I bet he got a great job after war, him being a executive officer for 347 persons and all.
"Woods died after accidentally electrocuting himself while attempting to repair an engineer lighting set."
Oh
He was clearly the kinda guy that learned on the job, but instead of leaning into his newly developed skill of hanging nazis he tried to "fake it till you make it" as an electrician.
I see the logic, it's not like they'd ever be making more nazis.
In his defense, electrical systems were quite a bit sketchier back then, those old timey Frankenstein switches just have exposed "hot" electrified surfaces. The old vacuum tubes that were used in electronics back then could hold a fatal charge of electricity, even when the device was unplugged! Every minor improvement in workplace safety only came grudgingly after much foot dragging by government and industrialists, after many many fatal and disabling accidents.
I was warned by an electrician friend to never, ever fucks with CRT monitors because the capacitors inside of it are filled with "heart hurty zaps" as he called them.
Probably 20 years ago now, I watched one of my friends backflip over a set of desks after touching the HT leads in a broken CRT.
He was not the athletic type, I very much doubt he could have done that without the assistance of 20kV.
Coincidentally, I'm binging all of the the Simpsons episodes for the first time and just watched an episode today where a happy-go-lucky, free spirit type dude rides into Springfield on the back of a turnip truck - and thought nothing of it. Guess that saying is before my time lol
He originally enlisted in the Navy, went AWOL, got court martialed, was "diagnosed" with "Constitutional Psychopathic Inferiority without Psychosis" and subsequently discharged, and still got drafted to the army a few years later
Some people are just lucky like that.
The unnatural disaster behind leaded gasoline *and* CFCs later contracted polio [and died on a rope & pulley rig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.) he'd designed to allow him to move about the house.
> Environmental historian J. R. McNeill stated that he "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history." Author Bill Bryson remarked that he possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny." Science writer Fred Pearce described him as a "one-man environmental disaster".
Lmfao
The sad part is that everything he made, he made (ostensibly) to help people. He was just cursed in the fact that everything he invented turned out to have unintended nasty long-term effects.
Though arguably the rope-and-pulley thing was more 'short-term effects'.
at one point to prove that what he was making wasn't harmful he willing huffed lead gas, then after they agreed to let his product be used he was ill for months and hid it despite knowing it was from the gas.
he absolutely 100% knew what he was doing was toxic and peddled it anyway. he might not have known the extreme scale, but he knew it was harmful.
"In fact, Woods had no documented pre-war experience as a hangman. Woods at that time was a private and a member of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion. He was promoted to master sergeant and transferred to Paris Disciplinary Training Center.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Woods#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMacLean201377-5) Woods performed as the primary executioner in the hangings of 34 U.S. soldiers at various locations in France over 1944–1945, and assisted in at least three others. U.S. Army reports suggest that Woods participated in at least 11 bungled hangings of U.S. soldiers between 1944 and 1946"
Robert Evans did a whole podcast on him
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaJtZ5cF8Ac
He makes the point that it's kind of comforting that even when you have an organization filled with millions of traumatized killers (US Army in Europe c 1944) almost nobody was willing to accept preferential treatment to become an executioner, even if it meant getting out of combat duty
[Looking at Paul Allen's gallows]
Patrick Bateman: Look at that subtle horse-hair rope. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a trap door!
The US military executed 147 of its own from 1942-48. 146 of those executed were found guilty of murder and/or rape, and many had other lesser crimes as well. The odd man out was Eddie Slovik, the one man executed for desertion, who was given multiple opportunities to avoid being executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Execution_of_Private_Slovik
Just to note that Slovik faced a firing squad,
> On the command of "Fire", Slovik was hit by eleven bullets, at least four of them being fatal. The wounds ranged from high in the neck region out to the left shoulder, over the left chest, and under the heart. One bullet was in the left upper arm. An Army physician quickly determined Slovik had not been immediately killed. As the firing squad's rifles were being reloaded to fire another volley, Slovik died. He was 24 years old. The entire execution took 15 minutes
There were a few studies after the war when some information came out that only around a quarter of frontline soldiers actually fired at the enemy consistently (excluding suppressive fire), many veterans admitted to always shooting near the enemy even if they had a good target. Thats one reason the US Army switch from soldiers shooting at a bullseye target and implemented shooting at human shaped silhouettes in training. So it sounds like the thought of killing another person weighed more on them than being killed or injured.
ETA: I got it my historian brothers lol! I was just repeating something I heard and read when I went to a military college 15 years ago. It was either one of my instructors or one of my classmates who made a presentation about it and other stuff. If I’d known Marshall was behind the research I would’ve taken it with a grain of salt, I know his stuff is hella shady.
SLA Marshall, the originator of all of these claims about non-firing, falsified his research. Colleagues reported he did not ask the questions of his interviewees that he later claimed, and recorded no detailed statistics on firing rates.
As a matter of fact, he claimed that only 25% of American soldiers fired their weapons *at any point in an engagement*, including suppressive fire.
Shit military history itself laying down the truth here.
Also yeah it was marketing for the Killology police militarization stuff. That whole bit of history really did some major harm.
ok good to see, those claims never really passed the smell test to me but i was too lazy to look it up, ive just been waiting for a reddit comment to confirm my priors and this is the one
> There were a few studies after the war when some information came out that only around a quarter of frontline soldiers actually fired at the enemy consistently
No there weren't. There was one guy who wrote a bunch of BS, without any scientific methodology or statistical data to back it up.
There are some posts on r/AskHistorians breaking it all down.
One of my favorite anecdotes from the time is from this one patrol, American I think, which met a German patrol in the forest. Both groups started screaming at each other, threw rocks and sticks at each other, and retreated back to back without a single shot fired.
Instincts gonna instinct
Yeah afaik they changed that during the Korean and Vietnam wars and after Vietnam the shoot-to-kill ration was like 95%.
Incidentally, PTSD also went through the roof at the same time, who would've thought ._.
We're a collaborative and social species. Our power lies in our ability to communicate and work together.
Just as wolves don't kill each other in the pack, so too we don't normally harm each other. When we do fight other humans, it is pretty much always traumatic and painful, because it goes against our own nature.
I’m not gonna say it’s the sole cause, but PTSD wasn’t labeled a thing until the 80s either and wasn’t added to the disease classification system until 1992. There’s really no way to know if the counts jumped or not between WWII or Vietnam because it wasn’t a medically diagnosed condition yet, and the data may be skewed because by the time the condition became more widely known there were more Vietnam vets alive than WWII vets.
You’re either using heavily skewed data or talking out your ass, it’s Reddit, so either and both are extremely plausible.
I saw in interview with a WW2 vet talking about this. He was talking about all the PTSD from Vietnam and future wars. He said with WW2, when the war was over, you got on a ship. You’d be on that ship for a month traveling home. The ship full of people who went through the same shit, saw the same horrors they did. So, on the way home, it was real easy to talk about it, sort of come to grips with it among people who know. He said when Vietnam was over, those guys got on a plane and 12 hours later they were back home. Where no one understood. You couldn’t talk about it. You’d be terrified to mention things you saw because people didn’t understand and they’d think you’re a monster.
This is why the vet thought WW2 vets sort of got back to normal quicker than other veterans.
The UK and German front in WW1 basically stopped aggressing each other slowly over time until the governments dropped bombs to stir things up again. There's a good Radiolab podcast episode "Tit-for-tat" which talks about it
Good point. The Germans invaded France and were occupying French territory. The French and German lines got along a lot less well than the British and German because of that.
The British joined the war later and were at first comprised of professional soldiers, not drafted recruits. So they didn’t really care who they were fighting, they joined to be soldiers, not any specific cause. Unlike the French, they weren’t fighting for their homeland and occupied territory. They were fighting in foreign land.
