Inside of a prison in Poland, Ludwig Fischer was led out to a gallows which was inside
of a courtyard.
There stood a huge gallows, in which many war criminals who committed crimes during
the Second World War were executed.
The gallows was fitted with a trapdoor, and Ludwig Fisher was attended on by a number
of masked guards and executioners.
But things went wrong during his execution.
He was a man who had committed scores of evil acts during the conflict, and he had also
been responsible for many executions and he was a man who terrorised the Polish people
during World War 2.
The people of Poland suffered heavily following the invasion of the country which launched
the war in Europe, and Nazis would execute thousands of people and deport many to concentration
camps.
But what was the story of the execution of Ludwig Fisher and what did he do?
Join us today as we find out and to support our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
Ludwig Fisher was born on the 16th April 1905 in Kaiserslautern, and he was raised in a
catholic family.
However across Germany in the aftermath of the First World War there was great hardship
and suffering.
In the 1920s, the Nazi Party rose to prominence as did Adolf Hitler and he would during this
time try to take the power inside of Munich, during the Beer Hall Putsch.
Many people who were desperate turned to the politics of the Nazi party, and Ludwig Fisher
was one of those.
He was one of the first members of the party, joining whilst he was a student in 1926, and
whilst at university he attended rallies and speeches for the political group.
The Nazis and Hitler promised the people of Germany that they would restore national pride
following their loss of World War 1, and they also promised to sort out the huge issues
with economics across the land.
Inside of the Nazi Party, Ludwig Fisher joined the SA, Hitler’s brownshirts in 1929 and
these would be involved in disrupting political meetings and briefings.
They would also violently attack the enemies of the nazis and communists, but inside of
the party Fisher would rise to the rank of a gruppenfuhrer and in 1937 he was elected
to the Reichstag or the German parliament.
It was clear that in Hitler’s eyes that Fischer had a promising future within the
Nazi party, and he would rise to prominence during the Second World War.
The conflict broke out in Europe in September 1939.
It was obvious that Hitler was aiming to bring the continent to it’s kneels with a huge
war, as he had spent years and years building up his army to a huge extent and this broke
the peace treaty signed after world war 1.
But the German invasion of Poland was rather savage, and thousands of people would be killed
in the illegal incursion and within days and weeks the whole of the country fell to the
might of the Wehrmacht and the German Army.
The Nazis had brutal plans for Poland, and the SS had also created lists that would see
thousands being arrested and deported to concentration camps immediately.
Many of these were executed and lots were imprisoned inside camps such as Dachau where
they succumbed to the conditions of the camp.
But when the German invasion took place and the country fell, Ludwig Fischer was appointed
the Chief Administrator of the Warsaw District in the occupied General government.
He would two years later become the governor of the Warsaw district, and he would remain
in this position until the German army left Warsaw in January 1945 with the war turning
against the Nazis.
But in his role as a senior figure in Warsaw, Fischer was involved in a number of horrific
war crimes that brought tragedy and suffering to many people.
He was someone who oversaw the establishment and creation of the Warsaw Ghetto.
This was the largest of the Nazi ghettos set up during World War 2, and it was set up in
November 1940.
At the height of its use, there were 460,000 Jews who were imprisoned inside of the ghetto.
They were kept within an area of 3.4km square, and with this it meant that over 9 people
were on average inside of a room.
The food supplies were awful and terrible, and people were suffering to a huge degree.
The total death toll inside of the ghetto was at least 300,000 killed by either bullet
of gas following transportation to extermination camps such as treblinka or majdanek.
The conditions inside the ghetto were shocking, and the Nazis were intent on eradicating people
by hunger and disease as well as starving them and preventing them getting access to
medical treatment.
Inside the Warsaw ghetto in 1941, the rations for Jews was just limited to 184 calories
a day, in opposition to 2613 calories for Germans.
The food supplies were a major problem, and a black market economy thrived in the ghetto.
It was a horrific place, and around the ghetto would be dead bodies lying everywhere, ready
to be collected and dealt with by the authorities.
Culture was there in the ghetto, and there were some schools also for the children, but
the hardship was immense.
