Beheadings in the Third Reich

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Pete26
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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1681

Post by Pete26 » 03 May 2008, 21:51

Piotr1 wrote: I have no information about mediaeval german "diele"
This article references several sources that supposedly give a good description of the device called diele, hobel, or dolabra.

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Guillotine

I found the following description of diele in one article:

It looked like a window made of two short vertical beams about 50 cm high and attached to the execution block. A blade moved in the grooves in the vertical beams and was lowered onto the neck of the victim. The executioner then grabbed a heavy stick or a large mallet and hit the blade with sufficient force to sever the head of the victim.

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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1682

Post by gordon anderson » 05 May 2008, 16:30

GO AT ONCE to this address ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-cpONnfTw8
a heretofore unknown to most view of the actual Weidmann guillotine execution In Versaille .

then look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFlBjzmsvno
you will see 2 guillotine executions these are real done in Hanoi . Be warned you see the actual decapitations.


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Paul53
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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1683

Post by Paul53 » 05 May 2008, 23:06

gordon anderson wrote:GO AT ONCE to this address ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-cpONnfTw8
a heretofore unknown to most view of the actual Weidmann guillotine execution In Versaille .

then look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFlBjzmsvno
you will see 2 guillotine executions these are real done in Hanoi . Be warned you see the actual decapitations.
Where on earth did they find that......I noticed that neither on the Weidmann film,nor on the Hanoi executions,the comdemned s heads are held. Was this practice discontinued then?

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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1684

Post by gordon anderson » 06 May 2008, 00:32

No, the practice wasn't done away with, Orbrecht was the 1st assistant and he left his post. Not an auspicious start for him. And in Hanoi there is no one in place so you can see the heads fall. Normally the assistant would block this view and they left the three sided shield out of the way as well for this reason.

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Re: Eugene Weidmann video

#1685

Post by Pete26 » 06 May 2008, 04:30

Interesting, although it appears that the video is running at faster than normal speed, about 50% faster in my estimation. Compare to this normal speed video taken from an elevated position behind the guillotine (time between 4:20 to 4:37 seconds in the overall clip):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXels5zsE_M

In the other video the scene takes about 11 seconds, while in the normal speed one it takes about 17 seconds.

Pete26
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Time article on execution of Benita von Falkenhayn

#1686

Post by Pete26 » 06 May 2008, 04:59

This 25 February 1935 TIME article gives an interesting description of the story behind the beheading of Benita von Falkenhayn and Renate von Natzmer. It is also noted that the backs of the women's heads were shaved bald prior to the execution. This means that it was not only done for guillotine executions, but also for axe beheadings. The Zaluji books also confirm this as a common practice for condemned women at Pankraz prison.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 0-1,00.htm

http://www.geocities.com/as_k13/Falkenhayn.html

http://www.geocities.com/as_k13/Natzmer.html

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Paul53
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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1687

Post by Paul53 » 06 May 2008, 11:16

In Kershaw s book, a description of the hours before Weidmann s execution is given on page 74/75 quote....1939 Weidmann was executed outside the prison at Versalles.it was the culmination of a genuine cause celebre and there were numerous onlookers..conditions at Versailles were ideal for them and their Dickensian relish was altogether too much for prissy authority.Thtoughout the night,it is said, the condemned man could hear the jovial mob whiling away the time which must elapse before things got under way.They perched on window ledges and in the branches of trees...all apartments with a view on the place had been rented at heroic prices long before...buskers diverted the gatherings until such time as M.Desfourneaux and his asssistants began the curtain raiser...the punctilious setting up of their machine.Quantities of wine were exuberantly drunk,songs were sung,jests exchanged..unquote.

This was the reason that the authorities decided with the Decree of june 24,1939,to carry out all further execution within the prison.Source Alister Kershaw, History of the Guillotine.
By the way,it seemed to me that the Hanoi Guillotine was built almost an exact replica from the Paris machine.Is this true?
And I wondered why the Germans at one time decided to divert from the Frech model and to build their own.Apart from the reasons already indicated, some nationalistic element may have come into play.During Nazi rule, the term Guillotine was avoided altogether,the instrument having been referred to as Fallbeil, Fallschwertmaschine, F Geraet and the like.

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andreobrecht
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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1688

Post by andreobrecht » 07 May 2008, 01:21

Regarding the speed of the two Weidmann clips, the one taken from behind and above is the one that is too slow the other clip is the one that runs normal speed. This has been analyzed to the Nth degree by several people on the other "guillotine" forum where these videos were originally posted. The calculated real drop speed of the blade of approx. 0.65 sec is stretched to about 1.1 sec in the video. Someone managed to speed up the video 1.5 x and the rhythm of the scene appears more correct.

Most of the French guillotines used after 1872 were of the "Berger" design (in reference to Alphonse Berger, 1841-1906, who designed the "New" French guillotine). This design was first produced in 1868 and the modified version in 1872 (See Gordon's earlier post), therefore the guillotines from Guyana, Algeria, Hanoi, Saigon, New Caledonia, Tahiti, France and Sweden are more or less identical, as were the Tegel and 1854 fallbeils.

The French design is actually 14-years newer than the 1854 Fallbeil and completely different from the older French design so, in that regard, both the French and Germans decided that a new design was needed to replace the antiquated 1792 style machine. The Germans went for an industrial, all-metal, killing machine, while the French went for a more furniture-like, graceful, but still very sophisticated, design. This seems to perfectly fit their respective personalities.

In response to an earlier question, the blade shield was used on older style wooden guillotines, both in Germany (Hamburg, Weimar) and in France (Executioner Nicolas Roch had it added to his machine in 1878 but his successor, Louis Deibler, promptly had it removed in 1879).

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Paul53
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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1689

Post by Paul53 » 07 May 2008, 01:52

The German design was,of course ,easier to build, using prefab elements such as the uprights, of rolled steel instead of labour intensive wooden posts.

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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1690

Post by Pete26 » 07 May 2008, 04:16

andreobrecht wrote:Regarding the speed of the two Weidmann clips, the one taken from behind and above is the one that is too slow the other clip is the one that runs normal speed. This has been analyzed to the Nth degree by several people on the other "guillotine" forum where these videos were originally posted. The calculated real drop speed of the blade of approx. 0.65 sec is stretched to about 1.1 sec in the video. Someone managed to speed up the video 1.5 x and the rhythm of the scene appears more correct.
I take your word for it - I was not aware of this discussion on the other site, but something did not look quite right. Using 2.2 meters as the blade drop distance, and 9.81 m/s/s for gravitational acceleration, and neglecting the friction, the time for the blade to fall is 0.67 seconds. I did not time the blade drop, but your explanation makes sense. Now when I look at it, one clip appears to be a about 10% too fast, the other about 40% too slow.

To come to think of it, the actual beheading is so fast, that it must have looked disappointing to the spectators who waited all night to see it. In fact, when the guillotine was first used in France, many echoed this very sentiment - they wanted to go back to breaking on the wheel and hanging to watch the condemned suffer much longer.

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Paul53
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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1691

Post by Paul53 » 08 May 2008, 17:13

gordon anderson wrote:No, the practice wasn't done away with, Orbrecht was the 1st assistant and he left his post. Not an auspicious start for him. And in Hanoi there is no one in place so you can see the heads fall. Normally the assistant would block this view and they left the three sided shield out of the way as well for this reason.
Did nobody mind about Obrecht leaving his post?Obviously,he seemed to think that it was not necessary to hold heads.I wonder if the practice of holding the head was retained for as long as capital punishement existed in France ,or that it was abandoned as being useless.In any case, the Germans seemed to have been able to do without it.

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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1692

Post by Pete26 » 08 May 2008, 23:57

Paul53 wrote:
Did nobody mind about Obrecht leaving his post?Obviously,he seemed to think that it was not necessary to hold heads.I wonder if the practice of holding the head was retained for as long as capital punishement existed in France ,or that it was abandoned as being useless.In any case, the Germans seemed to have been able to do without it.


I do not think that Weidmann cared. As for Olbrecht, he probably felt that his own hands could be in danger of being hit by the heavy 40 kg mouton/blade moving at over 6 m/s when crashing all the way down.

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Paul53
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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1693

Post by Paul53 » 09 May 2008, 00:11

Pete26 wrote:
Paul53 wrote:
Did nobody mind about Obrecht leaving his post?Obviously,he seemed to think that it was not necessary to hold heads.I wonder if the practice of holding the head was retained for as long as capital punishement existed in France ,or that it was abandoned as being useless.In any case, the Germans seemed to have been able to do without it.


I do not think that Weidmann cared. As for Olbrecht, he probably felt that his own hands could be in danger of being hit by the heavy 40 kg mouton/blade moving at over 6 m/s when crashing all the way down.
:)I see.I read somewhere that the fall of the blade took 3/4 of a second.

Pete26
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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1694

Post by Pete26 » 09 May 2008, 00:57

Why can't a decapitated person's head speak while it is still conscious for several seconds immediately following the decapitation?

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Re: Beheadings in Third Reich

#1695

Post by David Thompson » 09 May 2008, 01:09

Pete26 -- There's probably not much air coming out of the victim's lungs into the severed throat, assuming the voice box, vocal cords and vocal musculature weren't destroyed by the "surgical strike" of the blade. Now let's get back on topic.

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