EXECUTIONS AT NUREMBERG MAY HAVE BEEN BUNGLED

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 October 1946, Page 6

EXECUTIONS AT NUREMBERG MAY HAVE BEEN BUNGLED

London, Oct. 28. Allegations that the Nuremberg executions were badly bungled by the American Army hangman, Sergeant Woods, are appearing in the New York Press, states the “Daily Graphic.” One American correspondent cabled his paper describing the scene below the gallows as a "shambles ” The “Graphic” says that although official photographs of the execution will not he published in Britain, they appear to support the American criticism. Gault. McGowan, Nuremberg correspondent of the "New York Sun.” says the result was "not attributed to negligence or inhumanity, but to inexperience.” Another American report says an American army chaplain, who was with Goering when he died, claimed that Goering carried the poison phial in a kangaroo-like pouch grafted on to the fleshy part of his body. The chaplain said Goering several times expressed a fear of death by hanging, because he believed it would be bungled and he would die a slow death by strangulation. Goering was convinced his death would take a quarter of an hour, and said: “I have hanged several persons myself, and know how it is done.” The Control Commission authorities reveal that an outbreak of swastikas and anti-British notices through the British zone of Germany coincided with the hanging of the Nazis at Nuremberg. Nazi flags were hung in parts as far apart as Flensburg, Hamelin, and Altona. At Flensburg a large home-made flag, bearing a swastika and the S.S. deathshead, was flown from a radio station tower and a black bordered skastika flag was huqg from a tree over the statue of Hamelin's Unknown Warrior. Under one swastika sign at Altona was scrawled: "Germans awake! revenge our martyrs!”