John Woods is probably one of the few Americans who could say a sincere thanks to Adolf Hitler. Without Hitler, there would be no World War II (at least in the format known to us) and the Nuremberg Tribunal. Namely, thanks to the latter, John Woods not only made good money, but also became the most famous executioner of the 20th century. And maybe the whole world history.
Profitable proposition
Very little is known about John's biography. Most likely, his personal data was simply classified. Perhaps to prevent neo-Nazis from revenge on the Woods family. But these are only assumptions. In fact - the biography of the executioner No. 1 was compiled from his words and has many blank spots. So, let's begin.
John Clarence Woods was born June 5, 1911 in Wichita, Kansas. The population here was relatively small - 50 thousand people, but for agricultural Kansas this is a real metropolis. The people here did not live in poverty - the railway, many enterprises, and it is unlikely that John grew up in poverty. True, we can only guess about this, since for him talking about childhood and adolescence was always taboo, and he did not answer questions about it.
In 1929, as expected, young Woods was called up for military service in the navy.
However, his colleagues disliked him for something. Woods escaped from the ship and was caught by the military police only six months later, for which he received a prison sentence. John served him in Texas. It was then that he received a "favorable offer." Namely, to become an executioner. Apparently, Woods did not have a relationship with the prisoners either, therefore, in order to avoid communication with them, he agreed. What? To live outside the prison, just like free, besides the salary they also pay for "piecework". That is, for each executed - a separate "fee".
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Good executioner
Woods, quite possibly, would have got into the history of the criminal world as one of the most productive executioners - in Texas he executed, according to his own recollections, 347 murderers and rapists. But this figure is far from the record. For example, on account of the Frenchman Charles Henri Sanson - almost 3000 people. And Major General Vasily Blokhin, Stalin's confidant, personally executed more than 10 thousand (according to some sources, 15 thousand) people, including Tukhachevsky, Meyerhold, Babel and Yezhov. So Woods is so average on this bloody list.
I must say that John deserved the glory of a good executioner. He did not try to prolong the victim's torment, as some of his colleagues did. Woods, knocking a stool out from under the feet of the condemned man, hung on him with all his weight. So the gallows did not choke in the noose, but died almost instantly from a fracture of the cervical vertebrae. On the part of the executioner, it is indeed in some way an act of humanism.
The Second World War began. For several years, John, as before, sent murderers and rapists to the gallows. But in 1943, despite a criminal record and the necessary profession, he was drafted into the army in the engineering troops. On June 6, 1944, the Allies finally opened a "second front" with the Normandy operation. Among the American soldiers, as happens with the "victorious army", there are murderers of civilians, rapists, looters. To maintain discipline, it was necessary to deal with them as strictly as possible. Shooting on the spot in the American army was not practiced, even the most notorious villains were required to be judged first. And - to execute in accordance with US laws. This required a full-time executioner. Guess who got the job? Of course, the hero of our article. Fortunately, he was no stranger.
Maestro's apprentice
Before the end of the war, Woods executed about 30 American military personnel who were sentenced to death by military courts. And here, as before, he showed humanism, helping his victims to quickly leave this world. And then came his finest hour. John was chosen as the man who would carry out the sentence of the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Legend has it that the Nazi bosses were originally supposed to be hanged by Johann Reichart, the famous German executioner, who has executed more than 3,100 executions. Johan, who "worked" both under the Weimar Republic and under Hitler, received an offer of cooperation from the Americans as soon as he fell into their hands. Reichart agreed and hanged fellow countrymen sentenced to death convicted of crimes against humanity (SS men, concentration camp workers).
However, shortly before that, the Nuremberg Tribunal passed a verdict (few doubted that it would be about the death penalty), and Johan learned that among the Nazis he hanged were two innocent people who were taken by mistake due to the coincidence of names. This so stunned the devout executioner that he flatly refused to engage in his craft. It was then that Woods was summoned to Nuremberg.
Refusing to hang himself, Johan taught his American counterpart some professional tricks. For example, do not knock out a stool from under the feet of a hanged person, but build a platform with a hatch. He is said to have taught Woods the 13-knot "crown" loop, which has since become the hallmark of the American executioner and looked very impressive in photographs.
Moment of glory
And then came the "finest hour" of John Woods - the day of the execution of the main Nazis. In the gymnasium of the Nuremberg prison, in just one night, the executioner and his henchman erected a scaffold with 13 steps, made three hatches in it and put the same number of gallows. It was a kind of conveyor belt of death: while one hanged man is agonizing, the next one is led to the scaffold.
Two Nazis still managed to escape justice. For example, the chairman of the "German Labor Front" Robert Leigh himself hanged himself in a cell on a water pipe. And Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering bit through an ampoule with potassium cyanide, which it is not clear how he got it. The rest of the prominent Nazis took a well-deserved execution.
It happened on purpose, or Woods did it on purpose, but the execution was not at all humane. The "long loop" principle is used for hanging from the scaffold. When the hatch opens, the condemned person falls through and for a few moments is in "free flight". Only then the rope is pulled, and the hanged man dies not from strangulation, but from a fracture of the cervical vertebrae (for example, Saddam Hussein was executed).
But Woods made very small hatches. When they opened, some of the condemned, falling down, touched them. Because of this, the speed of the fall turned out to be too low, and the Nazis did not die instantly, but suffered, suffocating. For example, Keitel was agonized in a loop for 24 minutes (all this was recorded by observers), Jodl - 18, Ribbentrop - 10. But on average, the execution of each Nazi took ten minutes.
After that, the corpses were photographed, put into coffins, taken out and cremated, and the ashes were poured into the Izar Canal.
After Japan's surrender, the Tokyo trial began, similar to the Nuremberg trial, but not so loud. Seven sentenced to death on December 23, 1948, was also executed by John Woods, who had become a celebrity by that time: his pictures with the same noose were spread all over the world.
Golden calf and electric shock
Returning to the United States, Woods was raised to the rank of a national hero (the only executioner in history). He handed out interviews, the most famous of which was titled How to Turn Up a Nazi in Ten Minutes. He willingly posed in front of reporters with the famous 13-knot loop. All this is not free, of course.
John also pulled off a pretty clever swindle. The fact is that after the execution of the Nazis, he removed the ropes from their necks, and later brought them as a kind of souvenir to the United States. And one day he advertised in a newspaper about their sale. John had never expected to receive a flood of letters from customers. For all the ropes, of course, there would not be enough, except to cut them into small pieces. Then John acted incredibly witty: he made several thousand more ropes with the famous loop and sent them to the suffering ones (for a moderate fee, of course). He assured each of them that this was the “same” rope on which one of the Nazis ended his days.
Executioner # 1 died very young, at 39 years old. There are two versions of his death - domestic and professional. According to the first, Woods was repairing the wiring in the house and died from an electric shock. According to the second, more like a legend, the executioner allegedly invented a new type of electric chair and sat on it. For fun, he asked his assistant to turn on the switch. He, however, did not have a sense of humor and fulfilled John's order literally.
Be that as it may, on July 21, 1950, executioner # 1 was gone. He was buried in his native Kansas.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №38. Author: Andrey Leshukonsky
