NUREMBERG, Germany – The final justice delivered to ten of the Third Reich’s most senior officials was a horrifically flawed process, with multiple executions descending into scenes of prolonged suffering due to a poorly constructed gallows and an incompetent hangman. New documentary evidence and eyewitness accounts detail how the early morning hangings on October 16, 1946, intended as a swift conclusion to the historic Nuremberg Trials, became a series of botched procedures where condemned Nazis took minutes to strangle to death.

The executions, carried out by U.S. Army Master Sergeant John C. Woods, were marred by critical failures. The gallows’ trap door was too small, causing condemned men to smash their heads on the frame as they fell. Woods’ use of a standard drop, rather than a calculated long drop designed to instantly break the neck, resulted in slow asphyxiation for several of the condemned. The world, which had watched the trials with revulsion at Nazi crimes, was largely shielded from the grim inefficiency of the executions themselves.

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the highest-ranking military officer sentenced, was the second to mount the scaffold. Witnesses noted he entered the chamber with his head held high, declining assistance from guards. After declaring, “I call on Almighty God to have mercy on the German people,” the black hood was placed over his head. His drop was anything but instantaneous. Keitel’s neck did not break; he strangled for a reported 24 agonizing minutes, bleeding heavily from a head wound sustained from the trap door.

Wilhelm Frick, the former Reich Minister of the Interior and architect of the Nuremberg Race Laws, stumbled on the steps to the gallows. His final cry of “Long live eternal Germany” preceded a drop that saw him violently strike the side of the trap, opening a severe wound on the back of his head. He was pronounced dead 15 minutes after entering the chamber, his body and suit later photographed smeared with blood before being placed in a coffin.

The most dramatic and resistant figure was Julius Streicher, the virulently anti-Semitic publisher of Der Stürmer. He screamed “Heil Hitler!” and “Purim Fest 1946!”—a chilling reference to a Jewish holiday celebrating the defeat of a ancient persecutor. After the trap opened, the rope snapped taut with his body swinging wildly; audible groans came from behind the curtain. Witnesses reported the hangman, Woods, eventually lifted the curtain and pulled down on the struggling body to finally end the execution.

Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations for the German High Command, faced his fate with stoicism, offering the brief last words, “My greetings to you, my Germany.” His death appeared more straightforward than others, though the precise time it took remains unclear amidst the chaotic sequence of events that morning.

The first to die was Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister. He walked steadily to the gallows and spoke of a wish for peace before the hood descended. His death was not swift; he struggled behind the curtain for approximately 14 minutes before succumbing. This set a grim precedent for the executions that followed.

Sergeant Woods, an experienced but notoriously careless executioner, later boasted to reporters, “I hanged those 10 Nazis, and I’m proud of it.” He expressed no remorse for the botched procedures, focusing instead on his pride in having carried out the sentences. The flawed executions have since become a dark footnote in the history of the postwar reckoning, a stark contrast to the meticulous judicial process of the trials themselves.

The bodies of the executed men were subsequently cremated, and their ashes secretly scattered in the Isar River to prevent any location from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. While their crimes against humanity were monumental and meticulously documented, the clumsy administration of their sentences left a legacy of procedural failure alongside one of historic justice. The events of that October morning serve as a grim reminder that the machinery of justice, even when morally unequivocal, is only as sound as its weakest component.