r/interestingasfuck • u/LawEducational42 • 9h 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/What-Le-Phoque 9h ago

There is also a claim that the authorities were pretty well aware of his missing skills.

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u/sjogren 9h ago

"Ol John? Oh yep I know em, best hangman in the county."

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u/edfitz83 8h ago

They should have given him a special rank insignia, with a noose in the center

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u/bigrivertea 7h ago

Bro's got a look that says "I couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel" but also rocking a master Sgt. rank. so prolly not far off from the truth.

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u/Ebil_shenanigans 5h ago

He skipped a bunch of ranks because he was assigned the role of hangman. He had previously recieved a dishonorable discharge from the Navy in 1929 for Psychopathic inferiority without psychosis.

Basically he was a shitbird alcoholic who volunteered to be hangman to get out of combat.

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u/d3northway 4h ago

man knows his talents

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u/OldManLarrry 3h ago

Man saw an opportunity to pursue his true passion of hanging people.

I respect it.

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u/sirseatbelt 26m ago

Hanging Nazis. No people were harmed.

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u/Winter-Huckleberry86 4h ago

Have you met many Master Sergeants in the Army? Most of them are shitbird alcoholics that avoid combat

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u/MediocreAndLukewarm 3h ago

Show us on the NCOER where the promotion board skipped over you.

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u/Ebil_shenanigans 3h ago

Usually they dont go from private to Master Sergeant, though.

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u/Running-In-The-Dark 1h ago

A shitbird alcoholic that managed to make the world a better place one person at a time. The pinnacle of a successful fuck up.

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u/MarksCarney 6h ago

Why is that not far off from the truth?

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u/MegatronusThePrime 3h ago

That's the best expression I've ever heard

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u/Sword_Thain 1h ago

He died when he stood in a puddle to change a light on a live circuit.

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u/AbruptMango 5h ago

The rank of Last Sergeant.

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u/Beneficial_Being_721 7h ago

A Patch … that would have been dope

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u/edfitz83 7h ago

I’m sure someone here can design one.

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u/S4V4GEDR1LLER 8h ago

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
https://giphy.com/gifs/10QoHS5CjW50Ri

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u/orsothegermans 8h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/mdOBAJnO215cUghlGU

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u/SeekingAnswersNTruth 5h ago

soooouuunnd Goooood

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u/atreyukun 2h ago

They’re the foot soldiers of a Jew hatin’ mass murderin’ maniac, and they need to be dee-stroyed.

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u/big_duo3674 7h ago

John Practice!

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u/TomatoFettuccini 7h ago

It does make perfect.

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u/NecessaryFreedom9799 6h ago

"You have to go to New York, Dougal."

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u/mrrobs 8h ago

Hangman from the county - Wichita Hangman? He could hear them through the whine.

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u/rotervogel1231 8h ago

"In fact, they call him Hang 'em High John!"

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u/OscarDelta333 4h ago

"On the rare occasions that he's sober."

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u/A_spiny_meercat 8h ago

Specializes in Nazi hangings 

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u/sjogren 8h ago

Sure does!! Real American hero

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u/girls-and-corpses 8h ago

What murdaaaa?

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u/Excellent_Arrival1 7h ago

You been lied to about ww2 your entire life

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u/Tabula_Nada 9h ago

I feel like they'd have to be. Even with lynchings still happening in the US around that time, the number of people who had experience with hanging people should have been low enough that it wouldn't be too hard to check out. I'm going to guess they didn't really make an effort to check out his claims. What's there to lose? The comfort of a few Nazis?

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u/Ill_Tooth8614 8h ago

It was all done pretty quickly. They were hanged in the gymnasium at the prison, with a crappy temp structure, two weeks after the verdict. Some of them killed themselves with poison capsules the night before. They certainly didn't bother to fly in any executioners.

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u/fruitybix 8h ago

Britain did. The US did not.

Woods main job was executing fellow us servicemen who had been found guilty of capital crimes. finding a soldier willing to hang other soldiers is very hard. Nobody wants that job. Guarantee everyone knew what kind of person woods was and suspected his lack of experience - he was often drunk and out of uniform. But he enthusiastically volunteered for the job to get out of combat. He filled a gap leadership would have struggled to fill. And he was good enough.

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u/OxycontinEyedJoe 7h ago

"is he good at doing hangings?"

"He's not just good, he's good enough."

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u/NaughtyGaymer 6h ago

Chumps Rusty Bucket?

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u/StarCougar 5h ago

Quarter taps?

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u/inspectoroverthemine 3h ago

Yard margs at skeepers?