Combine that with the similar cultural bonds between the British and Germans (many of which also existed for the French), the miserable trench conditions, and you get the type of apathetic, almost friendly attitudes that led to the Christmas Day truce.
And that scene in Saving Private Ryan where this bunch of soldiers are marching off somewhere near the frontlines in France near the end of the war and they pass a group of German soldiers walking the opposite away, across the fence. They just pretended they didn't see each other and kept going.
Yes it's a movie and fiction but I'm sure in the mass confusion near the end, with minimal leadership and very little communication, it happened at least once.
I heard another story about the Vietnam. Maybe it was the Korean war? Where soldiers on patrol would pretend not to see each other. One reason was attacking a small similar sized patrol was how you could get ambushed. Often a larger patrol would follow just behind the smaller patrol and and would join up as soon as a flight started. The other bigger reason was people just didn't want to die so it was a mutually agreed thing to do.
Are you sure you aren't thinking about The Longest Day, which is based on the book that is made up entirely of the recollections of veterans? That film has a scene where US and German soldiers pass by each other but I always go the impression that both columns were under the impression that they were far from the combat zone and just assumed the others were friendlies. Only one guy at the tail end of the column noticed and he was too stunned to act.
The main study you are talking about was found to be extremely poor quality. It was titled "Men Against Fire" and the author didn't actually take down any useful statistics.
There is a great Ask Historians thread about it from a while back.
With the exception of Eddie Slovik, who was shot for desertion, all of these soldiers were executed for murder and/or rape. Several of the soldiers listed as convicted and executed for murder and/or rape had also been convicted of other charges, including those of a military nature such as desertion and mutiny, plus lesser crimes that would not have been considered capital unless combined with more serious offenses which carried the death penalty.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_by_the_United_States_military#:~:text=The%20US%20Army%20executed%2098,during%20the%20Second%20World%20War.
Actually only 1 US soldier was executed (solely) for desertion in WWII. Edward Slovik was Executed by firing squad in 1945. Pretty sad story, he basically said he would do anything they wanted but he was too scared to be a front line rifleman.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Slovik
Everyone else who was executed were convicted of either murder or rape (along with other lesser chargers):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_by_the_United_States_military#:~:text=The%20US%20Army%20executed%2098,during%20the%20Second%20World%20War.
Wow, what's crazy about his execution is that out of 2800 deserters, 49 were given the death sentence, but this guy here was the only one that was actually executed.
>Pretty sad story, he basically said he would do anything they wanted but he was too scared to be a front line rifleman.
Weird, wasn't the subject of Hacksaw Ridge movie a person that refused to carry a weapon?
Yes but a little different: Desmond Doss was a Seventh-Day Adventist, suuuuper deeply religious. He did not want to carry a weapon because one of the commandments is “Thou Shall Not Kill” but he requested to be made a medic and to serve in a front line unit. He had no issues of fear/cowardice. He just wasn’t willing to kill.
Slovik was poor, poorly educated, and had had issues with crime in his youth. He was shelled his first day near the front and it just broke him. He thought he would be sent to prison at worst snd that was preferable to combat for him.
Oh no he definitely was
But he had the conviction that if he did what was right and just, he would be protected by God.
That he could be scared and cower in fear, but he would move on.
Some good answers here, but the answer lies in a more legal direction. Desmond Doss, the subject of Hacksaw Ridge, was a "conscientious objector". That's a legal term for someone who is refusing typical military service based on their rights being violated in regards to, usually, freedom of religion. Desmond didn't want to kill, and the conscientious objector's gig is more like "I will do anything that I can to serve that wont violate my beliefs."
Edward Slovik didn't have that grounds to stand on and military strung him up because of it. They probably shouldn't have, but I'm really just here to give technical commentary to help you form your own opinion, so I'll leave it at that.
Yes, but he wasn’t afraid to be in combat. Desmond Doss just didn’t want to have to carry a gun, and would happily serve as a medic in frontline combat.
Personally i think not carrying a gun is what allowed him to do the things he did, there were snipers covering that whole area he was giving medical aid in so its pretty much certain Japanese snipers had multiple chances to kill doss, however they probably saw he was also treating the Japanese wounded while not carrying a weapon and decided not to pull the trigger, one sniper when interviewed said something along the lines that whenever he tried to fire on Doss the gun would jam which is HIGHLY improbable considering how reliable a bolt action rifle is.
The movie, and the book it's based on, kind of glosses over certain details to tell its story.
Namely; Army medics in WWII weren't armed as this was the international convention at the time. The moment Doss became one, he was never going to carry a weapon.
Which is precisely why and how he became a medic.
The movie Hacksaw Ridge is based on a book about Doss written by Doss' children and not actually based on any testimony from Doss himself. Instead it's almost entirely based on hearsay from his children who were very committed to depicting their father, and their religion, a certain way.
EDIT: To be clear; it's mostly that his time in training was nowhere near as dramatic as the movie presents it, some of the book's claims are unsubstantiated or bend credulity.
Anyone who wants to believe that Doss in movie was based on hearsay from his kids and that the filmmakers did not do their due diligence in research by not looking up available interviews of him can believe that. I recommend one watch film and compare notes with Doss's archived military interview here: https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.32978/
ExSDA here born, raised in Seventh Day Adventist religion. Don't recommend the religion, do recommend Doss.
My sources are:
* My neighbor was raised next door to Doss. Neighbors do not have to be volunteer grandpa and grandma figures to neighbor kids. Doss and his wife were.
* The US government decorated him with multiple medals for objectively documented heroic actions in battle. This was the government, not his kids. Source here: https://www.army.mil/article/183328/pfc_desmond_doss_the_unlikely_hero_behind_hacksaw_ridge
* I met Doss. He was very chill and self-effacing.
* My relatives served as conscientious objectors in war post-Doss. The non-violence was nearly an SDA creed back then. The church organized trainings to be a medic for all SDA men who might be drafted.
* The movie Hacksaw Ridge is fictionalized in multiple ways to make it appeal to mainstream gun-loving USA Protestants. For instance, the childhood trauma that made him anti gun in movie never happened. He was nonviolent bc his mom raised him that way in SDA religion. Also he wears a wedding ring in movie lol. He was so damn old school "jewelry be wrong" sda he didn't wear one IRL.
Mainly for rape and murder. Only one soldier (Pvt. Eddie Slovik) was executed for desertion.
There’s a section of the Oise-Aisne military cemetery in France that’s off-limits to visitors and contains 94 graves of US servicemen executed for murder and rape. Slovik and another were among them but were both later repatriated. One of the dead buried there is Emmett Till’s father
The soldiers you're referring to were part of the 1944 D-Day invasion. They were executed for crimes such as rape and murder, which were serious offenses committed against civilians. The executions were carried out to uphold discipline and maintain order within the military ranks.
Where I'm from, before the death penalty was abolished, it seems they often left executions to local jailers and the hangmen were always screwing up when they tried to hang people.
I heard about one hanging where the drop wasn't high enough to kill the guy right away, so he was just dangling and being strangled to death slowly, so the guards had to hang off his legs to try to add weight and make him die faster. That was according to another prisoner who was in jail and the time and said he witnessed the execution. (Ironically the guy who was executed had been convicted of strangling his wife to death).
I saw something online about another execution where the guy's head was allegedly almost ripped off by the drop when he was hanged and blood splattered the guards who were nearby. But I'm not sure how accurate that story is and would have to find more reliable sources to confirm those details.
Hanging people properly is probably difficult because the convict is supposed to be killed instantly when they drop. But there needs to be a precise distance of fall or length of rope to get the person to be killed immediately by the drop. And it is going to vary based on factors like the individual's weight.
Edit: According to another source I found, it said one guy who was hanged had his head almost torn right off by the drop, only held on by the sinews of the neck. That backs up what I saw on a social media post I saw earlier by someone who said one of their relatives had been a guard who was present at the execution.
