During the Second World War and following Adolf Hitler’s time in power there was an
execution device used in many Prisons across Germany that took the lives of many people
who defied the Nazi regime.
Prisons across the nation were filled with many resistors and people who actively opposed
the evil regime and many faced their deaths because of this.
To defy Hitler was a dangerous thing, and those who did not agree with his ideas of
beliefs often found themselves underneath an execution device which had roots in the
French Revolution.
The Guillotine was the device that executed the French King Louis XVI and also his wife
Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution, and it today is still seen as a symbol of
liberty, fraternity and equality.
But this was completely the opposite of the Third Reich’s ideas and policies, but the
guillotine was used in the land as an efficient way of executing criminals.
It was exported from France and had been used for decades before the Second World War, and
it also had a different name, the Fallbeil.
Join us today as we look at the HORROR of Hitler’s Guillotine Execution Machine.
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Guillotines and execution or beheading machines have had a long history that dates back for
centuries before the French Revolution.
In England there was a device used during the Medieval times known as the Halifax Gibbet,
which was a wooden structure and scaffold that utilised a falling axe blade to take
the lives of a condemned person.
The gibbet had a few issues, including that it relied on the condemned being held under
device by a number of trusted people.
There were accounts of people that as the blade was released, breaking free and actually
escaping execution as they were not caught and fled the town and then could not be brought
back to face their death sentence.
But the guillotine was eventually used in Germany by many of the German states and they
also at the time used execution by hand axe, and some executioners used an axe to take
the life of someone like they used to in the medieval period.
This was rather unreliable and often blundering axemen were forced to take several swings
of the axe prolonging someones death.
This even happened during Hitler’s lifetime, and he eventually outlawed beheading by axe.
But following the French Revolution, the guillotine as an execution machine was used in many other
countries including it’s neighbours, and despite the Terror causing chaos in France
executing thousands on the device, Germany used it.
Many Germans adopted the device to condemn criminals as it was seen as efficient, easy
and quick to do so.
The German guillotine was called the Fallbeil or the Drop Axe, and it was different to the
guillotine in a number of ways.
Different devices were used across the land, but there were many changes to the mostly
wooden guillotine.
Some early Fallbeils were the same as the early French devices, but over the following
century most of them were made from metal and were considered harder standing, and some
were a lot smaller too.
The Hamburg Fallbeil was used from 1856 to 1933 and this specific device had a blade
and release mechanism that was different to guillotines.
Also on the scaffold there was a hole on it, or a trap door and a hatch that following
execution would allow the body of the condemned to then drop into a coffin or a room below
where they were then placed into the coffin and were then taken away.
This was all protected by a wooden shed like structure that gave the authorities privacy
to dispose of the body.
This fallbeil was also inside Hamburg Prison, so the device was not used in public and was
sheltered from the view of the everyday person.
When the Nazis came into power, these machines were put into overdrive, with many of those
who spoke out against the regime executed.
One of the most prominent resistors to the Nazis was Sophie Scholl, who along with her
brother were part of the White Rose Movement.
This group were focussed on intellectually questioning people to not conform to the Nazi
ideals and the policies, and the white rose made leaflets which were then distributed
across many German cities.
Sophie and Hans, the brother and sister combination who distributed the leaflets were eventually
turned over to the Gestapo who placed them on trial for treason, and the pair were then
sentenced to death.
The Fallbeil became their instrument of death, as they met the executioner Johann Reichhart
who was considered a master of the Fallbeil.
He went on to execute 3000 people during Hitler’s time in power and these were mostly resistors.
But Sophie was described by Reichhart as ‘the bravest person he ever had to execute,’
and Sophie Scholl is considered a martyr by many across Germany today.
The Fallbeil used to execute her was believed to have been missing for centuries, but allegedly
it could have recently appeared in a collection inside of a Bavarian museum.
Another lady who was executed by the Fallbeil was Grete Beier who in 1908 met her end on
the beheading machine.
Despite this being before Hitler’s time in power, she was a woman who was found guilty
of poisoning her fiancé and also shooting him.
She was forced it seems to marry him but she didn’t really love him, and with this she
decided killing him was the easiest way out of the relationship which is strange.
At the age of 22 she was beheaded by Fallbeil, and this specific device had large and tall
posts and there was no place for her body to be placed inside of, and it then had to
be packed inside of a coffin by hand.
But many executioners such as Moritz Brand who performed this killing were considered
masters of their craft, and they were very smartly dressed when they performed the killings.
They would be kitted out in their finest black suits, and also often worse large top hats.
