The Psychopath That Hanged Nazis
The Interesting Career of United States Army Executioner John C. Woods and The Men He Hanged at Nuremberg
Nuremberg Palace of Justice
Fuerther Str. 110
Nuremberg, Germany
October 16, 1946
1:13 a.m.
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel, former Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces, stepped into the gymnasium of the Palace of Justice, a place that was practically in the backyard of the courts in which he had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
He was number two of the ten men who would die by the rope that morning. By his side, two American guards held him by the arms. He still would’ve been standing upright if they had been allowed to let go of him. He did not flounder in posture nor in temperament.
He held an erect figure that displayed preparedness, and this being all very according, for perhaps in his mind he held the creed that he had been born a soldier, lived a soldier, and now was to die a soldier, regardless of the fact that he was given a criminal’s death by the rope rather than a soldier’s death by the bullet.
He walked up to the gallows with the stride of professional soldiery, emitting…