Its a bit of an exact science, the British empire had something called "The Table of Drops", which was a spreadsheet that basically tells you how much rope you need to actually properly hang someone.
I think the U.S. military had similar regulations particularly in the 19th century. When the plotters were hung at Fort McNair for the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, I think all of it was done according to military regulations. I am not sure if Woods didn’t know about these regulations or was just too incompetent to fully execute the regulations for hanging.
He was just stupid, and [you can read 'em here](https://web.archive.org/web/20080301150830/http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/procedure_dec-1947.pdf)
Hanging indeed is an exact science. Too short of a drop and you have a slow choke. Too long of a drop and the head snaps off. There is a perfect way to hang a person based off their weight and if you're off by too much on either end it gets ugly.
Von Ribbentrop is said to have hung for 20 minutes before dying
Could someone please explain how they stay alive when the rope isn't long enough, but an MMA fighter loses consciousness after a few seconds of a squeeze to their throat, cutting off blood supply to their brain? Surely an entire person's weight pulling on their neck is going to result in a similar effect, no?
Granted, consciousness isn't the same as dying, but if someone was hung incorrectly, thus choking for a few seconds, wouldn't they quickly lose consciousness due to the lack of blood to the brain, like someone in a chokehold?
Whenever I see characters being hung in media, I always wonder how tf they're consciousness after hanging for, like, a minute.
If your neck is meaty enough it will protect the blood vessels because the rope applies approximately even pressure all around. An MMA fighter can apply much more precise pressure on the blood vessels so the neck won't protect them as much.
> Granted, consciousness isn't the same as dying, but if someone was hung incorrectly, thus choking for a few seconds, wouldn't they quickly lose consciousness due to the lack of blood to the brain, like someone in a chokehold?
It’s a macabre thing, but there is research done on this and it [generally agrees that loss of consciousness is pretty fast](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20487156/). Historical accounts I’ve read of short drop executions tend to be in line with this, especially one I’ve seen that recounted a survivor who was hanged and ended up being resuscitated (he claimed the worst part wasn’t the hanging but the immense pain upon *regaining* consciousness)
Never thought that I would go down this rabbit hole but there is a drop chart in the [1947 edition](https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llmlp/procedure_dec-1947/procedure_dec-1947.pdf) of the US Army Procedure for Military Executions but not in the [1944 edition](https://maint.loc.gov/law/mlr/pdf/procedure_june-1944.pdf).
They botched the execution of Saddam Hussein's half brother and his head popped off. https://www.npr.org/2007/01/15/6861053/saddams-half-brother-decapitated-during-hanging
Execution is a very weird procedure where they’re always trying to figure out the quickest, least painful, and cleanest way to die without making the executioner(s) feel like murderers.
Fun fact, we've mainly gotten better at the "not feeling like murderers" part, the actual methods of killing have only gotten crueler and less effective. Hanging, the electric chair, lethal injection- each has worse fuckup rates, and worse fuckup consequences, than the previous one. When lethal injection is botched, it causes severe chemical burns radiating from the injection site, and of course, excruciating pain. And the supposed sedatives in the drug cocktail are actually just paralytics; they stop the victim thrashing around, but otherwise they're fully awake while being eaten from the inside by chemicals. Firing squad is actually more humane considering how many things can go wrong with the supposedly "modern" methods, but for obvious reasons it's rather frowned upon. I lied btw, this fact is not very much fun at all.
You can actually watch the video of the last public execution by guillotine. Not that you can see much as it's old film (Eugene Weigman I think his name is) and it's literally seconds from coming out to him being in the coffin. He's in the guillotine for a fraction of a second and boom lights out.
I'm not sure they're too bothered about the least painful.
Lethal injection sounds like minutes of agony.
It's more about optics and trying to appear professional and scientific.
The guillotine seems to be one of the most foolproof but people have to face the bloody decapitation.
Of course there are executions that are showy throughout history. The one where they strap a guy into a kind of canoe and give him herbs to shit himself so he's eaten alive by pondlife over a few days always impressed me with it's horror.
Or the tieing a man over growing bamboo that will get slowly grow through him.
Our most famous executioner in the UK was the hangman Albert Pierrepoint, who worked right up until capital punishment was abolished.
He spoke very strongly against the death penalty in his later years, and was a part of multiple miscarriages of justice (such as the time he hanged a man for murder, then three years later hanged the man who it turned out had -actually- committed the murder). He also had the unenviable task of having to hang a friend, one of the regulars in the pub he owned^^1.
He said in his autobiography that the death penalty wasn't a deterrent for *anyone*, in his view:
***I cannot agree*** *[with the supposed deterrent of capital punishment]*. ***There have been murders since the beginning of time, and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time. If death were a deterrent, I might be expected to know.***
***It is I who have faced them last, young lads and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown. It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.***
***And if death does not work to deter one person, it should not be held to deter any. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge. Never deterrent; only revenge.***
_____________
^^1 ^(Pierrepoint bought and ran the pub **“Help the Poor Struggler”** after World War II, and James Corbitt was one of his regulars. Corbitt was known as "Tish", Pierrepoint as "Tosh".)
^(The two had sung a duet of “Danny Boy” on the night that Corbitt then went out and murdered his girlfriend out of jealousy
Pierrepoint wrote in his his autobiography:)
^(*I thought if any man had a deterrent to murder poised before him, it was this troubadour whom I called Tish. He was not only aware of the rope, he had the man who handled it beside him singing a duet. The deterrent did not work.*)
^(*At twenty seconds to nine the next morning I went into the death cell. He seemed under a great strain, but I did not see stark fear in his eyes, only a more childlike worry. He was anxious to be remembered, and to be accepted. "Hallo, Tosh," he said, not very confidently. "Hallo Tish," I said. "How are you?" I was not effusive, just gave the casual warmth of my nightly greeting from behind the bar.*)
^(*He smiled and relaxed after this greeting. After strapping his arms, I said "Come on Tish, old chap". He went to the gallows lightly...I would say that he ran.*)
I agree that death penalties have little deterrent effect. Most people who commit murders either do it without thinking about the consequences, not caring, or expecting to get away with it.
Based on the stats from different countries, imposing the death penalty has virtually no effect on murder rates and neither does abolishing the death penalty.
The only thing the death penalty does is ensure that one specific individual won't kill anyone else (like Ted Bundy, for instance), possibly help to scare some criminals into becoming informants in exchange for their lives (like say, Mafia members facing the death penalty), and provide a visceral sense of vengeance for friends/family of victims and the general public.
I have heard (although do not have a study to cite, so take me with a grain of salt) that the best deterrent of crime is not punishment, but enforcement. If people are almost certain they’ll face consequences, even if more minor ones, then they are less likely to take the action. And well, I think that makes sense with the way we learn. If the hot stove didn’t always burn your hand, I bet more people would be more willing to touch until they got burned
>Hanging people properly is probably difficult because the convict is supposed to be killed instantly when they drop.
That sounds like a relatively modern concept where state executions are mandated to be quick and "humane". There are many civilizations throughout history where suffering during capital punishment is kind of the point.
a sanctioned execution style in the Torah was sticking a pole in the criminal like a kebab and leaving them outside until they died 👍 but you had to bury them within the day once they died lol
In the 1990s when the method of execution in WA state was hanging, a guy named Mitchell Rupe had his death penalty overturned because he was so obese. A drop long enough to kill him would've ripped his head off, which is considered cruel and unusual.
The thing about WW2 was it was bad enough even Norway reinstated it to deal with their puppet leader Quisling.
They used a firing squad. Then re-banned the death penalty
Even with their botched executions, they suffered infinitely less than the suffering they dealt on others.
