Throughout the Second World War, there were a number of executions that took place with
the condemned being found guilty of desertion.
Leaving your post was considered by Hitler and the Nazis as one of the most serious offences
that someone could commit, and like during the First World War they believed that a soldier
should pay for it with their lives.
During World War 1, there were scores of British soldiers who were shot at dawn, and were executed
for military offences of desertion or cowardice, and still today these executions are seen
as stains on the British army, with many of the victims being in fact very young and also
suffering with conditions such as shellshock.
But during World War 2, there was one Nazi war criminal who deserted from the German
Army, but then as he lied to authorities, he became responsible for organising mass
executions of German army deserters, despite the fact he was one himself.
He was playing the executioner, when he should have been the one on the receiving end of
the firing squad’s bullets.
Join us today as we look at the execution of Willi Herold, the executioner of Emsland.
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Born on the 11th September 1925 in a small village in Saxony, Willi Herold joined the
Jungvolk when he was 10.
This was a separate part of the Hitler youth for boys who were aged between 10 and 13.
In this group they would participate in many different activities and sports, but the Nazis
would indoctrinate the young members, and by the end of the Second World War, some members
of the jungvolk were actually fighting, and had become child soldiers.
However Willi herald was then expelled from the group as he skipped service and then tried
to make his own gangs and groups which was against what the leaders allowed.
He later at 14 joined the Hitler Youth, and whilst there he loved being part of the group,
and through this group he rose to a number of different positions.
But he continued his education and at 15 he became a chimney sweep, before he went awol
with a friend and looked towards moving to America.
But then he was arrested by the Gestapo, and he finished his apprenticeship before he was
called into the Reich Labour Service, working on the Atlantic Wall.
But then on the 30th September 1943, Herold joined the German Army.
At this time, the Germans had lost the battle of Stalingrad, and they had sustained heavy
losses so they were looking to replenish their army with fresh men and troops.
Herold trained as a paratrooper, and he was noted for having excellent physical fitness.
But his division was the last to undergo full paratrooper training, and he then took part
in battles in Italy, including at Monte Casino in 1944.
He gained promotion to Lance Corporal, and was also given many different accolades including
the Iron Cross 1st class for destroying British tanks on a beachhead.
However in March 1945, his unit were on the retreat from the Netherlands to Germany as
the Allies were pushing the Germans back at great speed.
Herold during the retreat got separated from his unit late in the month, and he was then
travelling on his own between Gronau and Bad Bentheim.
Whilst he was travelling he came across a damaged Wehrmacht car riddled with bullet
holes and inside was a uniform of a decorated Luftwaffe Captain, and Herold then took this
and assumed the identity of Captain Herold of the Sixth Parachute Division.
He regrouped with other Germans, and convinced a major of this, and he was then given a group
of four soldiers which then expanded to around 60.
Herold said that he was on a special mission given to him by Hitler himself, but he conducted
a number of scouting missions with his men.
He then also made a number of attempts to fight with the Allies, and he and his men
joined a unit close to the village of Lathen, which had been occupied by the Allies.
The effort to retake the village failed, and Herold’s men were demolished under tank
fire, but then Herold the rogue commander and captain was now trying to recruit more
men and equipment into this strange band of soldiers.
He came across a garrison commander who told him that there were hundreds of former German
soldiers in a prison camp waiting for the war to come to an end, and Herold seizing
the opportunity to recruit more men went to the prison camp.
They arrived and whilst there one of the supervisors, asked Willi Herold to judge a group of 30
prisoners who had escaped during a march to a different site, and they were then recaptured.
These were of course German soldiers, and Willi Herold was asked to judge these men,
with more people fooled by his false identity.
Herold stated that five of the men should be executed, but then he was stopped by an
official, who then asked Herold to get permission from the head of the prison camps.
He did not get permission for this, and Herold then got the Gestapo involved, and the Gestapo
granted Herold personally the responsibility to execute the 30 escaped prisoners.
But then, he went further.
Over the next two weeks he ordered the executions of dozens more prisoners from a list of inmates
which had been compiled.
He also chose many prisoners to join his group of soldiers, and he gave them uniforms and
weapons, but ultimately the group were not the most successful.
Willi Herold also enlisted 12 prisoners to become his bodyguards, and they would travel
north and would terrify villagers in local areas.
They raided one prison and dragged out five Dutchmen.
They then forced them to dig their own graves, and shot the prisoners dead before they hanged
a farmer who was waving a white flag of surrender.
But in a hotel on the 30th April 1945, Willi Herold was arrested and was imprisoned.
He was placed on trial, however he was then released due to the involvement of the Kriegsmarine
Chief Justice.
Herold was released and he then left the town of Aurich and he tried to hide out returning
to work as a chimney sweep, however on the 23rd May 1945, he was arrested by Royal Navy
officers as he had stole a loaf of bread.
But his crimes were then investigated, and then he along with other inmates were forced
to dig up the remains of prisoners who had died at the prisoners of war camps that he
had tried to recruit people from and also where he had carried out executions.
195 bodies were excavated, and then Herold was placed on trial.
During this he was known for being rather laid back, expressing no remorse for his crimes.
But he was then sentenced to death, and he had been held responsible for the executions
and murder of 111 people.
The important thing to remember with the case of Willi Herold is the fact he was a liar,
and was someone who wanted to create his own group of soldiers that he could lead.
He was not who he said he was, and he should have been imprisoned by the German military
himself as he was a deserter after all.
But because of his crimes, he was not sentenced to death to die by a standard military death
of a firing squad, but instead was sentenced to death to die on the guillotine.
This was of course the efficient but brutal device which became known during the French
Revolution for taking the heads off thousands of people but also it was used inside of Nazi
Germany for executing resistors.
Inside of Wolfenbuttel Prison, he was brought to the execution chamber.
There stood a German guillotine known as a fallbeil, and other defendants were taken
into the execution chamber kicking and screaming, crying their eyes out as they were dragged
to the guillotine.
But Willi Herold did not show this emotion, he went to his execution with calm and he
was then strapped onto the metal board which was then slid under the guillotine blade.
The executioner then made final checks as a number of witnesses looked on, before the
blade was released taking Herold’s head clean off.
At the age of just 21, Willi Herold was executed by the guillotine.
In the dying days of the Second World War, he seized the opportunity to become someone
else and to fool a number of people claiming he was in fact a prestigious Luftwaffe pilot,
who had been sent on a secret mission from Hitler.
He was a fraud, but he was a man who it’s believed was responsible personally for the
executions of 200 German men, who had deserted and fled from the army as the war had turned
against them.
In Hitler’s eyes these were men who were deemed to have been the worst of the worst,
and who were rightfully executed, but Willi Herold was one of these men.
He himself was a deserter, and he was a man who had fled the Wehrmacht and his unit but
when he found the Luftwaffe uniform he wanted to make a new persona for himself, and to
escape military court martial also for desertion.
But he met his end at the guillotine, but he was a conman, who at the age of 21 was
responsible for dozens of executions, and he deserved the nickname the executioner of
Emsland.
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