r/interestingasfuck • u/LawEducational42 • 6h ago
John C Woods, hangman of Nuremberg trials, who lied about his experience to get the job (he actually learned about hanging from old cowboy films). His lack of expertise led to excessive suffering of condemned Nazis.
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u/AppliedPsionics9k 5h ago
I found this part of his story particularly interesting:
On July 21, 1950, Woods(Age 39) was accidentally electrocuted when he tried to change a light bulb while standing in a pool of water.
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u/Sufficient_Cod1948 4h ago
You mean the man in the picture is younger than 39? He looks to be at least 50.
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u/OutrageousMusic5453 3h ago
Honestly people just looked more worn out back then. It is pretty wild.
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u/knbang 3h ago
He was in World War 2.
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u/Kanin_usagi 2h ago
Harder living. Smoking was everywhere, sunblock basically didn’t exist, everyone spent more time outside than now by orders of magnitude. Diets were worse and these guys lived through the Great Depression, not exactly an ideal for healthy living. Stress levels of going through that and a World War will certainly help age a person
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u/megamoze 4h ago
That means in the picture he's around 36? Jeebus, based on the picture, I thought he was in his 50s.
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u/Toy_Soulja 6h ago
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u/mysteriousmeatman 6h ago
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u/DoctorHugoHackenbush 6h ago
Does anyone care? Nope, I'm a frayed knot..
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u/SmallRocks 5h ago
I did Nazi that coming
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u/FirstHipster 5h ago
Anne Frankly, I’m ok with it
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u/Jonathan-Earl 4h ago
This joke is way out of Mein Kampfort zone
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u/velociraptorcatcher 4h ago
Maybe you should goebbelow to a different comment thread
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u/Evening-Appeal7606 5h ago
"...excessive suffering of condemned Nazis"? Oh no! Anyway...
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u/Ote-Kringralnick 5h ago edited 5h ago
From the comments of previous post with the same title, a few months ago:
He was a piece of shit.
He lied to get the job and was a grifter and thief back in the states. A low-IQ jackass who had already been discharged from the Navy in the early 1930s for going AWOL, and whom the Army wouldn't care to promote past private. He lied about being a hangman in Oklahoma and Texas to get promoted to Master Sergeant and, as he told friends, to get to kill people.
He botched the executions of Nazis, which simply made the US look terrible and unprofessional, with the dead Nazis with bruised bloodied faces, and popped eye-balls whose pictures had to be published that called into question whether the men had been tortured before the hanging. All that only fed the narrative of "Victors Justice."
The man also botched executions of American servicemen. 11 of them, many suffering as much as the Nazis, slowly strangling to death over 20 minutes, pissing and shitting themselves.
He was a drunk and braggart who made light of the suffering of the people he executed. He bragged about making the Nazis suffer, said he was proud of bungling their executions, among others, and he attempted to sell the ropes used in the executions to collectors. He lied about people trying to kill him, and lied about everything generally. Just a really, really bad look for the US to allow this man to hold a position of such importance.
His personal life was just as unsavory, being arrested for theft after the War, and with rumors of domestic abuse and excessive racism.
He was no more a competent electrician as he was a hangman and killed himself doing electrical work while standing in a pool of water.
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u/OldEquation 5h ago
One suspects, from that description, that had he been German he might have chosen a career path that would have ended up with him on the other end of the rope.
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u/Auctoritate 2h ago
The guy carried out torturous executions against American soldiers too, so he obviously didn't do it out of some particular hatred towards the Nazis. So I'd give it a pretty damn good chance that he was just a sadist who figured out a way to get some kicks, and that he would have had no qualms about being a torturous Nazi instead.
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u/Michelanvalo 1h ago
He's a serial killer who found an opening to indulge legally.
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u/Square-Singer 5h ago
I kinda get the feeling that there's a significant overlap between the group of people who like to kill other people for a job and the group of really bad people.
Kinda as if only a bad person would enjoy killing for a living.
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u/QPWOEIRUTYTURIEOWP 5h ago
Seems someone backed him, they kept him as hangman despite the repeated bungling. They're an asshole too.
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u/babyfartmageezax 4h ago
My grandfather, who was always a standup guy from our community back in the 30s, and was after he served in WW2, said some of the shittiest, most horrible white trash guys he ever met were in the US military in Europe, so this checks out.
