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The night of October 15, 1946, was eerily quiet inside the cells of Nuremberg Prison. The once-mighty leaders of Nazi Germany, who had commanded vast armies and orchestrated the deaths of millions, now sat in silence, waiting for the gallows. The same men who had once barked orders with arrogance were now reduced to prisoners, stripped of their uniforms, their power, and their futures. By sunrise, their bodies would be swinging from a rope.
As the clock struck past midnight, the condemned were led from their cells one by one. The first to face justice was Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister. The man who had once shaken hands with world leaders now stood on the wooden platform, staring at the noose. When asked for his final words, he muttered, “God save Germany. My last wish is for peace.” The trapdoor opened, and his body dropped.
Next came Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, who had blindly followed Hitler’s every command. Unlike the military executions he had ordered for thousands of soldiers, his own death would be slow—hanging instead of a firing squad. He stood rigid, as if still in uniform, and declared, “I follow the orders of my German people.” A moment later, he fell through the trapdoor.
One after another, the Nazi elite faced their reckoning. Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank, and others met their end in the same grim manner. Some, like Ernst Kaltenbrunner, tried to appear defiant, while others, like Arthur Seyss-Inquart, mumbled last-minute words of resignation. The executioner worked efficiently, tightening the noose and pulling the lever, sending each man plummeting to his fate.
For all their power, for all the destruction they had unleashed, their final moments were stripped of dignity. Unlike the quick, clinical executions of their victims, many of these men died slowly—some struggling, some gasping for air as they dangled from the ropes. The gallows had given them the justice they never gave to others.
By morning, their bodies lay in wooden coffins, ready to be cremated. There would be no graves, no monuments, no legacy—only ashes scattered into the wind, just as the Reich they had built crumbled into nothing.