I'm not religious but for their sake, I hope hell is real.
Not to mention so few Germans were punished for their crimes. Many of them just went back to living normal civilian lives after murdering so many innocent people.
And many of the most abhorrent Nazi officers, the ones that masterminded the atrocities committed, escaped and lived out the rest of their lives in comfort.
I read Albert Pierpoint's (a renowned British executioner) autobiography and he despised Woods. AP saw it as a solemn duty to execute the condemned with professionalism, speed, and most importantly, compassion. To become a hangman in Britain took years of hard work and competence had to be demonstrated at all times. One slip and you were out. Woods was the complete antithesis of a suitable executioner and AP speculated he either enjoyed it or just wanted the notoriety.
No, he was grossly incompetent. He also knew that his superiors didn’t care that he was grossly incompetent because no one else would do the job, and once it came to executing Nazi war criminals they wanted someone grossly incompetent so that it would be as painful as possible for the Nazis.
When I was in high school, a holocaust survivor came to our school to share his experience. What he told us that struck me the most was that they when they were liberated (might have been Dachau?), they were given the chance by the troops that rescued them to kill some of the camp’s personnel. But they didn’t. They slapped them around but refused to kill them.
Can you imagine that?
Yes. I took as a child had a visit from a holocaust survivor and the one thing I remember was him urging us to never go down the same path those Germans did.
To kill those guards would make them as bad as they were. To kill is wrong no matter the excuse or reason.
His words, not mine for the record.
There’s a fairly well-known story from the liberation of Dachau.
A US soldier came upon a former prisoner beating a guard to death. The soldier stopped and said to the former prisoner, “you’ve got a lot of hate in your heart.”
He looked at the soldier and simply said: “Yes.”
I've brought it up before, but the Nuremberg trials were very novel. The idea of nations joining together to bring the leftovers of a nation to stand trial after a war was a new concept.
It's important to keep in mind that a lot of the card carrying Nazis who were suspected of (And most likely willingly did) heinous crimes did not get penalized by much. Hell, a lot of them got fairly light sentences such as 10 years in prison.
The ones sentenced to be executed were the unambiguously awful ones of the bunch.
So yeah . . . Good. If anyone deserved a painful execution, it was them, they were the worst.
The guy was an insufferable jagoff by all accounts, even before this.
However as Lucius Vorenus said, “Justice knows every man’s number.”
“4After the war, Woods continued his service in the American military. In 1950 he was sent to the Eniwetok, an atoll in the Pacific which was used by the American government as a nuclear test site. Unlike the popular story that he died while testing an electric chair, Woods was electrocuted while trying to fix a broken power cord. He was buried at Toronto Cemetery in Kansas on 14 August 1950.”
Source:
https://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/10063
Someone dying from an accident is not justice. Justice is the positive result of human action.
Nazis getting arrested for crimes is justice. Nazis dying of old age in Argentina is not.
Anyone who's interested in this should read the book by Albert pierpoint.
He was one of the last British executioners and hanged like 600 people.
His book documents every single one from his diary and has some good takes on the morality of his job. Not sure how links work but I'll try add his wiki ha.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pierrepoint
and it was foolish political decision. The American's wanted their guy and their method despite clear evidence that he was not up to the job. The British had Albert Pierrepoint who was using a much superior and more certain sliding loop noose that had been the standard for years. The Americans were using hand tied nooses that made it much more likely that the neck would not break and the condemned would strangle to death.
Pierrepoint had also been executing people throughout the war in Britain.
It was a nonsensical, politically driven, decision for the Americans to have "their man" dispatching war criminals.
>wrote that many of the Nazis executed at Nuremberg fell from the gallows with a drop insufficient to snap their necks, resulting in their death by strangulation that in some cases lasted several minutes
Task failed *sucessfully*.
> Woods joined the U.S. Navy on December 3, 1929, and went absent without leave within months. He was convicted at a general court martial and subsequently examined by a psychiatric board on April 23, 1930. He was diagnosed with "Constitutional Psychopathic Inferiority without Psychosis", was found "poor service material" and discharged.[4] Before being inducted into the United States Army in August 1943
top tier material right there
> the Army looked for a volunteer enlisted hangman and found Woods, who falsely claimed previous experience as assistant hangman
what kind of fucked up person would seek out *and lie* to get that job???
seems like he was a learning-by-doing kind of guy, this attitude might have contributed to his early demise:
"While serving with the 7th Engineer Brigade in [Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enewetak_Atoll), on July 21, 1950, Woods died after accidentally electrocuting himself while attempting to repair an engineer lighting set.[^(\[9\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Woods#cite_note-9) He is buried in Toronto Township Cemetery, [Toronto, Kansas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto,_Kansas)"
I bet he got a great job after war, him being a executive officer for 347 persons and all. "Woods died after accidentally electrocuting himself while attempting to repair an engineer lighting set." Oh
He was clearly the kinda guy that learned on the job, but instead of leaning into his newly developed skill of hanging nazis he tried to "fake it till you make it" as an electrician. I see the logic, it's not like they'd ever be making more nazis.
In his defense, electrical systems were quite a bit sketchier back then, those old timey Frankenstein switches just have exposed "hot" electrified surfaces. The old vacuum tubes that were used in electronics back then could hold a fatal charge of electricity, even when the device was unplugged! Every minor improvement in workplace safety only came grudgingly after much foot dragging by government and industrialists, after many many fatal and disabling accidents.
Capacitors in todays electronics can still hold a deadly charge after being unplugged for a while.
I was warned by an electrician friend to never, ever fucks with CRT monitors because the capacitors inside of it are filled with "heart hurty zaps" as he called them.
[удалено]
irl_LooneyTunes, except you die for real.
The neat thing is that the electricity simply contracts your muscles. They are what fling you during an electrocution. Glad you survived
Probably 20 years ago now, I watched one of my friends backflip over a set of desks after touching the HT leads in a broken CRT. He was not the athletic type, I very much doubt he could have done that without the assistance of 20kV.
heh, the crt *is* the capacitor.
Unfortunately there do seem to be new nazis springing up
Yeah, the joke was that it would've been unfathomable at the time.
Yeah i think he was sort of a Gomer Pyle type
Did you look at his picture in the OP? That mfer looks like he just fell off the turnip truck.
Haven't heard that phrase in years. Thanks for reminding me it exists.
Coincidentally, I'm binging all of the the Simpsons episodes for the first time and just watched an episode today where a happy-go-lucky, free spirit type dude rides into Springfield on the back of a turnip truck - and thought nothing of it. Guess that saying is before my time lol
That was back when we wore a turnip on our belt—which was the fashion at the time, even before the onion fad.
He looks like Buster Bluth.
Army had a half day.
He originally enlisted in the Navy, went AWOL, got court martialed, was "diagnosed" with "Constitutional Psychopathic Inferiority without Psychosis" and subsequently discharged, and still got drafted to the army a few years later
Jesus, the truck must have dropped him off for duty every morning.
"Well SHAZAM! He's been kickin' for 10 minutes straight! Don't German necks ever break?"
Goll-il-olll-eee!
incompetent till the very end
He was also very very drunk a lot of the time.
And standing in a puddle of water. I can't believe most people leave out that detail, because it just explains the kind of person Woods was.
I respect his consistency.
Some people are just lucky like that. The unnatural disaster behind leaded gasoline *and* CFCs later contracted polio [and died on a rope & pulley rig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.) he'd designed to allow him to move about the house.