Eventually as mentioned hundreds of thousands of people would be deported to extermination
camps where they were executed within minutes of entering the site being offloaded off the
trains.
They were then driven into the gas chambers quickly by the guards.
Ludwig Fischer was involved in the creation of the ghetto, and he also issued many antisemitic
laws that made the lives of Jews even more difficult.
He also would take part in the brutal de-establishment and deportations of thousands, and he was
one of those linked to terror in the city.
He would administer mass executions in public, in which those who were suspected of being
involved in the resistance were executed in public, with their bodies being left out for
days.
There were many slave labour programs that took place too as the German companies took
advantage of the free labor of those who lived in the ghetto.
Fischer was involved in this, and as more were sent to concentration camps, he would
continue to rise throughout the Nazi’s ranks.
Hitler was impressed with his work, however during the Second World War there were a number
of attempts on his life.
Polish resistance groups and underground courts would sentence him to death for his crimes
against the Polish people, and with this the plan for Operation Heads was drawn up.
This was a code name for a series of assassinations of Nazi officials who had terrorised the Polish,
and on this list Ludwig Fischer was top.
The resistance began to plot how to kill him, and in 1944 before the Warsaw Uprising took
place, Fisher’s car was shot at as it was driving near the city.
The Home Army’s Zoska battalion on the 8th January had been tipped off that he had gone
hunting just outside of Warsaw.
The subordinates were gathered and they agreed to attack.
40 men went ahead to carry out the ambush.
Fisher’s car would be stopped by a steel rope which was strung across the road, and
then the resistance members would empty their weapons into the car and the entourage and
they would aim to kill Fischer along with his body guards.
Around 6pm that evening, the cars appeared, but someone fired too early and the driver
of the first car floored the car and sped through the rope snapping it.
The others went through, but 9 germans were hurt, however Fischer escaped unhurt.
Following the failing of the Warsaw Uprising, Fisher would also take part in the destruction
of Warsaw in which scores of civilians were executed and slaughtered.
The city would be razed to the ground in places and its believed that 80% of Warsaw’s buildings
including museums and art galleries were destroyed.
There was large scale looting also, and Fischer was the beast who was responsible for huge
amounts of this.
He was also responsible for the terrible conditions inside temporary transit camps in Poland that
the Nazis established to house people who had been expelled from the city.
But as the war turned against the Germans and came to an end, Ludwig Fischer went on
the run.
He hid out in Bavaria inside the town of Bad Neustadt an Der Saale.
But he was then on the 10th May 1945 arrested by American soldiers who then interrogated
him.
Following his indentification, he was then transferred to Poland to face the crimes that
he had committed there.
Whilst on trial, he was accused of huge crimes and murder against the Polish people in Warsaw,
and there was very little that he could do about his fate.
The evidence against him was huge, and on the 3rd March 1947, Ludwig Fisher was sentenced
to death for crimes against humanity.
Many of those who had come forward as witnesses to testify against him spoke of the brutality
and execution he had took part in inside of Warsaw, and how his actions and persecution
caused a huge amount of tragedy.
But his execution would be one in which Ludwig Fischer would be made to suffer, as it was
an execution which went wrong not once, but twice.
On the 8th March 1947 at the age of 41, inside of Mokotow Prison he was taken from his prison
cell to the courtyard where a gallows had been created.
This gallows was a large wooden structure, and underneath it was a series of steps and
also a trapdoor.
The executioners had black masks over their eyes and Fischer was led to the gallows.
He was wearing a long coat, and the noose had been secured around the gallows.
However the execution was botched as during the first attempt the rope snapped and Fishcer
fell through the trapdoor first and he was not hanged.
This then happened against the second time and there was a lot of chaos inside the execution
courtyard with this.
But the third time was more successful, as when the noose was place around his neck and
the trapdoor release, Fischer was then executed.
Ludwig Fisher was the brutal and barbaric beast of Warsaw who took part in the executions
and deportations of hundreds of thousands of people.
He was a man who was responsible for the deaths of so many, but he was someone who could not
be executed in a straight forward manner, with it taking the polish executioners three
times to enact their vengeance on a man who was completely evil.
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