Third Reich(German: Drittes Reich - “Third Empire”, “Third Power”) - the unofficial name of the German state from March 24, 1933 to May 23, 1945. In literature and historiography, the Third Reich is also known as " Nazi Germany", "Fascist Germany". Germany during this period was a totalitarian state with a one-party system and a dominant ideology (National Socialism), all spheres of society were subject to control. The Third Reich is associated with the power of the National Socialist German Workers' Party under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, who was the permanent head of state (the official title is “Führer and Reich Chancellor”) until his death on April 30, 1945.
Foreign policy of the Third Reich was determined by the desire for territorial and political expansion: in 1938-1939, Czechoslovakia (except for the Slovak Republic) became part of Germany; in 1938, the Anschluss of Austria was carried out; as a result of the military campaign of 1939, a number of Polish territories were annexed; in 1941 it was annexed Luxembourg.
Early years of World War II began very successfully for Germany, by 1942 most of Europe was under its control (except Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Sweden), some of the territories were occupied, some were dependent state entities(Croatia), the exception was Bulgaria, which, even as an ally of Germany, pursued a largely independent policy. But in 1943 there was a turning point in the fighting in favor of the Anti-Hitler Coalition, and in 1945 the fighting moved to German territory. The Third Reich ceased to exist after the Allies dissolved the Flensburg government on May 23, 1945, which was headed by Reich President Karl Dönitz.
Story
Third Reich- Nazi Germany from March 24, 1933 to May 23, 1945.
Myth of the Third, or the Thousand-Year Reich, was the ideological justification for fascism’s claims to world domination. Fascism was declared the “final”, “highest” stage of social development. The Nazis used the term “Third Reich” to emphasize the continuity of their state with the great empires of the past. The First Empire was the medieval Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, created by Otto I and lasting for nine centuries from 962 to 1806. The Second was the German Empire, founded in 1871 Bismarck, which started the First World War in 1914 and actually ceased to exist in 1918.
The third empire was to be the new national Germany, revived after defeat in the First World War, which was to exist for a thousand years. The Nazis considered themselves the founders of the Third Empire (“Thousand Year Reich”).
The term "Third Reich" was widely used in German nationalist literature, although officially the state was called the German Empire, after 1943 - the Greater German Empire. Other unofficial names are also used in literature: Nazi Germany, Fascist Germany, Thousand-Year Reich. The Third Reich replaced the Weimar Republic after the National Socialist German Workers' Party, the NSDAP, came to power in 1933 under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. Hitler was the permanent Chancellor of Germany throughout the existence of the Third Reich (1933 - 1945).
World economic crisis of 1929 marked the beginning of the end of the Weimar Republic. In the summer of 1932, the number of unemployed reached 6 million. The political situation in the country has become greatly radicalized. The number of supporters grew communist party Germany - in the 1932 elections, the Communist Party received the highest result in its entire history (from 1919 to 1933) - 16.9% of the vote. At the same time, strengthening the role of the Communist Party was in conflict with the interests of big capital. However, the popularity of the National Socialist German Workers' Party also increased. In July 1932, the National Socialists collected 37% of the votes - more than all other parties. But this was not enough to create a government. Therefore, repeat elections were scheduled for November 1932, in which the NSDAP received even fewer votes - 34%. During 1932, President Hindenburg repeatedly invited Hitler to join the government, including inviting him to take the post of vice-chancellor. But he agreed only to the post of Reich Chancellor, and also demanded the post of Reich Minister of the Interior for one of the members of the NSDAP and for himself as the head of the government of emergency powers. Only at the end of January 1933 did Hindenburg agree to these conditions of Hitler.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Reich Chancellor. In February 1933, the Communist Party was banned, and repressions were launched against its activists. On March 3, 1933, the chairman of the KPD, Thälmann, was arrested. Of the 300 thousand members of the KKE, about half were persecuted, thrown into prisons and concentration camps, and tens of thousands were killed. Underground, the Communists, together with the Social Democrats, fought against the Nazi government as part of the anti-Nazi Resistance Movement. In July 1943, on the initiative of the Central Committee of the KPD, the national committee “Free Germany” was created on the territory of the USSR. On February 1, 1933, the Reichstag was dissolved. The Reich President's Decree “On the Protection of the German People” of February 4, 1933 became the basis for the ban on opposition newspapers and public speeches. Using the Reichstag fire on February 27 as a pretext, Hitler began mass arrests. Due to a lack of prison space, concentration camps were created. Re-elections were called.
From the elections to the Reichstag, held on March 5, 1933, the NSDAP emerged as the victorious party. The votes cast for the communists were annulled. The new Reichstag, at its first meeting on March 23, retroactively approved Hitler's emergency powers. Part of the intelligentsia fled abroad. According to the law of July 14, 1933, all parties except the Nazi one were banned. Activists of right-wing parties were not only not arrested, but many of them became members of the NSDAP. Trade unions were dissolved and banned. Instead, the German Labor Front was created, led by one of Hitler's comrades, Reichsleiter Robert Ley. Strikes were prohibited, entrepreneurs were declared the owners of enterprises. At the end of June 1934, Hitler eliminated the top leadership of the SA Storm Troops, led by Chief of Staff Ernst Rehm, who demanded a “second revolution,” socialist in spirit, and the creation of a “people's army.” Hitler accused the SA leadership of treason and declared them enemies of the state. In these events, called the “Night of the Long Knives,” a considerable number of people disliked by the Nazis who had no relation to the SA and its leadership were eliminated. This is how the former Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Hitler's former deputy in the party Gregor Strasser were killed.
Thanks to the end of the Great Depression, the destruction of all opposition and criticism, the elimination of unemployment, propaganda that played on national feelings, and later territorial acquisitions, Hitler increased his popularity. In addition, he achieved major successes in the economy. In particular, under Hitler, Germany came out on top in the world in the production of steel and aluminum. In 1936, the Anti-Comintern Pact was concluded between Germany and Japan. Italy joined it in 1937, and Hungary and Spain in 1939.