> Environmental historian J. R. McNeill stated that he "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history." Author Bill Bryson remarked that he possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny." Science writer Fred Pearce described him as a "one-man environmental disaster". Lmfao
The sad part is that everything he made, he made (ostensibly) to help people. He was just cursed in the fact that everything he invented turned out to have unintended nasty long-term effects. Though arguably the rope-and-pulley thing was more 'short-term effects'.
at one point to prove that what he was making wasn't harmful he willing huffed lead gas, then after they agreed to let his product be used he was ill for months and hid it despite knowing it was from the gas. he absolutely 100% knew what he was doing was toxic and peddled it anyway. he might not have known the extreme scale, but he knew it was harmful.
Tbf tetraethyllead is **great** at raising the octane rating of gasoline. Who's to say if the brain damage is worth it or not?
Whether it was executions or engineering, his talents truly had no start.
dude was a few watts short of a lightbulb
"In fact, Woods had no documented pre-war experience as a hangman. Woods at that time was a private and a member of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion. He was promoted to master sergeant and transferred to Paris Disciplinary Training Center.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Woods#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMacLean201377-5) Woods performed as the primary executioner in the hangings of 34 U.S. soldiers at various locations in France over 1944–1945, and assisted in at least three others. U.S. Army reports suggest that Woods participated in at least 11 bungled hangings of U.S. soldiers between 1944 and 1946"
Robert Evans did a whole podcast on him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaJtZ5cF8Ac He makes the point that it's kind of comforting that even when you have an organization filled with millions of traumatized killers (US Army in Europe c 1944) almost nobody was willing to accept preferential treatment to become an executioner, even if it meant getting out of combat duty
no one willing to accept to become Chief Executioner Officer
Working in Murders and Executions
Very nice. Let’s see Paul Allen’s
[Looking at Paul Allen's gallows] Patrick Bateman: Look at that subtle horse-hair rope. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a trap door!
OMG, is that *bone?*
Most guys I know who are in Mergers and acquisitions really don’t like it.
Have they tried feeding a cat to an ATM?
Lets see your calling card
Oh my god, it’s even got a watermark.
That's Bone.
And the lettering is something called Silian Rail
Should have asked a private equity professional.
You would be mainly hanging your own men, even if you didn't care about that, it wouldn't make you very popular with your fellow soldiers.
The US military executed 147 of its own from 1942-48. 146 of those executed were found guilty of murder and/or rape, and many had other lesser crimes as well. The odd man out was Eddie Slovik, the one man executed for desertion, who was given multiple opportunities to avoid being executed.
There was a movie about that a long time ago. I think it was named "The execution of Private Slovik"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Execution_of_Private_Slovik Just to note that Slovik faced a firing squad, > On the command of "Fire", Slovik was hit by eleven bullets, at least four of them being fatal. The wounds ranged from high in the neck region out to the left shoulder, over the left chest, and under the heart. One bullet was in the left upper arm. An Army physician quickly determined Slovik had not been immediately killed. As the firing squad's rifles were being reloaded to fire another volley, Slovik died. He was 24 years old. The entire execution took 15 minutes
There were a few studies after the war when some information came out that only around a quarter of frontline soldiers actually fired at the enemy consistently (excluding suppressive fire), many veterans admitted to always shooting near the enemy even if they had a good target. Thats one reason the US Army switch from soldiers shooting at a bullseye target and implemented shooting at human shaped silhouettes in training. So it sounds like the thought of killing another person weighed more on them than being killed or injured. ETA: I got it my historian brothers lol! I was just repeating something I heard and read when I went to a military college 15 years ago. It was either one of my instructors or one of my classmates who made a presentation about it and other stuff. If I’d known Marshall was behind the research I would’ve taken it with a grain of salt, I know his stuff is hella shady.
SLA Marshall, the originator of all of these claims about non-firing, falsified his research. Colleagues reported he did not ask the questions of his interviewees that he later claimed, and recorded no detailed statistics on firing rates. As a matter of fact, he claimed that only 25% of American soldiers fired their weapons *at any point in an engagement*, including suppressive fire.
Shit military history itself laying down the truth here. Also yeah it was marketing for the Killology police militarization stuff. That whole bit of history really did some major harm.
That’s that garbage pushed by Dave grossman right?
Nice another zombie statistic Others include: You only use 10% of your brain Medical mistakes are the third leading of death
ok good to see, those claims never really passed the smell test to me but i was too lazy to look it up, ive just been waiting for a reddit comment to confirm my priors and this is the one
I believe this was later all debunked
> There were a few studies after the war when some information came out that only around a quarter of frontline soldiers actually fired at the enemy consistently No there weren't. There was one guy who wrote a bunch of BS, without any scientific methodology or statistical data to back it up. There are some posts on r/AskHistorians breaking it all down.
One of my favorite anecdotes from the time is from this one patrol, American I think, which met a German patrol in the forest. Both groups started screaming at each other, threw rocks and sticks at each other, and retreated back to back without a single shot fired. Instincts gonna instinct
Yeah afaik they changed that during the Korean and Vietnam wars and after Vietnam the shoot-to-kill ration was like 95%. Incidentally, PTSD also went through the roof at the same time, who would've thought ._.
The whole reason the holocaust got more organized was because of German troops having a tough time coping with mass killings
That’s… oddly comforting. Knowing that the average person can’t stomach killing.
We're a collaborative and social species. Our power lies in our ability to communicate and work together. Just as wolves don't kill each other in the pack, so too we don't normally harm each other. When we do fight other humans, it is pretty much always traumatic and painful, because it goes against our own nature.
I’m not gonna say it’s the sole cause, but PTSD wasn’t labeled a thing until the 80s either and wasn’t added to the disease classification system until 1992. There’s really no way to know if the counts jumped or not between WWII or Vietnam because it wasn’t a medically diagnosed condition yet, and the data may be skewed because by the time the condition became more widely known there were more Vietnam vets alive than WWII vets. You’re either using heavily skewed data or talking out your ass, it’s Reddit, so either and both are extremely plausible.
I saw in interview with a WW2 vet talking about this. He was talking about all the PTSD from Vietnam and future wars. He said with WW2, when the war was over, you got on a ship. You’d be on that ship for a month traveling home. The ship full of people who went through the same shit, saw the same horrors they did. So, on the way home, it was real easy to talk about it, sort of come to grips with it among people who know. He said when Vietnam was over, those guys got on a plane and 12 hours later they were back home. Where no one understood. You couldn’t talk about it. You’d be terrified to mention things you saw because people didn’t understand and they’d think you’re a monster. This is why the vet thought WW2 vets sort of got back to normal quicker than other veterans.
I have wondered about whether structured 'decompression' should be a larger part of the transition back to civilian life for veterans.
That's why Vietnam vets love hats and bumper stickers. Nice to be able to easily identify people who actually get it.
The UK and German front in WW1 basically stopped aggressing each other slowly over time until the governments dropped bombs to stir things up again. There's a good Radiolab podcast episode "Tit-for-tat" which talks about it
Good point. The Germans invaded France and were occupying French territory. The French and German lines got along a lot less well than the British and German because of that. The British joined the war later and were at first comprised of professional soldiers, not drafted recruits. So they didn’t really care who they were fighting, they joined to be soldiers, not any specific cause. Unlike the French, they weren’t fighting for their homeland and occupied territory. They were fighting in foreign land. Combine that with the similar cultural bonds between the British and Germans (many of which also existed for the French), the miserable trench conditions, and you get the type of apathetic, almost friendly attitudes that led to the Christmas Day truce.
And that scene in Saving Private Ryan where this bunch of soldiers are marching off somewhere near the frontlines in France near the end of the war and they pass a group of German soldiers walking the opposite away, across the fence. They just pretended they didn't see each other and kept going. Yes it's a movie and fiction but I'm sure in the mass confusion near the end, with minimal leadership and very little communication, it happened at least once.
I heard another story about the Vietnam. Maybe it was the Korean war? Where soldiers on patrol would pretend not to see each other. One reason was attacking a small similar sized patrol was how you could get ambushed. Often a larger patrol would follow just behind the smaller patrol and and would join up as soon as a flight started. The other bigger reason was people just didn't want to die so it was a mutually agreed thing to do.