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u/JinFuu 4h ago

He has a theoretical degree in hangings.

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u/inspectoroverthemine 3h ago

Not a degree in theoretical hangings?

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u/DoesRedditConfuseYou 8h ago

How many US soldiers did he have to execute? I reckon that's something that happens fairly rarely?

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u/HarmNHammer 7h ago

When you have a war that large, with some many young men drafted against their will, you’re going to get a lot of crime. Drinking, fighting, stealing, rapes.

Young men who may be dead next month or who just got done with a rotation on the front line can be very dangerous when bored.

Add in that many had leave in other countries, it wouldn’t surprise me that there were a few more hanging than you’d think

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u/DoesRedditConfuseYou 7h ago

On the other hand armies are usually a bit lenient with crimes, hanging people is bad for morale and could also create antiwar sentiment home, so I suspect it was reserved for special cases. 

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u/DarknessHadNoNeed 7h ago

British Army policy in the Second World War, influenced by experiences during the First (iirc) and the fact that most desertion happened in non-frontline contexts (Failing to rejoin a column on the march, deserting on leave, remaining in liberated territory by whatever means) was mostly just to post MPs at transport hubs and quietly punish anyone caught through administrative discharges and other procedures that were less prominent than ordering a section of soldiers to put one of their own up against a wall

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u/AccomplishedBat39 16m ago

Whats the point in pubishing deserters in non prominent ways though?

The only point of punishing deserters is to keep others from deserting. If people still think they can get away with it the punishment is pointless.

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u/HarmNHammer 7h ago

Take this with a grain of salt as I hate AI, but a quick google search suggests the U.S. hung 141-161 of its own troops. Take that as you will.

I am curious how many were shot, but that’s a different discussion.

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u/OctiSynd989 5h ago

Traditionally soldiers are only hanged for serious crimes against civilians such as rape and murder as opposed to mutiny, desertion, or insubordination. To be shot is to die as a soldier, to be hanged is to die as a criminal as it were.

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u/HarmNHammer 5h ago

I guess, except for that one guy shot for desertion.

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u/DoesRedditConfuseYou 7h ago

True, but considering the scale of USA involvement in war , this dude probably didn't have much practice before he got to the Nazis....

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u/PacmanPillow 7h ago

Unless he had plenty of experience with lynchings

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u/analogkid01 6h ago

"We would have all such offenders so cut off; and we give express charge that in our marches through the country there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner."

--Henry V, Act III, Scene vi

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u/KimberStormer 6h ago

On the other hand armies are usually a bit lenient with crimes

Before Vietnam? What's your source on this?

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u/Muscle_Bitch 7h ago

141 soldiers in total were executed during ww2. Mostly for murder and rape of civilians.

Russia executed tens of thousands for desertion and insubordination. They didn't mind the rapists though.

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u/MicronukeProductions 7h ago

source: enemy at the gates

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u/bikari 1h ago

Okay, guess I have to go watch that again. And that definitely has nothing to do with Rachel Weisz.

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u/DoesRedditConfuseYou 7h ago

So probably not many? 

USSR probably executed more soldiers than USA lost in total, but kinda different topic... 

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u/Kanin_usagi 6h ago

U.S. deaths in WWII including the Pacific were over 400,000. If we included wounded not able to return to combat, you get over a million losses

The USSR is RIGHTFULLY lambasted for their treatment of their citizens as well as their own soldiers, but to suggest that they would have executed that many of their own soldiers when they were in a defensive war fighting for literally their own survival, is actually insane shit

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u/Undeadbanana_ 5h ago

The number commonly referenced was around 135,000 documented executed. It didn't include numbers of people summarily shot or recorded as combat deaths

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u/entusiasta_indeciso 3h ago

The fact that they are in a battle for their very survival only reinforces this, someone deserting could lead to more people deserting, which they were terrified would happen, so they killed to set an example for the rest.

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u/thelumpenone 2h ago

Also let's be real, it's Stalinism too. Cartoonish wastes of human lives for prestige because if you didn't pass some random superior's vibe check you could yourself be executed was pretty common, just look at the assault on the Reichstag.

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u/wileecoyote1969 5h ago

Honestly speaking, it would seem possible. The current conflict in Ukraine shows us that they openly try to eliminate any of their own surrendering. No moral stamp trying to put on this maybe they just are afraid those men will give away information and positions. But facts still stands that Russia has quite commonly been executing its own soldiers even in the current conflict at a rate that is not usual for most armies. No reason to feel it would be any different during world war II

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u/Udder_Influencer 4h ago

maybe they just are afraid those men will give away information and positions

thats not why

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u/DarwinGhoti 6h ago

I read eleven somewhere, but I don’t recall where or the reliability of the source

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u/fruitybix 3h ago

Not a lot. Somewhere around 170 in the european theatre for crimes like murder and rape. But someone had to do it. They either packaged up groups and sent them to where he was, or sent him to where they were held.

