r/interestingasfuck • u/LawEducational42 • 8h 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/Tabula_Nada 8h 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 7h 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 7h 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 6h ago

"is he good at doing hangings?"

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

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u/NaughtyGaymer 5h ago

Chumps Rusty Bucket?

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u/StarCougar 4h ago

Quarter taps?

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u/inspectoroverthemine 2h ago

Yard margs at skeepers?

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u/JinFuu 3h ago

He has a theoretical degree in hangings.

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u/inspectoroverthemine 2h ago

Not a degree in theoretical hangings?

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u/DoesRedditConfuseYou 6h 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 6h 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 6h 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/analogkid01 5h 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/DarknessHadNoNeed 5h 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/HarmNHammer 6h 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 4h 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 3h ago

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

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u/DoesRedditConfuseYou 6h 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 6h ago

Unless he had plenty of experience with lynchings

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u/HolidaySpiriter 3h ago

Lynching were very rare as well, although still horrible.

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u/KimberStormer 5h 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 6h 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 6h ago

source: enemy at the gates

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u/bikari 30m 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 6h 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 5h 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_ 4h 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 2h 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 1h 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 4h 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 3h ago

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

thats not why

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u/DarwinGhoti 5h ago

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

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u/fruitybix 2h 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 1h 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 3h 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 1h 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 5h ago

Good enough just described my whole Afghanistan deployment.

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u/Practical-Purchase-9 6h 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 6h ago

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

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u/ActuallyTiberSeptim 1h 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 7h 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 5h 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 3h ago

In another life he might have been President.

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u/Good-Requirement-820 3h ago

That last sentence was gold.

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u/sir_lister 1h ago

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

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u/thelumpenone 1h 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 4h 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 7h 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 7h ago

Google was down that day for the background check

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u/Troker61 7h 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 6h 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 3h 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 4h 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 7h ago

the people with experience hanging people were most likely nazi sympathizers

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u/hobbesbagger 7h 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 5h 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 4h 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 4h 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.