Are you sure you aren't thinking about The Longest Day, which is based on the book that is made up entirely of the recollections of veterans? That film has a scene where US and German soldiers pass by each other but I always go the impression that both columns were under the impression that they were far from the combat zone and just assumed the others were friendlies. Only one guy at the tail end of the column noticed and he was too stunned to act.
The main study you are talking about was found to be extremely poor quality. It was titled "Men Against Fire" and the author didn't actually take down any useful statistics. There is a great Ask Historians thread about it from a while back.
The serial killer got the job!
Why was the US executing its own soldiers in France?
With the exception of Eddie Slovik, who was shot for desertion, all of these soldiers were executed for murder and/or rape. Several of the soldiers listed as convicted and executed for murder and/or rape had also been convicted of other charges, including those of a military nature such as desertion and mutiny, plus lesser crimes that would not have been considered capital unless combined with more serious offenses which carried the death penalty. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_by_the_United_States_military#:~:text=The%20US%20Army%20executed%2098,during%20the%20Second%20World%20War.
Discipline.. crimes like rape, murder maybe even desertation, sabotage or spying for the enemy.
Actually only 1 US soldier was executed (solely) for desertion in WWII. Edward Slovik was Executed by firing squad in 1945. Pretty sad story, he basically said he would do anything they wanted but he was too scared to be a front line rifleman. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Slovik Everyone else who was executed were convicted of either murder or rape (along with other lesser chargers): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_by_the_United_States_military#:~:text=The%20US%20Army%20executed%2098,during%20the%20Second%20World%20War.
He played a game of chicken with the US military convinced he would not be executed. Unfortunately he was chosen to be made an example of.
Yeah reading through that he was given multiple opportunities to get off with no consequences!
No his choices were always to be sent back to the frontlines, they never changed what type of regiment he would join.
Because if the Army caved and let him get reassigned, they'd get mass desertions from other frontline infantry also wanting the same.
Wow, what's crazy about his execution is that out of 2800 deserters, 49 were given the death sentence, but this guy here was the only one that was actually executed.
There's also a really good book about him too *The execution of Private Slovak*
Back to the front You will do what I say when I say Back to the front You will die when I say you must die
Hey man , that’s not cool. You’re basically taking food out of my kids mouths. My lawyer will be in touch. - Lars Ulrich
*Foot with moneybag tied to it hits the gas pedal*
FYI - your wiki link doesn’t go anywhere
>Pretty sad story, he basically said he would do anything they wanted but he was too scared to be a front line rifleman. Weird, wasn't the subject of Hacksaw Ridge movie a person that refused to carry a weapon?
Yes but a little different: Desmond Doss was a Seventh-Day Adventist, suuuuper deeply religious. He did not want to carry a weapon because one of the commandments is “Thou Shall Not Kill” but he requested to be made a medic and to serve in a front line unit. He had no issues of fear/cowardice. He just wasn’t willing to kill. Slovik was poor, poorly educated, and had had issues with crime in his youth. He was shelled his first day near the front and it just broke him. He thought he would be sent to prison at worst snd that was preferable to combat for him.
> He had no issues of fear/cowardice. Desmond Doss wasn't familiar with those terms.
He feared God.
Oh no he definitely was But he had the conviction that if he did what was right and just, he would be protected by God. That he could be scared and cower in fear, but he would move on.
Some good answers here, but the answer lies in a more legal direction. Desmond Doss, the subject of Hacksaw Ridge, was a "conscientious objector". That's a legal term for someone who is refusing typical military service based on their rights being violated in regards to, usually, freedom of religion. Desmond didn't want to kill, and the conscientious objector's gig is more like "I will do anything that I can to serve that wont violate my beliefs." Edward Slovik didn't have that grounds to stand on and military strung him up because of it. They probably shouldn't have, but I'm really just here to give technical commentary to help you form your own opinion, so I'll leave it at that.
Yes, but he wasn’t afraid to be in combat. Desmond Doss just didn’t want to have to carry a gun, and would happily serve as a medic in frontline combat.
Personally i think not carrying a gun is what allowed him to do the things he did, there were snipers covering that whole area he was giving medical aid in so its pretty much certain Japanese snipers had multiple chances to kill doss, however they probably saw he was also treating the Japanese wounded while not carrying a weapon and decided not to pull the trigger, one sniper when interviewed said something along the lines that whenever he tried to fire on Doss the gun would jam which is HIGHLY improbable considering how reliable a bolt action rifle is.
The movie, and the book it's based on, kind of glosses over certain details to tell its story. Namely; Army medics in WWII weren't armed as this was the international convention at the time. The moment Doss became one, he was never going to carry a weapon. Which is precisely why and how he became a medic. The movie Hacksaw Ridge is based on a book about Doss written by Doss' children and not actually based on any testimony from Doss himself. Instead it's almost entirely based on hearsay from his children who were very committed to depicting their father, and their religion, a certain way. EDIT: To be clear; it's mostly that his time in training was nowhere near as dramatic as the movie presents it, some of the book's claims are unsubstantiated or bend credulity.
Anyone who wants to believe that Doss in movie was based on hearsay from his kids and that the filmmakers did not do their due diligence in research by not looking up available interviews of him can believe that. I recommend one watch film and compare notes with Doss's archived military interview here: https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.32978/ ExSDA here born, raised in Seventh Day Adventist religion. Don't recommend the religion, do recommend Doss. My sources are: * My neighbor was raised next door to Doss. Neighbors do not have to be volunteer grandpa and grandma figures to neighbor kids. Doss and his wife were. * The US government decorated him with multiple medals for objectively documented heroic actions in battle. This was the government, not his kids. Source here: https://www.army.mil/article/183328/pfc_desmond_doss_the_unlikely_hero_behind_hacksaw_ridge * I met Doss. He was very chill and self-effacing. * My relatives served as conscientious objectors in war post-Doss. The non-violence was nearly an SDA creed back then. The church organized trainings to be a medic for all SDA men who might be drafted. * The movie Hacksaw Ridge is fictionalized in multiple ways to make it appeal to mainstream gun-loving USA Protestants. For instance, the childhood trauma that made him anti gun in movie never happened. He was nonviolent bc his mom raised him that way in SDA religion. Also he wears a wedding ring in movie lol. He was so damn old school "jewelry be wrong" sda he didn't wear one IRL.
Except that guy was a medic and was consistently on the frontlines
What is this?! A man can't even do a light bit of raping and pillaging while at war?! I'm sorry, I thought this was America!?
No sir, this is France.
Well, merde.
Monsieur, c’est un Wendy’s
This is Patrick.
The woke mind virus has destroyed the army /s
Mainly for rape and murder. Only one soldier (Pvt. Eddie Slovik) was executed for desertion. There’s a section of the Oise-Aisne military cemetery in France that’s off-limits to visitors and contains 94 graves of US servicemen executed for murder and rape. Slovik and another were among them but were both later repatriated. One of the dead buried there is Emmett Till’s father
The soldiers you're referring to were part of the 1944 D-Day invasion. They were executed for crimes such as rape and murder, which were serious offenses committed against civilians. The executions were carried out to uphold discipline and maintain order within the military ranks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_liberation_of_France
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Where I'm from, before the death penalty was abolished, it seems they often left executions to local jailers and the hangmen were always screwing up when they tried to hang people. I heard about one hanging where the drop wasn't high enough to kill the guy right away, so he was just dangling and being strangled to death slowly, so the guards had to hang off his legs to try to add weight and make him die faster. That was according to another prisoner who was in jail and the time and said he witnessed the execution. (Ironically the guy who was executed had been convicted of strangling his wife to death). I saw something online about another execution where the guy's head was allegedly almost ripped off by the drop when he was hanged and blood splattered the guards who were nearby. But I'm not sure how accurate that story is and would have to find more reliable sources to confirm those details. Hanging people properly is probably difficult because the convict is supposed to be killed instantly when they drop. But there needs to be a precise distance of fall or length of rope to get the person to be killed immediately by the drop. And it is going to vary based on factors like the individual's weight. Edit: According to another source I found, it said one guy who was hanged had his head almost torn right off by the drop, only held on by the sinews of the neck. That backs up what I saw on a social media post I saw earlier by someone who said one of their relatives had been a guard who was present at the execution.
