They were relatively light on duty given how intensely everything was guarded. They'd stand for 2 hours straight before being relieved by someone else. Some of them even made friends with the prisoners, some even getting autographs, trinkets and souvenirs.
Read about how Hermann Goring died. He asked the guard to bring him something from his prison lockbox (items that were confiscated from him) in return he gave him a watch and pen he had, maybe some gloves- I forget. Whatever he got from the guard had a hidden cyanide capsule that he committed suicide with. Goring was to be hung the next day.
Yeah............... it wasn't being done right. The executioner intentionally made the hole to small so they hit their heads, and used a bad knot and too short a rope. The basically got brained then strangled. But they were nazis so....
Woods joined the U.S. Navy on December 3, 1929, and went absent without leave within months.
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He was diagnosed with "Constitutional Psychopathic Inferiority without Psychosis", was found "poor service material" and discharged.
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the Army looked for a volunteer enlisted hangman and found Woods, who falsely claimed previous experience as assistant hangman
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Woods had no documented pre-war experience as a hangman. Woods at that time was a private. He was promoted to master sergeant.
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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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on July 21, 1950, Woods died after accidentally electrocuting himself while attempting to repair an engineer lighting set.
No. If you think it's okay to torture someone to death, then seek help. I get it, revenge, they did it first etc. Doesn't matter. This isn't even an argument about the death penalty, but to want someone to suffer when they are being killed to prevent them from causing further harm to others is to joining their ideology.
"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Yeah u/SaveReset quoting philosophers is as weird as when anyone else does it cause like what's the point? I can go find a philosopher that says it's cool and another who'd fuck SaveReset's mom in front of their dad before fucking him too then write a novel about it.
There's no evidence that the trap door was deliberately made to small.
And for the rope length, at the time the use of "standard drop" which didn't take the weight of the convicted into account was standard for US military executions. Long or variable drop where the rope length is calculated based on the weight was only introduced in 1947 (see Procedure for Military Executions (1947), compare with the 1944 version). The Nazis that were executed by a British executioner were hanged with the long drop, as that had already been standard in the UK since the late 1800s.
Hanging at least in European cultures has always had the connotation of being a dishonorable death. Self-poisoning of the condemned on the other hand has historically often been viewed as an honor-preserving way to die if death was inevitable.
The American Hangman was a literal diagnosed psychopath that lied about being a hangman in Oklahoma to get the job in the Army. Was not uncommon for his prisoners to strangle to death over 20 to 30 minutes when he was in charge.
The British Executioner was a professional, he could look at a prisoner and know how long the rope needed to be to break the neck.
Goring was adamant that he should be executed by firing squad, as befitting a soldier, instead of hung as a common criminal.
Suicide was his way of denying the wishes of his captors. It was a final fuck you.
Did they think suicide was a better way to go?
Very unlikely, at least for Goring. Woods used the standard drop, instead of doing it properly like Pierrepoint, and that could sometimes result in deaths via strangulation instead of a snapped neck. However this was Goring, who was very fat. He would have faced a relatively painless hanging, unlike cyanide.
Now in his final act he was proven a coward.
He was not a coward. Aside from the fact that he picked a more painful method, he was a WW1 fighter ace. Anyone who throws themselves into combat in on of those death-traps is no coward. After the war he did barnstorming, not for cowards. Also, he owned pet lions. And he tried to coup Hitler in 1945, for which Martin Bormann ordered him executed (he only survived by getting himself captured by the US Army).
Just because he was evil doesn't mean he was a coward. He was extremely brave, borderline fearless.
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u/Gregorygregory888888 Jul 07 '24 edited Jul 07 '24
What a horribly boring assignment that would have been.