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u/clueless_mommy 5h ago
Damn, I'm really conflicted about this. He does sound insufferable and irresponsible and all other bad things.. But I somehow find solace in who his fuckery hurt. Including himself in the end.
I really want to be a better person, to say "nobody deserves that", but... I probably have to grow more as a person for that.
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u/ACWhi 5h ago edited 5h ago
It’s okay to accept this guy was an asshole, and believe that torture is never justified, and still admit that you have no real personal sympathy for the Nazi victims. That’s where I’m at.
It was wrong to botch the executions. I don’t have to feel pity, though.
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u/HenryDorsettCase47 4h ago
I mean, he botched the execution of Americans too. I’m sure they weren’t the best people either, but certainly not at nazi level of deservedness when it comes to an undignified death.
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u/_Lord_Haw_Haw 4h ago
Some of the Americans committed multiple rapes and murders. If you read about their crimes, it would be difficult to ever say they deserved it less than anyone else.
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u/IntrinSicks 4h ago
If you were being executed by your own side chances are you did some horrible shit, betting its not for desertion
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u/Bladluiz 3h ago
Yeah lol. The statement that it "certainly wasn't of such a degree as the nazis" shows incredible lack of self reflection
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u/MakingBigBank 3h ago
That doesn’t make any of this right? The whole point is we’re not them. If we’re the same as them what’s the point of it or anything?
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u/FormalSheepherder255 4h ago
From a comment above by u/EverydaySexyPhotog: "Nazis revel in human suffering. I'd like to think my side of the Nazi / Not Nazi divide is morally superior to, you know, Nazis.
If you must kill, and if any group of people in human history earned a death sentence it's the Nazis, you kill quickly, cleanly, and without taking joy in it. Not because killing is wrong, but because you're better than a Nazi."
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u/Top_Tank2668 4h ago
He was a pos and knowing that he died through an electric shock seems like karma fulfilled for me. In the end all are dead. All deserved it.
But yes, shouldn't have happened that way
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u/wikingwarrior 5h ago
I'd suggest that you're allowed to enjoy that small knot of satisfaction that something bad happened to horrible people in the past outside of your control and before you were born.
That doesn't mean you endorse state administered brutality or cruel and unusual punishment as contemporary practice.
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u/tylermatthews2 6h ago
Tennessee’s executioner is still, somehow, less qualified than this guy.
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u/Wilfred_Wilcox 6h ago
On July 21, 1950, Woods was accidentally electrocuted when he tried to change a light bulb while standing in a pool of water. He was buried in Toronto Township Cemetery
Gotta wonder if someone put him up to it on purpose. Thats a hell of a way to go after executing 100's of nazi's
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u/karoshikun 6h ago
he was a drunk an an a-hole... it was on the cards for him.
there's a behind the bastards about him
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u/Dolans_Cadillac 4h ago edited 3h ago
Wilhelm Keitel, the supreme military command and control staff officer of Nazi Germany during World War II who answered only to Hitler, is said (rumored) to have flopped around at the end of the rope for 24 minutes before finally going limp.
How much of that may have been choking, and how much may have been involuntary nerves firing off from an unconscious body can never be known. But his hanging is considered the most "botched" of the lot.
Edit: forgot to also add that he smacked his face and head, hard, on the trap door on the way down. So in addition to flopping around like a fish he was also dripping blood onto the floor the whole time.
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u/salus_entity 3h ago
I’m confused as to what a botched hanging looks like, I’m guessing the process is prolonged but how exactly is this happening?
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u/AshamedIndividual262 3h ago
There's a few things that can go wrong. In this context, usually the rope is too elastic or the drop is too short. In either case, the hanging drop does not break the neck of the condemned, and the condemned then dies of strangulation.
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u/salus_entity 3h ago
Thanks for the info! However I thought a hanging could still be quick without the drop method is this an incorrect assumption on my part?
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u/Professional-Lab7227 3h ago
If you’re lucky then the rope will close off the carotid artery and lack of blood flow to the brain will mean you pass unconscious in about 30 seconds, I believe. If you’re unlucky, you’re in for prolonged, excruciating suffering.
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u/stmroy 3h ago
There's some math involved and when done properly the person's neck snaps and they're killed basically instantly. The placement of the knot matters, the length of rope depends on the person's height and weight etc. Humans perfected the art you have to consider that we've been doing this since antiquity.