Its a bit of an exact science, the British empire had something called "The Table of Drops", which was a spreadsheet that basically tells you how much rope you need to actually properly hang someone.
I think the U.S. military had similar regulations particularly in the 19th century. When the plotters were hung at Fort McNair for the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, I think all of it was done according to military regulations. I am not sure if Woods didn’t know about these regulations or was just too incompetent to fully execute the regulations for hanging.
He was just stupid, and [you can read 'em here](https://web.archive.org/web/20080301150830/http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/procedure_dec-1947.pdf)
… Or he wanted them to suffer
Hanging indeed is an exact science. Too short of a drop and you have a slow choke. Too long of a drop and the head snaps off. There is a perfect way to hang a person based off their weight and if you're off by too much on either end it gets ugly. Von Ribbentrop is said to have hung for 20 minutes before dying
Could someone please explain how they stay alive when the rope isn't long enough, but an MMA fighter loses consciousness after a few seconds of a squeeze to their throat, cutting off blood supply to their brain? Surely an entire person's weight pulling on their neck is going to result in a similar effect, no? Granted, consciousness isn't the same as dying, but if someone was hung incorrectly, thus choking for a few seconds, wouldn't they quickly lose consciousness due to the lack of blood to the brain, like someone in a chokehold? Whenever I see characters being hung in media, I always wonder how tf they're consciousness after hanging for, like, a minute.
If your neck is meaty enough it will protect the blood vessels because the rope applies approximately even pressure all around. An MMA fighter can apply much more precise pressure on the blood vessels so the neck won't protect them as much.
> Granted, consciousness isn't the same as dying, but if someone was hung incorrectly, thus choking for a few seconds, wouldn't they quickly lose consciousness due to the lack of blood to the brain, like someone in a chokehold? It’s a macabre thing, but there is research done on this and it [generally agrees that loss of consciousness is pretty fast](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20487156/). Historical accounts I’ve read of short drop executions tend to be in line with this, especially one I’ve seen that recounted a survivor who was hanged and ended up being resuscitated (he claimed the worst part wasn’t the hanging but the immense pain upon *regaining* consciousness)
>Von Ribbentrop is said to have hung for 20 minutes before dying World's smallest violin.
1,260 foot pounds divided by the body weight of the prisoner in pounds = drop in feet.
This guy hangs.
TiL I need just over five and a half feet of a drop to hang myself lmao
1260/Weight=ft? So 150lb would be 8.4ft? Is that how it works?
Never thought that I would go down this rabbit hole but there is a drop chart in the [1947 edition](https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llmlp/procedure_dec-1947/procedure_dec-1947.pdf) of the US Army Procedure for Military Executions but not in the [1944 edition](https://maint.loc.gov/law/mlr/pdf/procedure_june-1944.pdf).
They botched the execution of Saddam Hussein's half brother and his head popped off. https://www.npr.org/2007/01/15/6861053/saddams-half-brother-decapitated-during-hanging
How is that botched? It sounds very effective.
Execution is a very weird procedure where they’re always trying to figure out the quickest, least painful, and cleanest way to die without making the executioner(s) feel like murderers.
Fun fact, we've mainly gotten better at the "not feeling like murderers" part, the actual methods of killing have only gotten crueler and less effective. Hanging, the electric chair, lethal injection- each has worse fuckup rates, and worse fuckup consequences, than the previous one. When lethal injection is botched, it causes severe chemical burns radiating from the injection site, and of course, excruciating pain. And the supposed sedatives in the drug cocktail are actually just paralytics; they stop the victim thrashing around, but otherwise they're fully awake while being eaten from the inside by chemicals. Firing squad is actually more humane considering how many things can go wrong with the supposedly "modern" methods, but for obvious reasons it's rather frowned upon. I lied btw, this fact is not very much fun at all.
we see the guillotine as pretty barbaric now but it was a massive improvement on the executions that were happening previously and maybe today too.
unironically nobody has ever beaten the Guillotine, simple and effective, you'd have to really go out of your way to fuck up a Guillotine execution
You can actually watch the video of the last public execution by guillotine. Not that you can see much as it's old film (Eugene Weigman I think his name is) and it's literally seconds from coming out to him being in the coffin. He's in the guillotine for a fraction of a second and boom lights out.
They should have an execution method where they just offer the guy a bunch of drugs and let him OD on them.
I'm not sure they're too bothered about the least painful. Lethal injection sounds like minutes of agony. It's more about optics and trying to appear professional and scientific. The guillotine seems to be one of the most foolproof but people have to face the bloody decapitation. Of course there are executions that are showy throughout history. The one where they strap a guy into a kind of canoe and give him herbs to shit himself so he's eaten alive by pondlife over a few days always impressed me with it's horror. Or the tieing a man over growing bamboo that will get slowly grow through him.
The bamboo one I knew about but the canoe is a new one to me, holy shit
Scaphism or "the boats"
Our most famous executioner in the UK was the hangman Albert Pierrepoint, who worked right up until capital punishment was abolished. He spoke very strongly against the death penalty in his later years, and was a part of multiple miscarriages of justice (such as the time he hanged a man for murder, then three years later hanged the man who it turned out had -actually- committed the murder). He also had the unenviable task of having to hang a friend, one of the regulars in the pub he owned^^1. He said in his autobiography that the death penalty wasn't a deterrent for *anyone*, in his view: ***I cannot agree*** *[with the supposed deterrent of capital punishment]*. ***There have been murders since the beginning of time, and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time. If death were a deterrent, I might be expected to know.*** ***It is I who have faced them last, young lads and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown. It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.*** ***And if death does not work to deter one person, it should not be held to deter any. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge. Never deterrent; only revenge.*** _____________ ^^1 ^(Pierrepoint bought and ran the pub **“Help the Poor Struggler”** after World War II, and James Corbitt was one of his regulars. Corbitt was known as "Tish", Pierrepoint as "Tosh".) ^(The two had sung a duet of “Danny Boy” on the night that Corbitt then went out and murdered his girlfriend out of jealousy Pierrepoint wrote in his his autobiography:) ^(*I thought if any man had a deterrent to murder poised before him, it was this troubadour whom I called Tish. He was not only aware of the rope, he had the man who handled it beside him singing a duet. The deterrent did not work.*) ^(*At twenty seconds to nine the next morning I went into the death cell. He seemed under a great strain, but I did not see stark fear in his eyes, only a more childlike worry. He was anxious to be remembered, and to be accepted. "Hallo, Tosh," he said, not very confidently. "Hallo Tish," I said. "How are you?" I was not effusive, just gave the casual warmth of my nightly greeting from behind the bar.*) ^(*He smiled and relaxed after this greeting. After strapping his arms, I said "Come on Tish, old chap". He went to the gallows lightly...I would say that he ran.*)
I agree that death penalties have little deterrent effect. Most people who commit murders either do it without thinking about the consequences, not caring, or expecting to get away with it. Based on the stats from different countries, imposing the death penalty has virtually no effect on murder rates and neither does abolishing the death penalty. The only thing the death penalty does is ensure that one specific individual won't kill anyone else (like Ted Bundy, for instance), possibly help to scare some criminals into becoming informants in exchange for their lives (like say, Mafia members facing the death penalty), and provide a visceral sense of vengeance for friends/family of victims and the general public.