On November 9, 1938, a pogrom of Jews occurred, known as Kristallnacht.. From that time on, mass arrests and extermination of Jews began. In 1938, Austria became part of the Reich, in October 1938 - the Sudetenland, and in March 1939 - Czechoslovakia. In 1939, Germany concluded the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of Non-Aggression and Partition with the USSR. of Eastern Europe and the Treaty of Friendship and Borders. Soviet-German political relations also developed in the trade and military-technical spheres. In September 1940, Germany concluded the Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy, which was then joined by their allies and puppet states as new members of the Axis. In November 1940, Germany invited the Soviet Union to join the Axis powers. The Soviet government agreed on the condition that Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey were included in the sphere of interests of the USSR, but these demands were rejected by the German side.

Economy of the Third Reich
The success of the Nazis in the early years of their reign was based on the achievements of Adolf Hitler during foreign policy, which ensured not only bloodless conquests, but also the economic revival of Germany. Unemployment, the bane of post-war Germany, fell from 6 million in 1932 to less than a million four years later. Between 1932 and 1937 industrial production increased by 102%, income doubled. Industry developed faster and faster. During the first year of Nazi rule, economic policy, largely determined by Hjalmar Schacht, focused on efforts to employ all the unemployed by dramatically expanding public works and stimulating private enterprise. The unemployed were provided with state credit in the form of special bills. Taxes were significantly reduced for companies that expanded capital investment and ensured stable employment growth.
But the real basis of Germany's revival was rearmament, to which, from 1934, the Nazi regime directed the efforts of entrepreneurs and workers, combining them with the efforts of the military. Germany's economy, called the "war economy" by the Nazis, was purposefully organized to function in both war and peacetime in a war-oriented manner. Hjalmar Schacht's ability to arrange financial affairs was aimed at paying for Germany's preparations for war. Printing banknotes was just one of his tricks. Schacht carried out currency manipulations so skillfully that, as foreign economists calculated, the German mark at one time had 237 different rates at once. He concluded trade deals with dozens of countries that were amazingly profitable for the Third Reich and successfully demonstrated that the more you owe a country, the more you can do business with it. The economy revived by Schacht from 1935 to 1938 was used exclusively to finance rearmament and was valued at 12 billion marks.

In 1936, in connection with the development and transfer of the four-year plan under the strict control of Hermann Goering, who instead of Schacht became the “dictator” of the economy, although he was as ignorant in this area as Hitler, Germany switched to a system of total war economy. The goal of the four-year plan was to transform Germany in 4 years into a country that could provide itself with everything necessary in the event of war and could not be strangled by a military blockade. Imports were reduced to a minimum, and strict price and size controls were introduced wages, dividends were limited to 6% per annum, huge factories were built to produce synthetic rubber, fabrics, fuel and other products from their own raw materials. Hermann Goering's giant factories were built, producing steel from exclusively local ore. The German economy was completely mobilized for the needs of the war, and industrialists, whose incomes jumped sharply, turned into mechanisms of the war machine.
In 1937, Hjalmar Schacht was succeeded by Walter Funk, first as Minister of Economics and in 1939 as President of the Reichsbank. In general, by the beginning of World War II, Germany had accelerated its economy at full speed, but despite this, the Third Reich was not ready for prolonged military action. The supply of raw materials was severely limited. The size of military production was very minimal. The labor situation throughout the war was unsatisfactory both quantitatively and qualitatively. In technical terms, arms financing has been brought to a very high level in Germany. high level. As for the management and organization of the economy, as well as the conduct of monetary policy, many mistakes were made here. Although the share of taxes in covering general military expenditures was greater than in the First World War, it was still not possible to solve the problem of excess purchasing power. The lending method, which turned the depositor 90% into a state creditor, led to a systematically increasing preponderance of short-term debts, to rising inflation and to the destruction of all the foundations of this financing system. Summing up the activities of the economic system of the Third Reich, we can safely say that such an economic revival of post-war Germany in the 30s became possible mainly due to total control over all aspects of the life of the German people, tightening legislation and forced labor, but “having accelerated the locomotive, the designers did not Calculated the brakes." Until the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War Germany had serious economic and military-technical cooperation with the USSR.

