Holocaust victim

The most surprising thing was not the trial, but the guy they hired to be the executioner. Most people believed that the person who operated the hangings at Nuremberg in 1946 was a professional. In fact, he was an American sergeant by the name of John C. Woods who was basically a fake.

The army was in need of manpower quickly and Woods seized the opportunity. He said that he was a professional hangman from Texas, but that was a lie. He had never hung anyone. Years before the war, he had been kicked out of the Navy as a result of doctors who claimed he had a psychopathic personality. Since no one else wanted the hard job of hanging Nazi leaders, the Army did not check his story and gave him the job.

Because he didn't know what he was doing, the executions were a mess. A proper hanging should be over in an instant, but Woods used the wrong lengths of the rope and the trapdoors were too small. As a result, leaders like Wilhelm Keitel did not die quickly, they hit their heads on the way down. Instead of taking a second to die, some of them became stuck for about 20 minutes. It was messy and nothing like what it was supposed to be.

The strangest part is how Woods acted following the hangings. He did not behave like a sad soldier going about a hard business. Instead he acted like a movie star. He posed for pictures with his ropes, and bragged to reporters about how proud he was of his work. He seemed more to love the power and the attention rather than keeping the rules.

But his story does not end in so strange a manner. Few years later in 1950, Woods was in the process of repairing light when he accidentally electrocuted himself. He died right there. Many people thought it was a crazy way to end with so many messy people dead.

It is intense to consider that the biggest trial in the history of the world came to the end through a man who pretended to be a professional until he went to the gallows.

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