1945: German soldiers for cowardice
11 comments April 27th, 2012 Headsman
Throughout the last days of the Third Reich, it ruthlessly forced its desperate conscripts by threat of summary execution into service to slow the overwhelming Soviet army.
Borrowing a page from Gen. Ferdinand Schoerner‘s no-mercy demonstrative hangings of any “straggler” found behind front lines without orders, Goebbels
issued a radio proclamation to the trapped troops [of Berlin]: “Any man found not doing his duty will be hanged from a lamp post after a summary judgment. Moreover, placards will be attached to the corpses stating: ‘I have been hanged here because I am too cowardly to defend the capital of the Reich. I have been hanged because I did not believe in the Fuhrer. I am a deserter and for this reason I shall not see this turning point in history.
SS members, aware that they would be in for the worst of it after the war (and that their mandatory blood-type tattoos would make them easy to identify) were the ones sufficiently motivated to impose this policy. One German in the city at the time recalled the horror of seeing
boys who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS as a warning that, ‘he who was not brave enough to fight had to die.’ When trees were not available, people were strung up on lamp posts. They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics.
Although it’s not specifically an execution story, the horrifying consequences of this lethal paranoia under siege are the theme of the West German film Die Brücke, in which a rare veteran sergeant looking after some child-conscripts is shot by a patrol when he can’t produce orders … leaving the children alone to be butchered pointlessly defending a bridge.
“This event occurred on April 27, 1945,” the film concludes about its (fictional) plot. “It was so unimportant that it was never mentioned in any war communique.”
From the Themed Set: The Death Rattle of the Third Reich.
On this day..
- 1663: Gustav Skytte, pirate - 2020
- 1877: James Singleton, Beeville character - 2019
- 1827: Joseph Sollis, the sheriff unmanned - 2018
- 1896: Carl Feigenbaum, the Ripper abroad? - 2017
- 1803: Michael Ely, personator - 2016
- 1889: The first executions in French-occupied Tunis - 2015
- 1883: Henry De Bosnys, bane of Elizabeths - 2014
- 1940: Wilhelm Kusserow, Jehovah's Witness - 2013
- 1649: Robert Lockyer, Leveller - 2011
- 1792: Jacob Johan Anckarström, assassin of Gustav III - 2010
- 1995: Nie Shubin. Oops. - 2009
- 1733: William Gordon, almost cheating death - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Children,Cycle of Violence,Death Penalty,Desertion,Execution,Germany,Gibbeted,Hanged,History,Known But To God,Mass Executions,Mature Content,Military Crimes,Occupation and Colonialism,Public Executions,Soldiers,Summary Executions,Uncertain Dates,Wartime Executions,Wrongful Executions
Tags: 1940s, 1945, battle of berlin, world war ii
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