Nazi cyanide suicides

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algy
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Who made the ampoules ?

#16

Post by algy » 28 Jan 2004, 18:13

From Anton Joachimsthaler "The last days of Hitler" ISBN 0-304-35453-8

"According to a directive of the Director of the Reich Criminal Police Departement in the Reich Central Security Office, SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe, between 3.000 and 4.000 so called "self-destructors" were developed in the departments laboratories in the Criminological-Technological Institute. The chemists used dehydrated prussic acid (HCN) with an additive of 2 per cent oxylic acid. The ampoules were produced in the depertments labratories in the Sachsenhausen concentrationcamp near Oranienburg nort-west of Berlin. Linge stated that Hitler had about twelve of these ampoules, whereas Frau Junge spoke of ten."

//ALGY

varjag
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#17

Post by varjag » 29 Jan 2004, 05:37

Thanks for that snippet Algy - the RSHA and Crim/Tech Dpt. certainly sounds like logical sources for such items. I thought Hitler had a bagfull of them - he certainly handed them out like lollies during the last days. Two recipients were Ritter v. Greim and Hanna Reitsch. A persistent rumour was that when Hanna Reitsch died in the 80-ies (?) - she used Hitlers farewell present to exit this world. Can anyone confirm this?


xcalibur
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#18

Post by xcalibur » 29 Jan 2004, 06:19

varjag wrote:Thanks for that snippet Algy - the RSHA and Crim/Tech Dpt. certainly sounds like logical sources for such items. I thought Hitler had a bagfull of them - he certainly handed them out like lollies during the last days. Two recipients were Ritter v. Greim and Hanna Reitsch. A persistent rumour was that when Hanna Reitsch died in the 80-ies (?) - she used Hitlers farewell present to exit this world. Can anyone confirm this?
I was always under the impression she died of a heart attack.... Perhaps the confusion is in the fact that Von Greim and some of her family committed suicide in the last days or shortly thereafter...

MilHist BT
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#19

Post by MilHist BT » 21 Aug 2007, 00:53

Hi All

Interesting. Had not really considered the issue before.

Zyklon B was a prussic acid based organic toxin in crystal form used pre war as a vermicide to fumigate buildings. It was converted into the gas agent used in the vernichtungslager gas chambers by eliminating the chemical warning odor and decreasing its stability in order to cause it to decompose at lower temperatures and outgas more rapidly.
After the crystals were dumped through ventillation hoods into the gas chamber the crystals warmed up and decomposed, producing potassium cyanide gas. When inhaled, potassium cyanide gas reacts with moisture in the nose, throat and lungs to produce hydrocyanic acid which then proceeds to paralyze the diaphram. This causes death by suffocation.

Death by suffocation is a slow agonal process that can take 5 -10 minutes depending on how long it takes to inhale a lethal dose, completely shutdown the lungs, then consume all the anerobic oxygen in your blood.

When Goering suicided his captors heard no thrashing about or noises. Hermann was a rather large fellow, and I can guarantee that if he was suffocating he would have trashed that cell and made a lot of racket, so there must be a cyanide type which kills quickly. Potassium cyanide does not.

nondescript handle
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#20

Post by nondescript handle » 21 Aug 2007, 03:14

MilHist BT wrote:[...]When inhaled, potassium cyanide gas reacts with moisture in the nose, throat and lungs to produce hydrocyanic acid which then proceeds to paralyze the diaphram.[...]
1) But potassium cyanide swallowed dissociates quickly into CN+ (and K-) due to the gastric acid. The CN+ then permeates very quickly into the blood stream, where it associates nearly instantly to HCN (hydrocyanic acid).

2) Hydrocyanic acid inhibits the cytochrome c oxidase in the mitochondrions resulting in a very quick "cellular suffocation".

This "cellular suffocation" (i.e. disruption of the mitochondrial adenosine triphosphate production) is totally different from the "macroscopic suffocation" (i.e. disruption of normal breathing, e.g. by a paralyzed diaphragm).

