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The Trial of Werner Rohde and Eight Others was the trial of several members of the Nazi regime in Germany for the execution of British agents without a trial. With the exception of Rohde himself, none were sentenced to death, and a few received relatively short sentences, which, in some cases, were not served as they were released after the trial by the French authorities.
On 1 June 1946, nine members of the concentration camp staff at Natzweiler-Struthof were charged with the murders of four British women. Wolfgang Zeuss, Magnus Wochner, Emil Meier, Peter Straub, Fritz Hartjenstein, Franz Berg, Werner Rohde, Emil Bruttel, and Kurt Aus Dem Bruch were all accused of capital murder of British women sent to aid liaison officers in France. These women assisted in establishing communications between the resistance movement in France and London. The names of the victims were Andrée Borrel, Sonia Olschanezky, Vera Leigh and Diana Rowden. Two of these women were a part of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and the other two were a part of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. All four were sent by the SOE for French resistance efforts.
Thought to be spies of the Allied Powers, the Nazi regime detained them and eventually imprisoned them in the Natzweiler Camp. There, these women were allegedly inhumanely killed by lethal injection and then cremated without a previous trial regarding the execution. Major Bill Barkworth of the SAS and Vera Atkins of the SOE were in charge of the prosecution. Under Article 29 of the Hague Convention of 1907 the women were not considered spies because of their purpose to obtain intelligence openly for communicating to their own army. Also, they were not wearing disguises when captured by the SS. Article 30 states that no spy can be punished until a trial has been completed.
All of the accused were officials at the Natzweiler Camp except for Franz Berg who was imprisoned at the camp and worked the oven in the crematory. Horst Kopkow was the head of counterintelligence and was responsible for all SOE agents captured in France at the time. Kopkow was never tried because he had not yet been captured at the time of the investigation. By 1946 he was captured in British custody and was thought to be dead of bronchial pneumonia. In 1948 the Allies realised that he was sent to aid in Counterintelligence efforts against the Soviets for uses in the Cold War.
Fritz Hartjenstein was the Kommandant of the Natzweiler Camp and claimed that he was not present at the camp during the time of the executions and stated he had no idea that they were given the lethal injections. However, to his dismay evidence was found that he was at a party in the camp during the same day of the killings. He was sentenced to imprisonment for life and then tried again for the hanging of a pilot in Natzweiler. He was sentenced to death and then extradited to France for another trial for the mass murder of prisoners. He was sentenced to death, but died on death row of a heart attack in 1954.
Werner Rohde was a medical officer at the Natzweiler Camp and admitted that he was ordered by Officer Otto to inject one of the women. Officer Otto was found to not be an official at the camp and also evidence came out that Rohde was aware that the four British women never received a trial before the executions. Officer Otto could never be prosecuted because information came out that he committed suicide once the war ended. Along with Rohde, Dr. Heinrich Plaza assisted in the executions using lethal injections. Plaza was never captured. In 1954, he was sentenced to death in absentia in France, but continued to live and practise as a doctor in Altötting (Bavaria). He died in 1968. Rohde was sentenced to death and was hanged on 11 October 1946 at Hameln (Germany).
Peter Straub was the SS officer in command for the executions. According to testimony Straub was said to be drunk the night of the executions because of a party thrown for the departure of Plaza. Straub was known to have bragged about the injections to other prisoners in the camp. Straub was sentenced to 13 years in prison which was thought to be surprising considering all of the other war crimes he had been accused of committing in other concentration camps. However, he was later found guilty at the Natzweiler trial in Wuppertal and executed on 11 October 1946 ("Nazi War Crimes Trials: Natzweiler Trial". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 18 September 2015).
Franz Berg was a prisoner in the camp who operated the crematorium oven. Berg was a recognised criminal with a record of up to 22 crimes. He stated that he never knew that anyone unusual was being cremated and that he was locked in his cell when the injections were being administered. He went on to state a fellow prisoner told him what was happening as the murders were taking place. His defence argument was that Straub told him to heat up the furnaces because he was in charge. Berg was sentenced to five years in prison. He was later found guilty at the Natzweiler trial and executed.
Magnus Wochner was the political head of the Natzweiler Camp and was directly under orders of the Berlin Police. He stated that the four British women were sent to his office and was told by the police that they were going to be executed. He sent them away because he did not think it concerned him and denied having any knowledge of the killings until the trial was conducted. However, one witness told the Judge Advocate that Straub, head of the crematorium, could not conduct any execution without Wochner's permission. Wochner was sentenced to ten years in prison. He was later sent to France for prosecution but was released.