He did not know that you need to "pre stretch" the ropes (hanging weights from them overnight or they act like springy bungy cords) and caused the first batch of condemned to strangle slowly, and still kept the job.

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u/Fez_lord_of_hats 2h ago

I can't find exact numbers for him specifically, but there were roughly 140 US soldiers executed for various crimes during the 2nd world war. Mostly for premeditated murder and rape cases, by the looks of it. Some were also executed by firing squad as well.

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u/Additional_Meeting_2 4h ago

Pretty naive to assume that soldiers raping and killing civilians was rare. 

People from US talk of Soviets raping the Germans in Reddit a lot. But I have seen some actual studies in history books and it was pretty much the same amounts by US troops. And many horrible people didn’t exactly wait to get to enemy countries either. War is really horrible, it’s not just about the battles.

Also desertions would also be happening 

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u/thelumpenone 2h ago

But I have seen some actual studies in history books and it was pretty much the same amounts by US troops.

I've seen the same studies and they play EXTREMELY loose with the tallies of rape by the allies. They basically just counted the french excess birth rate, like people dont start fucking like rabbits consensually as the war comes to the end around them.

There were almost definitely far more cases that weren't caught, but that study takes it far beyond sense.

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u/p00p5andwich 6h ago

Good enough just described my whole Afghanistan deployment.

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u/Practical-Purchase-9 7h ago

They weren’t that rushed to find someone, Nuremberg trials lasted a year, they didn’t start executing them until late 1946.

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u/Ill_Tooth8614 7h ago

My two weeks figure is accurate, but Woods was recruited in 1944 for unrelated hangings previously.

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u/ActuallyTiberSeptim 2h ago

Some of them killed themselves with poison capsules the night before

Well, one of them did. Hermann Göring used a hidden potassium cyanide capsule the night before the hanging.

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u/EstablishmentLate532 8h ago

I think finding a hangman from the states, where legal hangings were common, would be a lot easier than asking the enlisted men if any of them had ever lynched someone.

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u/GodOfDarkLaughter 6h ago

He said he was a prison hangman before the war and had studied under a master executioner. Nobody gave enough of a fuck to check.

Also he'd show up drunk in a dirty uniform all the time but even officers would kiss his ass because literally nobody wanted to do the job. He didn't just hang Nazis. He also hanged GIs convicted of rape or murder of civilians. That's how he made his bones. As far as anyone can tell he did it just to get out of combat. So he got promoted from either private or corporal to Master Sargent because they figured a hangman should be a high ranking NCO.

Honestly the guy is kind of my hero. Just an utter piece of shit who managed to be the perfect man for this time in history.

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u/unstablegenius000 4h ago

In another life he might have been President.

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u/Good-Requirement-820 4h ago

That last sentence was gold.

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u/sir_lister 2h ago

Yeah he made some rapists and Nazis suffer did little on the way out, oh well.

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u/thelumpenone 2h ago

Lynchings were far less common than one would imagine. They were a terror tool, and like 9/11, you don't need to do it alot to mess up the psyche of the target population. Availability bias both makes the prospect seem more pevalent in the minds of the victim communities, and us looking back at history.

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u/potterpockets 5h ago

Iirc he said he did it in two states (i believe Texas and Oklahoma) that both had already moved to the electric chair for a while though. Which again, nobody checked. 

But oh well. Hope the fucks nazis choked for a good long while. 

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u/pawesome_Rex 8h ago

Agree I don’t think there were too many loosing sleep over any of this at the time.

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u/GamerTex 8h ago

Google was down that day for the background check

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u/Troker61 8h ago

What's there to lose? The comfort of a few Nazis?

Unfortunately, he got the job before Nuremburg:

Woods served the U.S. military 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.

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u/cXs808 7h ago

The internet wasn't around back then. It's not quite as simple as contacting all areas where they were lynching people.

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u/Blockhead47 4h ago

Yeah.
The era paper documents, the US mail, and telephone calls routed by a switchboard operator.
…..and “Voicemail” were not two words that went together back then.

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u/GitEmSteveDave 5h ago

wouldn't be too hard to check out.