Regards
Mark

peewee
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Re: Nazi cyanide suicides

#21

Post by peewee » 09 Dec 2010, 03:55

I have a little question about the lipstick-type container for cyanide?
I think that they have this container, but I'm not sure why I have attached some pictures.

thanks
Attachments
P1000525.JPG
P1000525.JPG (206.43 KiB) Viewed 3383 times
P1000521.JPG
P1000521.JPG (220.08 KiB) Viewed 3383 times
P1000519.JPG
cyanide lipstick
P1000519.JPG (224.15 KiB) Viewed 3383 times

peewee
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Re: Nazi cyanide suicides

#22

Post by peewee » 09 Dec 2010, 11:32

I apologize for my poor English !!

cucumberbear
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Re: Nazi cyanide suicides

#23

Post by cucumberbear » 12 Dec 2010, 18:47

bonzen wrote:Twelve minutes? Death was almost instantaneous. Prefered method was raise a pistol to your temple, bite on the cyanide capsule, and pull the trigger.
That's why they found shards of glass in Hitler's teeth.
I disagree.

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Grisu
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Re: I disagree.

#24

Post by Grisu » 20 Dec 2010, 18:46

cucumberbear wrote:
bonzen wrote:Twelve minutes? Death was almost instantaneous. Prefered method was raise a pistol to your temple, bite on the cyanide capsule, and pull the trigger.
That's why they found shards of glass in Hitler's teeth.
I disagree.
It was the Smersch-report claiming this, wasn't it?

cucumberbear
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Re: Nazi cyanide suicides

#25

Post by cucumberbear » 21 Dec 2010, 12:53

Yes, the SMERSH Report, correct. But the SMERSH Report also included footage of a group of SMERSH Agents grouped round a body in a trench grinning and taking photographs of the corpse in the trench whose body was not burnt and whose face looked familiar and with what appeared to be a bullet hole right in the centre of the forehead. It looked very much like crude Soviet Propaganda.

murx
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Re: Nazi cyanide suicides

#26

Post by murx » 31 Dec 2010, 16:50

Quotation from a doctor thesis from the department of Forensic Medicine, University of Bonn:

Besonders zu erwähnen ist jedoch an dieser Stelle noch ein Gift, welches zum Ende des 2.
Weltkriegs bei einer bestimmten Gruppe von Suizidanten vermehrt zum Einsatz kam: das
Zyankali. Einige der einflussreichsten NS-Größen entzogen sich auf diese Weise der
Gerichtsbarkeit durch die Alliierten. So nahm sich beispielsweise Heinrich Himmler, von 1929-
1945 Reichsführer der SS, kurz nach seiner Festnahme am 23. Mai 1945 mit einem Zyankali-
Röhrchen das Leben. Hermann Göring, der als preußischer Innenminister die GeStaPo (Geheime
Staatspolizei) erschuf und später Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe wurde, beging wenige Stunden
vor der Vollstreckung seines Todesurteils in der Nürnberger Haftanstalt Selbstmord mit Zyankali,
die Herkunft der Giftkapsel ist nicht eindeutig geklärt. Magda und Josef Goebbels,
„Propagandaminister“ der NSDAP, vergifteten ihre sechs Kinder mit Zyankali und nahmen sich
im Anschluss selbst das Leben. Auch bei Reichsaußenminister Joachim von Ribbentrop wird bei
seiner Festnahme eine Kapsel mit Zyankali gefunden.



Special notice shall be given here to a poison, which was used with increasing frequency towards the end of WW II by a certain group of suiciders: cyankali. Some of the most influencing NS-bigshots withdraw themselves from the allied's judement in this way. Heinrich Himmler for example, Reichsführer SS from 29 to 45, shortly after his arrest took his own life using a cyankali tubule. Herrmann Göhring....some hours before his execution committed suicide using cyankali, the origin of the capsule yet is not clarified. Magda and Josef Goebbels pousoned their six children using cyankali ad then took their own lifes. In the belongings of J: Ribbentropp cyankali was found during his arrest.