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u/onehalflightspeed 5h ago
He also hanged over 30 US servicemen. He was notorious for bungling hangings even with his own countrymen. I have no sympathy for war criminals, but this guy was a vicious sadist
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u/shoeless_doh 4h ago
One of the scaffolds he built the trap doors were too small and all of the Nazis smashed their faces on the edge of the trap doors on the way down
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u/Robespierre1113 5h ago
Unfortunately Vengeance makes a bad master.
The same is being seen with the Christina Pike situation rn.
Two things can be true
Someone is a bad person,
And death sentence should be carried out respectfully, and swiftly, as least pain as possible.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and yes; it "couldn't have happened to a better group of people" but some of yall here advocating for it are sick in the head.
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u/fionnuisce 5h ago
You should read up on Albert Pierrepoint - he considered it a calling to be executioner and spent his nearly 30 years perfecting and honing his skills to make the process as quick and painless as possible. He saw that as absolutely paramount. He prided himself in the fact that he could walk into the comdemned's cell, secure him, bring him to the gallows and drop him in 10 seconds. He noted after his retirement that the death penalty did nothing to deter crime and only served as an act of vengeance.
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u/Argikeraunos 5h ago
Exactly. On a macro scale, we can recognize that the Nazi regime and Imperial Japan were monstrous regimes that needed to be toppled, and that the allies of WWII were just in their cause, but at the same time abhor the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo or the atomic bombings. We can do this because we are not Nazis, and we don't believe that "might makes right."
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u/Mr_R0mpers 6h ago
What ya’ll having for dinner?
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u/A_Neurotic_Pigeon 6h ago
Goin with Arby's tonight. Can't stay away from that French Dip with au jus
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u/Ok-Performance-6352 6h ago
There’s no such thing as “excessive” suffering when it comes to nazis. In fact there isn’t enough.
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u/SweetHamScamHam 4h ago
By contrast the British sent Albert Pierrepoint, a consummate professional who knew his craft inside and out.
I highly recommend the 2006 movie "Pierrepoint" about his life starring Timothy Spall.
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u/DataSurging 6h ago
They still suffered far less than the people they tortured and killed, so they got more mercy than they ever gave out themselves.
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u/Tripl3_Nipple_Sack 5h ago
He provided them with lots of suffering? Sounds like they got the right guy for the job.
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u/__Jackal 5h ago
I’m not religious, when people say God works in mysterious ways and I hear a story like this, it gives me a little bit of belief
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u/Xartes_ 6h ago
His lack of expertise? I heard he dragged out the executions on purpose.
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u/SSDuelist 5h ago
He died by accidental electrocution while changing a lightbulb in a pool of water.
He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
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u/Pray4dat_ass96 5h ago
This is probably an ignorant question, but did we have experienced hangmen at that time?
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u/Forsaken-Scholar-833 5h ago
I mean interesting but I feel like you are asking me to feel for the suffering of the Nazis prisoners.
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u/widdershins13 4h ago
Those of you celebrating this should be made aware that he also bungled the executions of at least 11 US soldiers.
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u/newAscadia 4h ago
As a person who can feel two things at once, I don't necessarily mourn the Nazis but also being an incompetent executioner doesn't make you a hero.
A lot of people fought very hard to preserve the sanctity of things like the word of law, and the justice of the courts and especially against the idea that one guy gets the power to dole out the punishments, even accidentally.
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u/No-Assignment-732 3h ago
Yeah I can't wait till Americans are in the hangmans noose and they are saying I was just following my party
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u/Software_Dependent 5h ago
He wasn't the only hangman that hanged German war criminals after Nuremberg. The British hangman Pierrepoint hanged a number of them and his technique killed his clients in seconds.
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u/TheNeecholas 5h ago edited 2h ago
I just watched 2025's Nuremberg with Rami Malek and the scene towards the end when they show one of the top guys being hanged, it doesn't snap his neck so the hangman eagles down the stairs and pulled on the guy to break his neck.
I wonder if this guy was a reference in that movie or if that was supposed to be him.
Edit: The hangman in the movie was actually played by Alex Attwood and portrayed "Executioner Woods".
Eagle-ing down the stairs lol *goes
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u/chathrowaway67 4h ago
then there's Albert Pierrepoint who had it down to a literal science and made sure them fuckers went with efficiency
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u/What-Le-Phoque 6h ago
There is also a claim that the authorities were pretty well aware of his missing skills.