Throughout the years the role of the executioner remained the same but the Fallbeil did change
in it’s design, many of them had metal head baskets which were used to collect and catch
the head after the blade fell, and many structures had baskets filled with sand and sawdust underneath
the blade to collect the blood of the victim.
Some even had pipes which connected them to sewage systems or drainage so the blood would
be taken away.
As mentioned many were compact and were made of metal and could be collapsed and brought
to other prisons and sites around NAzi Germany.
Other executioners trialled different ways of making the killing process quicker, and
they sometimes used a metal gliding frame which kept the blade straight and made it
fall through the guillotine quicker, so it would hit the victim at a faster velocity,
improving reliability.
Also the blade was very heavy and when the prisoner was locked into the place the sharpness
of it would easily slice through the victim.
There were also quick ways of preparing the victims before death, including when they
were brought into the room and were then secured to a metal or wooden board.
They were tied to this, and sometimes would step on a footrest before they were strapped
with bells to the board.
After this the board was then quickly slid and locked into place below the blade and
quickly the signal to pull the lever which would release the blade was given.
This meant that executions sometimes took seconds, and someone could be dead within
10 seconds that they entered the execution chamber.
The Nazis kept stringent records of these, and many of them have survived the war and
quick executions of around 7 seconds from when someone came into the execution chamber
to when the blade was released did occur.
A bell would ring throughout the execution signalling what was happening, and curtains
were also found that granted privacy to the condemned and also the executioner which allowed
him to perform his job quicker and without pressure.
Executioners were paid around 3000 reichsmarks a year for their jobs, and they received a
bonus of 65 marks per execution, which was enough for one to buy a villa inside a rich
suburb of Munich.
Also the Nazis even charged the families of those who they beheaded, and for every prisoner
an execution cost 300 Reichsmarks.
Even a 12 penny cost of posting the invoice for the Nazis was demanded back from the condemned
person’s family.
In around 8 and a half years since Hitler seized control, it’s believed that around
16,500 people were executed using the Fallbeil, and despite many believing it was a painless
and efficient way to die, it was harrowing for many of the families to considered that
had happened to them.
One Nazi Doctor even claimed that a trip to the dentist was worse and more painful than
the guillotine, but one of the most shocking executions performed in the Third Reich using
the Fallbeil was of a 17 year old boy named Herbert Hubener.
He became the youngest person executed for resisting the Nazis, and he wrote pamphlets
questioning the Nazis.
In one he wrote, ‘"German boys!
Do you know the country without freedom, the country of terror and tyranny?
Yes, you know it well, but are afraid to talk about it.
They have intimidated you to such an extent that you don't dare talk for fear of reprisals.
Yes you are right; it is Germany – Hitler Germany!
Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they
have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding."
He was arrested by the Gestapo, and was tried by an adult however despite being underaged
he was put to death.
On the 27th October 1942 hours after his death sentence was confirmed, at 8:13pm he was executed
by the fallbeil inside the execution room at Plotzensee Prison in Berlin.
His last words to the judges were defiant and he said, ‘‘Now I must die, even though
I have committed no crime.
So now it’s my turn, but your turn will come.’
Shockingly the Fallbeil was even at one point used following the war in the post Hitler
Germany and was allowed to be used by the Allied War Crimes tribunals in post war Germany.
Those who were deemed sentenced to death by Allied War Crimes tribunals were killed by
hanging on gallows at prisons such as Landsberg and Hamelin, but they allowed the German courts
to use the device if they sentenced someone to death.
One was used by the British to execute people condemned under German war.
But it was inside the tough prisons of the Nazis and the Gestapo where the Fallbeil was
mostly used in it’s deadly manner.
The execution chambers of prisons such as Plotzensee or in occupied lands such as Czechoslovakia
where Pakrac Prison had a Fallbeil.
This had one that executed over 100 people during the German occupation of the land,
and most of the victims were members of the Czech resistance.
Despite it being initially a signal of freedom from the oppressive French monarchy during
the Revolution, the Guillotine when it was used inside of the Third Reich stood for something
completely different.
It stood for persecution and keeping down people who defied Hitler and his regime.
Many of the former victims of the Fallbeil were considered heroes in the period following
the war, and many were considered people who should have lived.
The Fallbeil was a quick and efficient execution device and within seconds someone could be
killed on it.
Often it took less than 10 seconds for someones life to be over when they entered the execution
chamber, and with this Hitler got what he wanted, their dissent over quickly with the
fall of the axe blade.
The fallbeil is remembered today as Hitler’s horrific execution device that took the lives
of over 16,000 people during his time in power.
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