Seems to be beyond reasonable doubt.


From: Anna Charlotte Fuhrmeister: Vergiftungen – Panoramawechsel der letzten Jahrzehnte. Ergebnisse einer Literaturstudie (Intoxications (Poisonings)- spectrum changes during the last decades. Result of a literature research)
University of Bonn, Medical faculty, 2005

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Grisu
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Re: Nazi cyanide suicides

#27

Post by Grisu » 04 Jan 2011, 12:51

Does the thesis say anything about the quality of cyanide? I was once told by a physician that the the quality of the poison in use differed greatly from high quality poison (practically leading to instant death) down to poison of very poor quality, mixed with other (poisonous/non-poisonous) substances (being the reason for long death struggles, or failed suicides).

varjag
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Re: Nazi cyanide suicides

#28

Post by varjag » 19 Jan 2011, 05:17

the lipstick-type container for cyanide?
Claims to be genuine article (or a replica) ?????

http://www.usmbooks.com/cyanide_capsule.html

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Matt Gibbs
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Re: Nazi cyanide suicides

#29

Post by Matt Gibbs » 21 Jan 2011, 09:11

The reason for not much information being out there on this subject is probably similar to why certain books on guerilla warfare and hand to hand combat were at one time banned or frowned upon [do a google search on it], as governments didn't really want the general public getting easy to find and use how-to books on making bombs or killing people with the minimum effort :D I don't say you can just "cook up" some poison on the kitchen stove, but you see what I mean. Would the leaders of the Reich really leave a great paper trail on this subject, more likely to be at least classed as "secret".
IIRC the TV programme I saw last year on Noor Inyat Khan SOE agent had a clip from the Imperial War Museum showing a british issued cyanide capsule which the museum has! [in a protective box!]

Sam Wren
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Re: Nazi cyanide suicides

#30

Post by Sam Wren » 29 Jun 2011, 06:01

From Bodyguard of Lies, Pg 799-800 and the last little bit from Pg. 795:

Had Kluge not taken his own life, he might have suffered a similar fate, or worse-arrest, a trial and death without honor. But his suicide forestalled any final assessment of his part in the Schwarze Kapelle conspiracy. How much did Kluge know of the 20th of July plot? Did he attempt to surrender the German armies in the West to the Allies? These questions would remain unanswered until the spring of 1975 when the last remaining portion of the files of the U.S. War Department Historical Commission's Intelligence Branch were opened at the National Archives to reveal the existence of a sworn statement by Dr. Udo Esch, of the German Army Medical Corps, to Special Agent Montford H. Schaffner. The statement was made on October 23, 1945 and concerned "von Kluge's participation in the July 20 Putsch and his subsequent suicide."

Esch was Kluge's son-in-law and the director of a military hospital in Paris. He had been very close to Kluge, both on the Russian and French fronts, and he stated: "From my father-in-law's assertions and actions have always taken him for an opponent of nazism." Esch also stated that he had taken part in the conference between Kluge, Goerdeler and Tresckow in Berlin in 1943, offering corroborative evidence that the meeting had occurred, and that Kluge participated in the plot. More important was Esch's testimony about Kluge's involvement in the conspiracy after he replaced Rundstedt as C-in-C West. He stated that he saw his father-in-law "almost daily" and "learned that the plot was maturing." Esch further remarked: "My father-in-law asked me to provide poison for him and the others in case the plot miscarried." He complied with the request, making up seven ampules of waterless acid cyanide in the laboratory of the University of Leipzig while on leave. When he returned to Paris, the ampules we given to the leaders of the conspiracy...

...Esch did not see his father-in-law again. Kluge, fearing arrest if he returned to Germany, took the cyanide capsule that he had been given by his son-in-law." and "died in an instant."

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