Nuremberg Executions 1946 - What Happened to the Bodies?

[Music] the International Military Tribunal the IMT convened in the ruined city of numeron burg on the 20th of November 1945 to sit in judgment of the surviving leaders of Nazi Germany the trial continued until the 1st of October 1946 when the judgments were handed down of the 24 defendants 11 was sentenced to death by hanging reichsmarschall Hermann Goering the most senior German leader placed on trial was somehow able to commit suicide the night before his execution using a vial of cyanide smuggled to him in his cell this will be the subject of a different film in the future the remaining ten were all Julie hang by a special team of US Army executioner's using two gallows constructed in the numeron burg palace of Justices gymnasium they were Vilhelm title field marshal and former chief of the german armed forces Yura Kim von Ribbentrop Hitler's foreign minister dr. ernst kaltenbrunner ss obergruppenfuhrer and chief of the reich main security office alfred rosenberg head of the Reich ministry of the occupied eastern territories and a major national socialist theorist dr. Hans Frank head of the general government of occupied Poland vilhelm Frick Reich Minister of Interior and then governor of occupied Czechoslovakia Julius Streicher publisher the Nazi Party newspaper - duma fritz zharko general plenipotentiary for labor deployment Alfred Ural Colonel general and chief of the operations staff of the armed forces High Command an artifice in quat Reich commissar of the occupied Netherlands the executions were botched resulting in several cases of slow death by strangulation of up to 28 minutes instead of broken necks and several of the condemned smashed their heads on the trapdoor of one of the gallows as they fell the opening being too small Master Sergeant John C woods conducted the hangings assisted by sergeant Joseph Malta and Billy Ford all members of the 68 50th internal security detachment at numeron Berg woods was a controversial character discharged from the US Navy in 1930 after being diagnosed with constitutional psychopathic inferiority he had falsely claimed hangman experience and was selected as an army executioner during the war hanging 34 American soldiers in France in 1944 245 internal reports suggested that woods bungled at least 11 executions of convicted US servicemen before he arrived at numeron burg and this is normally where the story of numeron burg ends with the executions on the 16th of october 1946 but what happened to the bodies of the Nazi leaders what happened to the contents of their cells and their personal property held in storage at numeron burg well the story of what happened to the bodies was suppressed for years but in fact they're top secret and rather macabre operation to dispose of them was swiftly enacted by the US Army after carefully photographing and labeling the bodies of numeron burg they were all stripped naked and placed into standard plain wooden coffins this included the body of Goering who had cheated the hangman and this is where things took a turn towards the bazaar each coffin was labeled with a false name each corpse being given the identity of a fictitious American soldier for example Goering became George Munga on the morning of the 17th of October 1946 the eleven coffins were loaded aboard u.s. army trucks under the command of a military police battalion the form part of the numeron burg trials guard force her 12th empty coffin was added to the trucks the reason soon becoming clear the trucks escorted by jeeps left numeron Berg's Palace of Justice early in the morning and drove to Munich to a huge cemetery called the osteoid HOF the trucks pulled up outside the cemeteries crematorium built in 1929 the crematorium staff were informed that the remains of 12 American soldiers had been killed in action in 1945 had been recovered from the battlefield in accordance for their family's wishes they were to be cremated the crematorium was surrounded by heavily armed US soldiers while the cremations were under way watched by several officers it took all day to complete the cremations the ashes of each war criminal was placed into urns carefully labeled with their false American identities at the conclusion of the operation the urns were loaded aboard a truck and driven under escort to US Army mortuary number one a 25 Hulman Strasser immune ik otherwise known as the villa uber Huma the attractive white house of a wealthy textiles manufacturer that had been commandeered by the US Army next came the disposal of the ashes not far from the villa is the vents back a small tributary stream of the river Issa that runs through munich the 17th of october US soldiers took the urns to the fence buck and tipped the contents into the water then using axes and their boots they carefully smashed the urns and de fragments and then drove away now for the second part of the cleanup operation disposal of the executed men's possessions those who had stood trial in their military uniforms have had those uniforms stripped of all insignia and decorations those materials have been placed in storage at numeron Beck Field Marshal Keitel z-- medals and decorations including his Knight's Cross and World War 1 iron crosses were all destroyed along with his field marshals baton strangely his two golden party badge errs were retained though the swastikas were defaced before being handed over to the finance director of the US occupation zone in Germany for sale to help offset the costs of the executions which had run to some four and a half thousand dollars regarding Colonel general yodel all of his decorations and medals were destroyed Hermann Goering had many decorations and was captured wearing his distinctive neck assemblage of the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross the Knight's Cross and the World War one polymer heat or blue max the Americans destroyed all of these decorations as well as his World War one Iron Cross first class however Goering 's solid-gold Nazi Party badge his diamonds stuttered pilots observers badge and other decorations made from precious metals were D not suffered by scratching out or otherwise defective before they too was sent to the finance director to be sold presumably for scrap however Goering had many sets of his medals and copies of his Blue Max Grand Cross and other decorations were recovered from his train at back to Scotland station or looted from his private property and survived in collections around the world today although not hanged at numeron burg Grand Admiral Calder Nets former head of the German Navy received ten years imprisonment at Neumann burg his u-boat war badge with diamonds was taken from him if swastika crudely excised and this was also sent to the finance director her scrap jewelry most of the executed had left behind papers letters or diaries in their cells these were gathered and sorted into categories though some of this materials subsequently disappeared all uniforms in storage bearing Nazi insignia were burnt or other clothing personal possessions and less precious jewelry were turned over to the relatives of the executed along with any cash up to a thousand rush marks all other cash and precious stones went to the financed record one man was missing from the cremations in october 1946 Robert Lai had been head of the German labour front under Hitler the Americans psychologist of numeron Berg dr. Douglas Kelly thought that lie was mentally ill but before further tests could be made lye managed to hang himself in his cell on the 24th of October 1945 the body was cremated but in a bizarre move dr. Kelly had lies brains smuggled out of the prison for study and a section of lies brain tissue was found among Kelly's papers in 2013 long after he also killed himself in 1958 thanks for watching please subscribe and share you can also visit my new audio book Channel war stories with mark Felton you can also help support both of my channels of PayPal and patreon details in the description box below [Music] and

Channel: Mark Felton Productions

Views: 6,630,700

Rating: 4.8558526 out of 5

Keywords: Mark Felton Productions, Nuremberg Trials, Hermann Goering

Id: At7IA19fXHc

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/WearingMyFleece]

Very interesting and good information to know.

[u/50Shekel]

Mark Felton!

[u/Boring_username1234]

Wow. Never knew that stuff

[u/KaiserKCat]

The bodies were all cremated and scattered in the Isar river.