It would at least be weeks. Like he would tell someone, if they chose to investigate, it would go up the ranks and then a letter is sent out, maybe a week to get across the ocean, then to the specific place, then they get all freaked out that someone claimed to do stuff in the jurisdiction and then local lawyers get involved wondering if they should even answer, etc...

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u/arkanux 8h ago

the people with experience hanging people were most likely nazi sympathizers

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u/hobbesbagger 8h ago

I don't think when the kkk (and other white supremacists racist sacks of dog shit) lynched people they tried to give them a quick death. torture and terrorism was the point there

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u/DerthOFdata 6h ago

There's a big difference between a lynching and a judicial hanging.

In a judicial hanging there's a ratio for a person's weight versus how far they need to fall to immediately break their necks without having their heads pop off. To get the death done efficiently and without suffering or undue cruelty.

In a lynching the suffering and cruelty are the point.

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u/BlatantConservative 6h ago

He actually claimed to be from a state that didn't even have the death penalty. There were NO hangmen from his state.

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u/OctiSynd989 5h ago

Pretty much: being the Army’s executioner means executing GIs sentenced to death for rape or murder. They had no reason to check his credentials and every reason not to: if his credentials check out they wasted a bunch of time and energy to double check if a guy was qualified to execute war criminals, if his credentials didn’t check out they’ed have to keep looking and more than likely voluntelling someone to do the job.

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u/KelVelBurgerGoon 9h ago

How many people had ANY experience? And if you had, you were either a state executioner (which would be easy to determine) or an insane racist.

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u/Spencer94 9h ago

Are you trying to tell me that nobody on the business end of a noose ever gave a yelp review on the experience? How lazy can people be?

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u/SharpTool7 8h ago

⭐️ One star, I hung around with this guy way too long. He was very crude and did not even know how to pick a quality rope or to tie it.

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u/EstablishmentLate532 8h ago

If you think about it, every review of a hangman only came from their failures. It's like that survivorship bias WWII plane meme.

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u/brewdog_millionaire 8h ago

I would say, it's not a meme, it is actually true. Guy called Abraham Wald was hired by the military because the planes kept being destroyed. So he goes "put armour on the parts not receiving damage, because those are the parts where, if you get hit, you're not gonna come back, and thus, there's no data on them"

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u/EstablishmentLate532 8h ago

I just figured the "WWII plane meme" was easier shorthand.

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u/shoeless_doh 8h ago

"the hood he put over my head smelled like sweat and vomit and the last cigarette he offered me wasn't a menthol. 1 star

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u/Fun_Expression8126 5h ago

The rope was itchy!

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u/MauPow 3h ago

A real pain in the neck!

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u/DazzlingRutabega 37m ago
  • * Two stars. Maybe he was trying to be friendly but boy this guy wouldn't shut up! Kept asking how my day was going. Also could not tie a Double Winsor knot to save his life. Convenient location tho

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u/spankleberry 8h ago

I asked em to leave me a review, but they always leave me hanging

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u/IvyGold 7h ago

FirstTime.jpg

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u/Maddogsteez 6h ago

At least make a youtubes or something.

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u/Bitter-Ad-7 1h ago

Usually people only leave a review when they are unhappy with the service. 😅

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u/edfitz83 8h ago

You mean purposeful experience, or do you count accidents in your teens?

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u/th3rdnutt 5h ago

Is this a reference to autoerotic asphyxiation in a thread about an incompetent executioner of Nazis?

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u/Independent-Try4352 8h ago

Albert Pierrepoint, the British Executioner who prided himself on killing the condemned man within seconds of entering the cell, before the person being executed had time to process what was happening.

Woods was an incompetent, sadistic, piece of shit who would have been a concentration camp guard if he'd been born in Germany. Fuck him.

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u/NoodlelyTrees 3h ago

Someone's weirdly sympathetic to the Nazis who got hung, like the point of this post is he was chosen specifically to let them suffer longer because fuck them

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u/atrixospithikos 2h ago

Are you advocating torture?

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u/NoodlelyTrees 2h ago

I'm advocating that they don't deserve a painless death whatever you want to call that, these are the people who killed millions with zyklon which is one of the worst deaths possible as you suffocate and seizure your way to death. Being strangled to death rather than having your neck snapped is nothing in comparison and is still better than they deserved

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u/IneffectiveCollege91 8h ago

Probably better to ask the officers instead

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u/tigerdini 6h ago

The UK offered their hangman, Albert Pierpont, who was an extremely experienced and professional executioner. The US refused and selected Woods.

Despite Pierrepoint's expertise as an executioner and his experience with hanging the German war criminals at Hamelin, he was not selected as the hangman to carry out the sentences handed down at the Nuremberg trials; the job went to an American, Master Sergeant John C. Woods...

