We associate execution by axe with the Tudor period.
During the reign of King Henry VIII, hundreds of people were taken in London to the public
beheading spot on Tower Hill.
This was just outside of the Tower of London’s walls, and huge crowds would gather to witness
public beheadings.
Some of History’s most famous figures such as Thomas Cromwell, Sir Thomas More, and even
two of Henry VIII’s wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were beheaded.
What we don’t associate with Nazi Germany is the use of beheadings using the axe.
At the early start of Hitler’s time in charge of the country, there was still one man who
was utilising the medieval method of execution.
During Hitler’s time as the dictator of Germany, there was a shift from using the
axe to the more reliable guillotine, to take the heads of those deemed by the state to
be traitors.
Many more executions were carried out using hangings and shootings, but there was one
executioner who relied on his axe to take the heads of criminals.
Today we look at Hitler’s Bloody Executioner and Axeman, Carl Gropler.
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Franz Friedrich Carl Grober was born on the 22nd February 1868 in Magdeburg.
His father was a railway worker, and at a young age he was a talented musician.
He would play often, and used this as a career but then he worked as a postal worker.
However, he later transitioned into a very different line of work.
He began to become an apprentice learning how to become a horse butcher, and later then
ran a steam launderette in his home town.
However the laundry business did not bring in enough money, so Gropler sought to earn
more money in different ways.
He found himself in the position as the main assistant to the Prussian Executioner Lorenz
Schweitz.
He worked in assisting executions in Prussia, performing duties such as confirming identities
and performing checks before executions were carried out.
A fellow Prussian executioner was sacked in 1906 after he submitted poor execution reports,
and Gropler then took over his job.
He became known for being one of the last executioners in Germany who was adept and
was confident in performing executions and beheadings using an axe.
At the time in Germany, the guillotine was used but some were sentenced to death by axe.
He often carried these out with a hand axe, also known as a judging axe.
Alongside using the axe he also used the guillotine too, a much more reliable and quicker method
of execution.
There was much more that could go wrong using an axe, hence why the guillotine was preferred.
In April 1924, Gropler became the sole executioner and the most senior in Northern Germany, and
he received a decent amount of money for this.
He continued to take heads from serial killers and murderers, for example in February 1926
he executed Josef Jakubowski with his hand axe, but at the time there was a shift in
politics.
The Weimar Republic began to discuss the idea of abolishing the death penalty, and the number
of executions across the country had gone down and decreased.
For Gropler this was bad, as he was suffering from a lack of work and also money.
He would receive around 60 marks for each execution, and he was missing this money.
However as politics shifted, Gropler would be one of many inside Germany who would benefit
financially from Hitler’s rise to power.
When the Nazis came into power and Hitler became chancellor and Fuhrer, the number of
executions that were performed went up significantly.
Anyone who was dissenting of Hitler or his Nazi party would simply he interrogated by
the Gestapo, probably tortured and then they were executed.
Executions took the forms of many different methods, from guillotine to firing squad.
Hitler was not scared to order many deaths, and it’s known that for some executions
he even watched them performed.
Gropler was given a renewal of his annual contract and was given a salary of 1500 reichmarks
a year, and was given a rate of 50 marks per execution performed under Hitler’s leadership.
It was claimed that during executions, Gropler would perform a Hitler salute during the execution
and after it took place, and because of this he was warned of his conduct, and told to
carry out his duties with professionalism.
He was an experienced executioner and carried out executions for decades across many different
cities.
As time went on his laundry business failed and he became reliant on his executions to
pay the bills.
He had taken the heads of some of Germany’ most famous criminals, including the serial
killer Peter Kurten who was executed by guillotine in 1931.
Kurten was described as the vampire of Dusseldorf, due to his perverse attempts to drink the
blood of his victims.
He continued to use the axe, executing Albert Kluge with an axe, but two of the last executions
using beheading by Axe in Germany were that of Baroness Benita von Falkenhayn and her
accomplice Renate von Natzmer.
Falkenhayn had for a long while been monitored by the Abwehr, as she was obtaining and passing
secret information about preparations for the German Invasion of Poland which would
come in years later in 1939.
She was sleeping with a polish spy, as was Natzmer and they were both arrested and brought
in front of the people’s court.
Accused of espionage and treason, the People’s Court which always favoured the Nazi protection
sentenced them to death.
Appeals for clemency were turned down, and they became two of the last people to be beheaded
by axe.
Inside the courtyard of Plotzensee Prison, the two women were led out where Gropler stood
with his axe ready.
He took the heads of both of the women, however the executions caused outrage across the world.
The foreign press heard of the bloody and barbaric executions, and with this they criticised
the Nazi leadership and the Nazi state, seeing it as a place where medieval execution methods
were accepted.
However because of the bloody backlash to Gropler’s executions using axe, Nazi Justice
Minister Franz Gurtner in October 1936 managed to convince Hitler that the best way of executing
treasonous individuals and performing beheadings was the more reliable guillotine.
Gropler argued otherwise, saying he was quicker and it was more secretive to take the head
off a condemned person using his trusty weapon.
However this ended the reliance on Gropler’s aim, his arm and swing with his axe.
He was forced into retirement in 1937, and was credited with over 144 executions however
during the Second World War, his past would come back to haunt him
Towards the end of the conflict in 1945, he was arrested in his home by the Soviet Red
Army military officials.
They arrested him in Magdeburg as he had been responsible for executing four communists
in 1934 in Hamburg Prison.
The papers and records had been discovered, and they believed he should pay for his role
as an executioner, however whilst on remand following his arrest in 1946 he died.
So for a short time whilst Adolf Hitler was the dictator of Germany, Carl Gropler was
serving as the axeman in almost a medieval fashion.
He relied on his axe to execute dozens of criminals, subsequently which helped him to
pay his bills being paid to perform the bloody office.
If the Nazis had not have abolished execution by axe then it bears the question as to how
many heads would Gropler have taken as they continued to impose their police state onto
Germany?
It’s almost certain that if he continued in this way during the Second World War, Gropler
would have become one of the most serial headsman in history.
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