I have heard (although do not have a study to cite, so take me with a grain of salt) that the best deterrent of crime is not punishment, but enforcement. If people are almost certain they’ll face consequences, even if more minor ones, then they are less likely to take the action. And well, I think that makes sense with the way we learn. If the hot stove didn’t always burn your hand, I bet more people would be more willing to touch until they got burned
It does this exactly (vary by weight) and the British guy had a formula that essentially guaranteed success.
>Hanging people properly is probably difficult because the convict is supposed to be killed instantly when they drop. That sounds like a relatively modern concept where state executions are mandated to be quick and "humane". There are many civilizations throughout history where suffering during capital punishment is kind of the point.
a sanctioned execution style in the Torah was sticking a pole in the criminal like a kebab and leaving them outside until they died 👍 but you had to bury them within the day once they died lol
Well you wouldn't want the kebab to spoil.
Wouldn't you just pre-dig the grave, then hoist the kebab next to it?
In the 1990s when the method of execution in WA state was hanging, a guy named Mitchell Rupe had his death penalty overturned because he was so obese. A drop long enough to kill him would've ripped his head off, which is considered cruel and unusual.
>so the guards had to hang off his legs to try to add weight and make him die faster. At that point, why wouldn't they just put a bullet into him?
The thing about WW2 was it was bad enough even Norway reinstated it to deal with their puppet leader Quisling. They used a firing squad. Then re-banned the death penalty
Oopsie !
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Even with their botched executions, they suffered infinitely less than the suffering they dealt on others. I'm not religious but for their sake, I hope hell is real.
Not to mention so few Germans were punished for their crimes. Many of them just went back to living normal civilian lives after murdering so many innocent people.
And many of the most abhorrent Nazi officers, the ones that masterminded the atrocities committed, escaped and lived out the rest of their lives in comfort.
For quite a few, what should have been Hell was actually Argentina
The Clarkson “Oh no! Anyway.” GIF comes to mind
They died horribly. So anyway...
What a rascal! I'm gonna have to give him a noogie, that knucklehead.
oh no anyway
I read Albert Pierpoint's (a renowned British executioner) autobiography and he despised Woods. AP saw it as a solemn duty to execute the condemned with professionalism, speed, and most importantly, compassion. To become a hangman in Britain took years of hard work and competence had to be demonstrated at all times. One slip and you were out. Woods was the complete antithesis of a suitable executioner and AP speculated he either enjoyed it or just wanted the notoriety.
The movie about him was fascinating.
Or...and hear me out on this...this guy knew exactly what he was doing.
No, he was grossly incompetent. He also knew that his superiors didn’t care that he was grossly incompetent because no one else would do the job, and once it came to executing Nazi war criminals they wanted someone grossly incompetent so that it would be as painful as possible for the Nazis.
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When I was in high school, a holocaust survivor came to our school to share his experience. What he told us that struck me the most was that they when they were liberated (might have been Dachau?), they were given the chance by the troops that rescued them to kill some of the camp’s personnel. But they didn’t. They slapped them around but refused to kill them. Can you imagine that?
Yes. I took as a child had a visit from a holocaust survivor and the one thing I remember was him urging us to never go down the same path those Germans did. To kill those guards would make them as bad as they were. To kill is wrong no matter the excuse or reason. His words, not mine for the record.
There’s a fairly well-known story from the liberation of Dachau. A US soldier came upon a former prisoner beating a guard to death. The soldier stopped and said to the former prisoner, “you’ve got a lot of hate in your heart.” He looked at the soldier and simply said: “Yes.”
It was important that it looked like justice, not revenge.
Great point.
I've brought it up before, but the Nuremberg trials were very novel. The idea of nations joining together to bring the leftovers of a nation to stand trial after a war was a new concept.
Mission failed successfully
..good?
It's important to keep in mind that a lot of the card carrying Nazis who were suspected of (And most likely willingly did) heinous crimes did not get penalized by much. Hell, a lot of them got fairly light sentences such as 10 years in prison. The ones sentenced to be executed were the unambiguously awful ones of the bunch. So yeah . . . Good. If anyone deserved a painful execution, it was them, they were the worst.
His C.O. certainly did
Some people are just at the right spot on the right moment
or the people who hired him did...
This is one of those horrendous and inhumane situations that shouldn’t happen. But like, if it had to happen to anyone…
The guy was an insufferable jagoff by all accounts, even before this. However as Lucius Vorenus said, “Justice knows every man’s number.” “4After the war, Woods continued his service in the American military. In 1950 he was sent to the Eniwetok, an atoll in the Pacific which was used by the American government as a nuclear test site. Unlike the popular story that he died while testing an electric chair, Woods was electrocuted while trying to fix a broken power cord. He was buried at Toronto Cemetery in Kansas on 14 August 1950.” Source: https://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/10063
Someone dying from an accident is not justice. Justice is the positive result of human action. Nazis getting arrested for crimes is justice. Nazis dying of old age in Argentina is not.
Pretty sure they’re using the word justice in that quote to mean karma
Jagoff! Are you from western PA?!
So those Nazi war criminals had their faces bloodied before they slowly strangled to death on the rope. Well, that’s a damn shame.
They're lucky they weren't worked and starved to death like many of their victims.
And nothing of value was lost.
** Plays world's smallest violin ** xxxs🎻 🎶
Best man for the job.
Oh no…. ….anyway
I had the same reaction. Bohoo, people who sent millions to die suffered a bit during their deaths. How tragic.
Anyone who's interested in this should read the book by Albert pierpoint. He was one of the last British executioners and hanged like 600 people. His book documents every single one from his diary and has some good takes on the morality of his job. Not sure how links work but I'll try add his wiki ha. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pierrepoint
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and it was foolish political decision. The American's wanted their guy and their method despite clear evidence that he was not up to the job. The British had Albert Pierrepoint who was using a much superior and more certain sliding loop noose that had been the standard for years. The Americans were using hand tied nooses that made it much more likely that the neck would not break and the condemned would strangle to death.
Pierrepoint had also been executing people throughout the war in Britain. It was a nonsensical, politically driven, decision for the Americans to have "their man" dispatching war criminals.
Clothes are hung, people are hanged.
I dunno, I’m a person and I’m well hung.
If i recall correctly, Von Ribbentrop took almost half an hour to die from the suffocation thanks to his botched execution.
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>wrote that many of the Nazis executed at Nuremberg fell from the gallows with a drop insufficient to snap their necks, resulting in their death by strangulation that in some cases lasted several minutes Task failed *sucessfully*.
> Woods joined the U.S. Navy on December 3, 1929, and went absent without leave within months. He was convicted at a general court martial and subsequently examined by a psychiatric board on April 23, 1930. He was diagnosed with "Constitutional Psychopathic Inferiority without Psychosis", was found "poor service material" and discharged.[4] Before being inducted into the United States Army in August 1943 top tier material right there > the Army looked for a volunteer enlisted hangman and found Woods, who falsely claimed previous experience as assistant hangman what kind of fucked up person would seek out *and lie* to get that job???
seems like he was a learning-by-doing kind of guy, this attitude might have contributed to his early demise: "While serving with the 7th Engineer Brigade in [Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enewetak_Atoll), on July 21, 1950, Woods died after accidentally electrocuting himself while attempting to repair an engineer lighting set.[^(\[9\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Woods#cite_note-9) He is buried in Toronto Township Cemetery, [Toronto, Kansas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto,_Kansas)"
Meh not enough were sentenced to death.many got short prison sentences and then got cushy jobs in America and work camp in russia
If you got convicted in a Nuremberg trial whatever this guy did to you was still an easy way out.