Second World War . September 1, 1939 German troops invaded Poland. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. During 1939-1941, Germany defeated Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Greece, and Yugoslavia. In June 1941, Germany invaded the territory Soviet Union and occupied part of its territory. There was a growing labor shortage in Germany. Recruitment of civilian ostarbeiters was carried out in all occupied territories. In the Slavic territories, a massive deportation of the working population was carried out. In France, there was also a forced recruitment of workers, whose position in Germany was intermediate between that of civilians and prisoners.

The policy of not using German women in production continued to operate, and they were only diverted from work in small numbers. household. At the same time, imported labor was intensively used. Thus, already in August 1944, about 8 million foreigners were working in different areas of the economy in Germany. In industry, their number was a quarter of the total. The majority - 2.5 million were citizens of the USSR, 1.7 million were Poles, 1.3 million were French, 600,000 were Italians. 2 million workers were prisoners of war and 650,000 were concentration camp prisoners, most of them Jews working in the war industry. About half of the workers from the Soviet Union and Poland were women, average age who was about 20 years old. After Germany's defeat, a significant number of workers were returned by the Allied administration to their homeland, including the Soviet Union. The English lawyer Dean, who later became a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, played a major role in organizing the repatriation and contributed to the redirection of millions of Eastern Europeans to the Soviet Union.
A regime of intimidation was established in the occupied territories. The mass extermination of Jews immediately began, and in some areas (on the territory of the USSR) the extermination of the local non-Jewish population as a preventative measure against the partisan movement. The number of concentration camps, death camps and prisoner of war camps grew in Germany and some occupied territories. The methods of terror used by the German administration in the occupied territories excluded the possibility of cooperation with the local population and caused the growth of the partisan movement in Poland, Belarus and Serbia. Gradually, guerrilla warfare also unfolded in other occupied territories of the USSR and Slavic countries, as well as in Greece and France. In Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, the occupation regime was softer, so there were fewer anti-Nazi protests. Separate underground organizations also operated in Germany and Austria.
On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht generals carried out an unsuccessful attempt at an anti-Nazi coup with an attempt on Hitler's life. This conspiracy was later called the "Conspiracy of the Generals." Many officers were executed, even those who were only indirectly related to the conspiracy. In 1944, the Germans also began to feel a shortage of raw materials. Aviation from the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition bombed cities. Hamburg and Dresden were almost completely destroyed by British and US aircraft. Due to large losses of personnel, the Volkssturm was created in October 1944, into which they mobilized local residents, including old people and young people. Werewolf detachments were prepared for future partisan and sabotage activities. On May 7, 1945, the act of surrender of Germany was signed in Reims., duplicated the next day by the Soviet side to Berlin. May 9 was declared the day of cessation of hostilities. Then, on May 23 in Flensburg, the government of the Third Reich was arrested.

Usually, when they talk about the reasons for Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, they remember his outstanding oratorical gift, charisma, political will and intuition, the difficult economic situation in Germany after the defeat in the First World War, the resentment of the Germans for the shameful conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, but in reality it all are just minor prerequisites that contributed to his rise to the top of the political Olympus.

Without regular serious funding for his movement, payment for a number of expensive events that made the German National Socialist Workers' Party (in German transcription NSDAP) popular, the Nazis would never have reached the heights of power, remaining common among dozens of similar movements of local importance. For those who have seriously studied and are studying the phenomenon of National Socialism and the Fuhrer, this is a fact.

The main sponsors of Hitler and his party were financiers from Great Britain and the United States. From the very beginning, Hitler was a "project". The energetic Fuhrer was a tool for uniting Europe against the Soviet Union; other important tasks were also solved, for example, the “New World Order” was tested on the ground, which they planned to spread throughout the planet. Hitler was also sponsored by German financial and industrial circles associated with the global financial international. Among Hitler's sponsors was Fritz Thyssen (the eldest son of industrialist August Thyssen), he had provided significant material support to the Nazis since 1923, and publicly supported Hitler in 1930. In 1932, he was part of a group of financiers, industrialists and landowners who demanded that Reich President Paul von Hindenburg appoint Hitler as Chancellor. Thyssen was a supporter of the restoration of the estate state - in May 1933, with the support of Hitler, he established the Institute of Estates in Düsseldorf. