Beheadings in the Third Reich

[ChristopherPerrien]

Given the New Year, I salute this excellent, well researched/supported topic and its longevity. I hope it continues for many more years, there will never be a better source than what can read here.

Chris

[fredric]

Thanks. I agree that this topic contains more information on the subject than any other
source I have found. Everyone who has contributed is to be thanked for this.
However we seem to have run a bit thin on new material at the moment. I hope more new info
will turn up soon.

[Pete26]

An interesting documentary discussing guillotine executions in East Germany after WWII. They talk at some length about the trial and subsequent beheading of Manfred Smolka in 1960. The execution report shows that it took only 2 seconds to carry out the execution after he was handed over to the executioner, which is hard to believe. The executioner used two assistants. There is a short clip about the trial of Dr Horst Fischer, who was the last person judicially beheaded in East Germany. They also mention an incident where it took 36 seconds to behead a prisoner due to guillotine malfunction when the blade got stuck above the prisoner's neck. Was the condemned person Dr Fischer? This embarrassing incident was used as the main reason to change the execution method to an unexpected shot to the back of the heads in the late 1960s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrIgWoD0MZ4

[fredric]

I do not believe beheading Fishcher took 28 seconds but have never found an execution report.
The 36 second beheading could be the execution of Werner Gladow.
I think we all have seen the report that the blade stuck and had to be dropped three times.
Two seconds is impossible. The executioner would have to have been better than Reichhart!
Reichhart's claim was that he and his team were so practiced that they could seize and behead their victim in 3 seconds.
Post-war executioners, except for Hehr and Reichhart, were not experts.
The East German fallbeil was a Tegel, not the Mannhardt shown in the film and identified as being in Brandenburg.
The fallbeil in East Germany must have been in poor condition. I believe it came from Dresden.
Good film anyway. I think Lorenz only used his automatic pistol, not the fallbeil.

[Pete26]

I do not believe beheading Fishcher took 28 seconds but have never found an execution report.
The 36 second beheading could be the execution of Werner Gladow.
I think we all have seen the report that the blade stuck and had to be dropped three times.
Two seconds is impossible. The executioner would have to have been better than Reichhart!
Reichhart's claim was that he and his team were so practiced that they could seize and behead their victim in 3 seconds.
Post-war executioners, except for Hehr and Reichhart, were not experts.
The East German fallbeil was a Tegel, not the Mannhardt shown in the film and identified as being in Brandenburg.
The fallbeil in East Germany must have been in poor condition. I believe it came from Dresden.
Good film anyway. I think Lorenz only used his automatic pistol, not the fallbeil.

Werner Gladow was beheaded in 1950 in Frankfurt on Oder. East Germany used the guillotine for another 16 years after that. So I seriously doubt that it was the botched execution of Werner Gladow that motivated the state to abandon the guillotine. I think it was an incident that happened very shortly before 1966 when Dr Fischer was beheaded, or even during Dr Fischer's execution itself.

And yes, the executioner Hermann Lorenz executed prisoners only by shooting in the back of the head.

I was hoping for an authentic photo of the original Dresden fallbeil installed in the Leipzig prison execution room. These photos no doubt exist but appear to be hidden in some East German archive and evidently were not accessible even to this documentary movie producers. The execution suite in Leipzig was made by modifying the former prison caretaker's apartment. The guillotine itself was located in the former children's nursery. You can see the impression on the floor left by the heavy wooden support under the vertical frame.

It is mentioned in the clip that following the execution, the body was placed in a casket and transported to the local crematorium the same day. For many executed prisoners, the remains were not identified by name, but referred to as "anatomical waste".
The cremains were secretly buried. The cause of death was typically falsified, if the death was reported by the media.

[Pete26]

about the Stadelheim guillotine - should it be exhibited or not? The opinion of several memorial center directors is no, among them those from Dresden Munchner Platz, Wolfenbuttel, and Roter Ochse in Halle. This article also states the year of death of executioner Alois Weiss as 1969, not 1986 as published in some sources.

The article refers to a "15 kilogram heavy and larger than man killing machine". This is very awkwardly stated, as the "15 kilogram" refers to the weight of the blade only, without the sledge. The combined weight of the blade and sledge (moving frame) was at least 60 kilograms. The weight of the entire machine was about 500 kilograms.

http://www.taz.de/!131376/

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[Pete26]

Delete

[Pete26]

Police Lieutenant Fritz Fehrmann was the first political victim in East Germany after the construction of the Berlin Wall. He was convicted of espionage, sentenced to death on 22 September 1961 in Frankfurt on Oder, and guillotined in Leipzig on 21 October 1961. The execution was carried out at 4 o'clock in the morning. His body was subsequently cremated and nobody knows where the ashes have been buried. His wife was given a 10 year prison sentence.



http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/brandenb ... 06696.html

Memorial plaque for Fritz Fehrmann:



http://www.mik.brandenburg.de/media_fas ... 063506.jpg

[Pete26]

http://www.doew.at/cms/download/e1o6m/f ... stiz-6.pdf

[Pete26]

http://f3.webmart.de/f.cfm?id=2165073&r ... 54734&pg=1

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Some interesting facts: the cross on the wall in the Leipzig execution room was not there when the chamber was used for executions, it was placed there in 1990. An effort is underway to restore the memorial, and it will cost several million Euros to perform the necessary work.

[Pete26]

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sondergeri ... 6_1943.jpg

[Piotr1]

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[Pete26]

Even though he was not a resistance fighter, but a serial killer, he was caught by the French authorities during its occupation by Nazi Germany and then he was guillotined in 1946, shortly after WWII ended.
This article reveals some grisly details of his crimes not found elsewhere.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news ... t---303745

Two police officers rushed into his elegant townhouse expecting to put out a chimney fire – and instead stumbled upon a scene of barbarity so appalling they both vomited.


Mutilated bodies in various states of decay were strewn across two floors of his 19th-Century mansion.


Down a marble staircase were canvas bags full of severed legs, arms and heads – enough parts for at least 10 complete bodies.

More remains were burning in two basement stoves – the cause of the thick smoke.

Police later took away “33 pounds of charred bones, 11 pounds of human hair, including more than 10 whole scalps, and three dustbins full of pieces too small to identify

.

In all, Petiot is believed to have stolen 200million francs from his victims – around £15million today.

Finally, three months before D-Day, one of history’s most gruesome serial killers – the Butcher of Paris – had been unmasked.
Officially he murdered 27 men, women and children, but he admitted to killing 63 and the toll could be at least 160.

After seven months on the run, he was caught in a Metro station in October 1944. He was charged with 135 crimes, including 26 counts of murder.
Petiot said his victims were Germans or Gestapo informers and told the chaplain: “My conscience is clean.”
One witness at his execution noted: “He approached the guillotine with ease, as if he were walking into the office for a routine appointment.”
Petiot then told the people present: “Gentlemen, I ask you not to look. This will not be very pretty.”
It was a brutal end to a savage life.

[Deliverance]

Petiot's execution was the first post WWII use of the guillotine in France. It was also the last time it was photographed in French service, a few pictures being available on the internet of it being dismantled at the Santé Prison.

[Pete26]

More on Dr Petiot, including many photos.

http://blogfamigerados.blogspot.com/2012/10/petiot.html

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