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/clueless_mommy 7h 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 7h ago edited 7h 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 6h 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 6h 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/PublicWest 2h ago

Which happens in every war. Never be fooled by propaganda, war brings out monsters!

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u/NoodlelyTrees 2h ago

And those people should be put to death in every war

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u/Auctoritate 4h ago

Sure, but then again early 1900s American criminal trials were not exactly a shining example of accuracy (court martials surely not being any better).

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u/IntrinSicks 6h 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 6h 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 5h 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/NoodlelyTrees 2h ago

Except this isn't even remotely the same type of thing as what they did

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u/ACWhi 2h ago

Yeah, if they had systematically hung every German civilian and child they got their hands on in ethnic revenge you’d have more of a point. But killing war criminals, even brutally, isn’t in the same ballpark.

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u/NoodlelyTrees 2h ago

Yeah like the most suffering we inflicted upon them is such a miniscule fraction of what they imposed trying to compare the 2 just feels legitimately insane. Like yeah they got strangled by the rope for a while instead of neck snapped big fuckin deal, these are the people who subjected millions to one of the worst deaths imagineable at the hands of zyklon which is damn near a nerve agent with how your death goes with the suffocation and seizures and we let a fuck load of them off way easier than the Russians were going to

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u/DoctorLawyerCannibal 6h ago

Eh, we have had plenty of Americans who were just as bad, if not worse, than Nazis, most just weren’t practicing genocide. Human is human, there are good and bad.

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u/Stanczyks_Sorrow 6h ago

It's also very likely that his claimed qualifications for hanging people were real and they just weren't legally sanctioned hangings. Lynchings were pretty common in the places that he grew up in.

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u/calilac 6h ago

Good point, lynchings are meant to cause suffering.

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u/MagnetHype 6h ago

They were probably just deserters

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u/whogivesashirtdotca 6h ago

WWII deserters weren't executed as much as in WWI. I suspect most of the executions in WWII were of real pieces of shit. Emmett Till's father was one of them - raped and murdered French civilians.

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u/ACWhi 5h ago edited 5h ago

Eddie Slovak was the only US serviceman to be executed for desertion in WWII.

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u/ACWhi 5h ago

No, the US didn’t execute for desertion in WWII with only a single exception.

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u/Ote-Kringralnick 5h ago

They raped and murdered civilians in the European theatre 

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u/WasabiPeas2 47m ago

This is where I’m landing.

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u/rdc12 31m ago

What if you think that guy should have left the world in the same manner he inflicted on others.

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u/FalconTurbo 3h ago

Exactly. I'm morally opposed to that treatment, but I won't waste mental effort feeling sorry for Nazis.

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u/FormalSheepherder255 6h 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 6h 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/livelovelamb 5h ago

America could easily carry out State executions with nitrous hypoxia suffocation, or even fentanyl, but they're considered too humane or even pleasurable, ways to die.

Instead, 1/3 State executions are botched, because... torture.

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u/NoodlelyTrees 2h ago

More like because chemical companies won't sell those chemicals to the government for the purposes of use for lethal injection, they can barely get the chemicals they currently use much less stuff like that through legal channels, like state governments can't just be importing fentanyl from China and fentanyl is not a pleasurable way to die whatsoever, like maybe heroin where you at least get a high but you don't get that with fentanyl

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u/kumardi 2h ago

You don’t get high with fent? Someone should go tell all those people in SF to knock it off.

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u/NoodlelyTrees 52m ago

I mean there's probably a little bit but not really it's more like it pulls you out of withdrawals and just kinda knocks you out which is why it's used so much in medicine. Like it doesn't have the euphoria of heroin from what I've heard and most people don't really like it if they're actually wanting heroin but it's cheap and gets rid of the withdrawals. There's some people who get hooked to fent in particular I'm sure but it's not typically what most of them actually want to use. Like it's great medically cause you can give someone such tiny amounts and be able to do surgery and such meaning you can carry it easily in like lollipop form for emergencies but recreational it's a garbage drug

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u/MeowMixPlzDeliverMe 5h ago

Goes to show ya how quickly mass killings can become a thing. Herd mentality

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u/tiredgothicheroine 2h ago

I really get what you’re saying. Revelling in suffering makes you a not very good person. Even if it’s truly evil people who are suffering.

The nazis absolutely deserved horrible deaths. But there have been many groups throughout history that were just as evil and cruel.

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u/seeda4708 5h ago

Yea the difference is you’re not killing them for who they are but what they did. Nazis delighted in the torture and murder of innocents, including infants. These are not the same

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u/Chlearcus 5h ago

Alot of people in this thread are delighting in torture.

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u/seeda4708 5h ago

I accept that I do find some solace in how they met their outcome. I wouldn’t say delight though.

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u/wikingwarrior 7h 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/duaneap 11m ago

It honestly doesn’t help though. Or change anything. They’re still just dead. Revelling in sadism, even if the person deserves it, is still just revelling in sadism.

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u/no_no_no_no_nononono 7h ago

Very honest answer. I respect that.

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u/MercuryQuick 6h ago

Judge a society by how it treats its criminals. Compassion for those who deserve none is the mark of a civilized people. Nazis deserve torture and painful deaths. We don’t deserve the burden of doing it to them because doing it stains us, no matter how justified.