Emil Bruttel was a first aid officer at the Natzweiler Camp who was ordered to bring the lethal injections to the site of the killings. He was outside the room at the time of the murders and stated that he wanted to leave but could not because he did not have a lamp. Moreover, he admitted to hearing words such as "four women spies", "we cannot escape the orders", and "execution" but did not admit to have any knowledge of the executions when given the order to obtain the lethal drugs. Bruttel was sentenced to four years in prison. Once turned over to French custody he was released as well.
Aus dem Bruch and Emil Meier were found not guilty due to insufficient evidence. Wolfgang Zeuss was found not guilty because he was not at the camp during the time of the executions and the other accused witnesses supported his claim.
Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading, is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are usually readily available and a gunshot to a vital organ, such as the brain or heart, most often will kill relatively quickly.
Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the villages of Natzweiler and Struthof in the Gau Baden-Alsace of Germany, on territory annexed from France on a de facto basis in 1940. It operated from 21 May 1941 to September 1944, and was the only concentration camp established by the Germans in the territory of pre-war France. The camp was located in a heavily-forested and isolated area at an elevation of 800 metres (2,600 ft).
Andrée Raymonde Borrel, code named Denise, was a French woman who served in the French Resistance and as an agent for Britain's clandestine Special Operations Executive in World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.
Fresnes Prison is the second largest prison in France, located in the town of Fresnes, Val-de-Marne, south of Paris. It comprises a large men's prison of about 1200 cells, a smaller one for women and a penitentiary hospital.
Vera May Atkins was a Romanian-born British intelligence officer who worked in the France Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) from 1941 to 1945 during the Second World War.
Diana Hope Rowden served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. Rowden was a member of SOE's Acrobat circuit in occupied France where she operated as a courier until she was arrested by the Gestapo. She was subsequently executed at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.
Vera Leigh was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive during World War II.
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. Capital punishment is, in practice, only applied for aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, only 20 states have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other seven, as well as the federal government, being subject to different types of moratoriums. The existence of capital punishment in the United States can be traced to early colonial Virginia. Along with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, the United States is one of five advanced democracies and the only Western nation that applies the death penalty regularly. It is one of 54 countries worldwide applying it, and was the first to develop lethal injection as a method of execution, which has since been adopted by five other countries. The Philippines has since abolished executions, and Guatemala has done so for civil offenses, leaving the United States as one of four countries to still use this method. It is common practice for the condemned to be administered sedatives prior to execution, regardless of the method used.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Ohio, although all executions have been suspended indefinitely by Governor Mike DeWine until a replacement for lethal injection is chosen by the Ohio General Assembly. The last execution in the state was in July 2018, when Robert J. Van Hook was executed via lethal injection for murder.
Capital punishment was abolished via the legislative process on May 2, 2013, in the U.S. state of Maryland.
Friedrich Hartjenstein was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. A member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, he served at various Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen. After the Second World War, Hartjenstein was tried and found guilty for murder and crimes against humanity.
Sonia Olschanezky was a member of the French Resistance and the Special Operations Executive during World War II. Olschanezky was a member of the SOE's Juggler circuit in occupied France where she operated as a courier until she was arrested by the Gestapo and was subsequently executed at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of New Hampshire for persons convicted of capital murder prior to 30 May 2019, when it was abolished prospectively for future crimes.
The 1982 Wilkes-Barre shootings was a spree killing in the United States carried out by George Emil Banks. A former Camp Hill prison guard, Banks fatally shot 13 people on September 25, 1982, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and Jenkins Township. The victims included seven children – five being his own – their mothers, some of their relatives, and one bystander. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Pennsylvania's history.
Ángel Nieves Díaz was a Puerto Rican convict and a suspected serial killer who was executed by lethal injection by Florida. Nieves, who had escaped from a prison in Puerto Rico while serving time for murder, was convicted of shooting and killing the manager of a strip club in Florida in 1979. He maintained his innocence until his death.
Hinzert concentration camp was a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, in what is now Rhineland-Palatinate, 30 kilometres (19 mi) from the border with Luxembourg. Between 1939 and 1945, 13,600 political prisoners between the ages of 13 and 80 were imprisoned at Hinzert. Many were in transit towards larger concentration camps where most would be killed. However, many prisoners were executed at Hinzert. The camp was administered, run, and guarded mainly by the SS, who, according to survivors, were notorious for their brutality and viciousness.
The Stutthof trials were a series of war crime tribunals held in postwar Poland for the prosecution of Stutthof concentration camp staff and officials, responsible for the murder of up to 85,000 prisoners during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War II. None of the Stutthof commandants were ever tried in Poland. SS-Sturmbannführer Max Pauly was put on trial by a British military court in Germany but not for the crimes committed at Stutthof; only as the commandant of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg. Nevertheless, Pauly was executed in 1946.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Idaho.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Wyoming.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of South Carolina. Between 1718 and 2021, more than 680 people have been executed in South Carolina. After the nationwide capital punishment ban was overturned in 1976, South Carolina has executed 43 people.