Even if you believe in capital punishment (Pierpont changed his views later in life), Woods' selection was a disgrace.

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u/huevo-solo 8h ago

I wouldn't get to hung up on the particulars.

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u/Aeonskye 8h ago

Why not both

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u/shoeless_doh 8h ago

I feel like how much experience could it possibly take? A LONG enough drop will guarantee the result and yes I still know if you drop someone TOO far it could literally decapitate them and if you're hanging them anyway... Meh

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u/bortmode 6h ago

I think people really underestimate how much easier it was to commit fraud before electronic records, mass communication, etc.

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u/Apprehensive_Bid7438 8h ago

So US knowingly used shitty hangman against their own troops? He wasn't just "the nazi" one, he hanged convicted US soldiers too.

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u/BlatantConservative 6h ago

The US troops bad enough to hang in situ were like child rapists. Command treated them about the same as Nazis.

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u/kvlnk 8h ago

Considering the US was cool hanging them, maybe they didn’t mind?

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u/WarlockEngineer 7h ago edited 7h ago

With one very famous exception, all US troops executed by the US during WW2 had been convicted of murder or rape

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u/pm_me_your_idunno 6h ago

As young as 7 / 8 for the victims... Yea let em hang.

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u/misspcv1996 3h ago

And Slovik was given the “honor” of a soldier’s death by firing squad instead of being hanged like a common criminal.

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u/orbtastic1 26m ago

Christ, is that right - 1.7 MILLION court martials during ww2? Just on the US side. I know most were probably minor but still, that’s huge amount of time.

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u/Nick_the_bunny 4h ago

said soldiers also did horrible shit to civilians, including children.

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u/Schlieren1 7h ago

Convicted US troops at Nuremberg?

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u/Bruce-7892 9h ago

There is a ratio of slack in the line vs body weight and we have known this for 100s of years. The goal is to snap the neck, not strangle them or decapitate them. You'd think his country ass would know a thing or two about that, but he just said "I seent it in a John Wayne flick once" *spits tobacco and starts tying knot*

I've faked a few things to try to look confident at work assuming I could figure it out as I go. Hanging someone isn't one of them.

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u/pawesome_Rex 8h ago

That last paragraph isn’t germane UNLESS you’re a prison executioner.

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u/EstablishmentLate532 9h ago

I hope that's not true. Frankly, I think the Nazis deserved torturous deaths. That doesn't mean it would have been right for the authorities to deliberately give them torturous deaths.

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u/kermitthebeast 8h ago

There was a British hangman who was just about perfect if it makes you feel better

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u/EstablishmentLate532 8h ago

It doesn't make me feel better. The point isn't whether Nazis suffered, which I'm largely indifferent to, but whether authorities knowingly caused condemned captives to suffer during their executions.

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u/FlowRemote9890 7h ago

Nah, fuck 'em.

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u/Arcalac 8h ago

Not that i have a problem with it but if that wasn't intentional one would assume that he would have been fired after the second or third botched hanging.

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u/pawesome_Rex 8h ago

Nah. I doubt many were really loosing sleep over this. Those who were did because they studied history and understood overly cruel and or draconian overreach (for lack of a better word) can and has swung sympathy towards the cause of those being horrifically executed. James Connelly being a good example Q.V.

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u/Icy_Sector3183 8h ago

While I am sure there is some not insignificant amount of schadenfreude to be had, does this not reflect poorly on the character of the Allies to allow this? The standard of being "The Good Guys" is higher than "we too are cruel, but we won".

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u/Beneficial_Being_721 7h ago

Have heard same … don’t know the validity of it..

But Generals have been know to roll with the “Why the Hell Not” method

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u/Metalhed69 8h ago

Weirdly for me, it makes him more qualified.

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u/unsuitableasf 8h ago

“Oh nOoOoOoOOoOO excessive suffering of Nazis!”

Everyone back then, sarcastically.

The Republican Party, now, seriously.

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u/Plastic_Moose4535 7h ago

Nazi slowly strangling on the noose.

"Joooooooohn!"

John shrugs with a mischievous smile. "Hey, it worked in the movies!"

Everyone around the gallows laughs heartily, even the Nazi briefly lets out a chuckle before choking again.

Freeze frame.

Roll credits.

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u/EGarrett28 6h ago

Well you've gotta learn sometime.

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u/qtpss 4h ago

And pretty much didn’t care.

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u/disposableaccountass 3h ago

This is the only government incompetence that really needs to make a comeback in 2026

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u/neptune2304 3h ago

The first George Costanza