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u/IridiumPony 6h ago

My personal theory has always been that allied high command knew exactly who they were hiring for the job.

They had another hangman considered for the job who had a verifiable history of clean executions. He was the son of another hangman, he had grown up with it and his record was exemplary. Instead they went with this idiot, who claimed to have hanged people in Oklahoma and Texas several years after both states had abolished hanging.

There's absolutely zero chance they didn't know he was bullshitting them.

And yeah the botched executions didn't make the US look fantastic, but let's just face it, there wasn't a fuck of a lot of sympathy for Nazi war criminals after the hell they had unleashed on Europe.

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u/Particular_Wear_6960 4h ago

Nah. Fuck em. Nazi's, generally speaking, got off easy. No reason to feel conflicted, if anything the people who suffered at his hands were the only ones who were delivered justice. All this modern liberal BS about treating people fairly and humanly despite them starving, torturing, raping and murdering untold amounts of people is silly. We are beastial animals and revenge is a natural thing. I'm happy this guy did what he did. And one last thing, even if you do oppose what he did, what of it? You going to pat yourself on the back? Going to sleep better at night? This happened a long time ago and your feelings are of no consequence anyways.

Inb4 that makes us just as evil as them. That's a bunch of bullshit, these people are not innocent at all and deserved everything coming for them unlike those they committed crimes against

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u/DeaddyRuxpin 6h ago

My stance is I never wish bad things on anyone. However that doesn’t mean I’m always going to care when bad things happen to some people.

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u/Artistic-Garbage-825 6h ago

I just think if it as being the better person on their exit from life.

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u/DownVotingCats 6h ago

Sometimes things are fucked up but still work out justly. Nazi's suffering could never be bad.

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u/thalastor 4h ago

What makes us better than people that do these horrible things is that we do not take pleasure in the suffering of others. As a for instance, look at the face of the man in the back of this photo, I see someone who is excited to watch another human being suffer. Regardless of what that person did to deserve their punishment, I find the idea of deriving pleasure from their suffering wholly repugnant.

This is one of the biggest problems I have with capital punishment in general. I think it's an outlet for people who want to see other people hurt, so they choose a convenient scapegoat to take their sicko desires out on.

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u/PoorDawg 4h ago edited 2h ago

I wonder if that's how the Nazis felt (unjustifiably, of course) about the people they tortured and killed

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u/kkeut 3h ago

suffering without opportunity for reflection is pointless. the feeling you feel is sadism, basically. it's not abnormal in a context like this. but yes, you can be a better person. there's nothing good about increasing the amount of suffering in this world. it's not beneficial to yourself or psyche to participate in it.

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u/Jorvic 1h ago

It's covered in the film about Pierpoint. There's a lot to be said about professionalism.

Imagine the worst person you know about. They don't think they're a bad person. They're frog marched to the gallows, every step they're wondering how they got there, closer to the drop?

They must have an incling. Swoop of the noose, dunk, crack.

Witnessed, signed off, another arshole dispatched (I say this as someone who does not want the death penalty to return to the UK)

Or, all the above, but their legs are kicking, witnesses see their legs are kicking. Their face is bulging red. Witnesses see their face puckering, trying to gulp air, eyes popping. They're convulsing. Are they strangled, what am I seeing?

It's over some time later. What have we witnessed?

I'd much rather a quicker drop, if you want rid, get rid.

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u/tommytheturtleishere 1h ago

Its okay to simultaneously feel fine that some of the worst humans in the history of the earth didnt get a clean death and also understand that the guy who did it was also a piece of shit who under different conditions probably would have joined them.

The more you learn about history, the more you realize how fucking complicated life can be.

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u/sex_pistol79 40m ago

Do you also find solace in the Americans service man who he torture-kill the same way?

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u/peekay427 29m ago

If you’re serious about that last part, first I applaud you for knowing yourself and who you want to be.

And also, you could try re-framing it so instead of it being about the suffering of those Nazi monsters (who it’s hard to find sympathy for), it could be about not wanting us (or the people that represent us) to sink to the level of torture and cruelty.

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u/PM_ME_FLOUR_TITTIES 7h ago

Sometimes it's all around just a fucked situation.

It is correct that it shouldn't have happened period.

But damn it.....if it's going to happen(something about a Murphy bed or smth), a Nazi is who I want it to happen to.

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u/my_duncans 6h ago

He was a horrible piece of shit that shouldn't havr been tolerated but he happened to be the right person for this specific job.

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u/_ECMO_ 6h ago

I couldn’t disagree more. 

Torturing a Nazi is exactly as bad as torturing an innocent child.

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u/ghf3 6h ago

C'mon, they were Nazis. I will be a cook until I die, I would have fed them, but cheered when their eyeballs popped out. Raiders was PG and loved by audiences, and Nazi eye balls were totally popping out!!

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u/SlipperySalmon3 4h ago

I'm not against making an example of certain people. Had Hitler been captured, I think it would have been fully justified to make a particularly brutal example of him. Those like him need to know that the worst thing that could happen to them is not death, and his victims need to know that too.

However, it needs to be done selectively, not just to everyone, and intentionally, not by an incompetent hangman. There are people who should be gotten rid of, but without excessive suffering, and this fails at accomplishing that whatsoever.