium
A large black curtain screened off part of the gymnasium. Here the eleven coffins had been waiting until, one after the other, their occupants were brought by the MP stretcher bearers and laid on top of them. After all executions were over, army photographers came and took two pictures of each body resting on top of his coffin.
Some time after the executions, the Allied Control Council decided to release these images for publication. The British members had voted against it and, when the decision was taken, strenuously appealed to all British publications not to print them. (They didn’t.) Publication in the German press was explicitly forbidden. However, the Council strangely did not forbid the sale of foreign publications featuring these photos in Germany.
Rumors of Bungle and Public Reaction
When the photos were made public, there had already been rumours that the hangings were bungled. British journalist Cecil Catling of the London Star was particularly critical of Woods’ performance. He claimed that the men took too long to die (Keitel had, according to him, struggled for 28 minutes), that all of them emitted horrible noises and strangled, that they had not enough dropping distance, and that their faces were smashed.
Subsequent articles picked up on this, and to this day the general opinion seems to be that the men were injured in their faces—either because the trap door opening was too small and they hit the edge in falling, or from the trap door bouncing back.
Visible Injuries in the Photographs
From the photos, it can be seen that there are two men where blood staining is clearly visible.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel
Keitel’s face, of which chiefly the left half is visible, shows blood trails running from each corner of the mouth upwards over the cheek, and ending, on the left side, between the outer corner of his eye and the cheekbone. His left eye is filled with blood; there are thin blood trails running from the inner corner over the nose bridge to the right, over the forehead upwards, and downwards-outwards to the left. His temporal hair on the left side also seems to be discoloured by blood.
His nose does not show any sign of injury; there is no blood coming from his left nostril. One thin, dark, strangely curved line runs from a corner of his tunic towards his left cheekbone. It does not look like a blood trail but like a blood-soaked loose thread from his tunic. The source of the blood trails seems to be the mouth and the eyes. The strange upward (cranial) direction of the trails may be caused by his head having been dangling backwards-downwards while the body was resting on the coffin.
Before the photo was taken, someone folded his black hood into a kind of cushion and put it under his head.
Wilhelm Frick
Wilhelm Frick’s head is resting on a white but heavily bloodstained piece of cloth. Since there are no blood trails from his face running down to the cloth, his face may have been wiped with that cloth. Traces of blood are still visible around his mouth.
The coat he is wearing shows several blood trails on his right side over the full length from collar to hem. The source of the blood is not evident at first sight, except that it must have been in the region of the head. There are no visible injuries. The evident conclusion is that the blood most probably has come from his mouth, nose, or eyes.
Evaluating the Injuries: Trapdoor or Natural Cause?
As we have seen, Tilles takes great care to show that a trap door bouncing back cannot have been the cause of the injuries, because of Woods’ ingenious latch. There is no reason why the size of the trapdoor opening should have been made smaller than in the gallows which Woods had used at Landsberg, Bruchsal, and Rheinbach. If it was the same, it would be strange if in Nuremberg two out of ten men hit the edge—which seemingly did not happen once in the 28 hangings in May.
The explanation Tilles offers for the bleeding follows the official line which already accompanied the publication of the photos: that bleeding from mouth or nose is a normal occurrence in hanging, e.g., because the men bit their lips or tongues in falling.
Convincing as this sounds, it must be pointed out that such bleeding is never mentioned in British executions. The LPC4 sheets are scrupulous in itemising every small laceration of the skin; to “never draw blood” can almost be termed the basic law of British executioners, so it is near impossible that such bleeding should have been “natural” in Britain as well.
Catling’s Criticism and Tilles’ Rebuttal
Of course, Catling, being a Brit and being conversant with a fairly different method, has no hesitation to call the Nuremberg results a bungle. However, Tilles very rightly points out that Catling was not present and that therefore all his positive statements, especially if unsourced, need to be taken with a grain of salt.
A Comparative Look at U.S. Executions
All in all, the hangings at Nuremberg were fast work—not a masterpiece, but fairly “state of the art” by U.S. standards.
To see them in perspective, one needs to remember what hangings at home in the States looked like at the time.
Reports the St. Quentin warden, Clinton Duffy, of a hanging in 1942:
The man hit bottom and I observed that he was fighting by pulling on the straps, wheezing, whistling, trying to get air, that blood was oozing through the black cap. I observed also that he urinated, defecated, and droppings fell on the floor, and the stench was terrible. I also saw witnesses pass out and have to be carried from the witness room. Some of them threw up.
When the man was taken down and the cap removed, it became evident that “big hunks of flesh were torn off” the side of his face where the noose had been, “his eyes were popped,” and his tongue was “swollen and hanging from his mouth.” His face had turned purple.
Compared to this effort, Woods may be forgiven for being proud of his work.
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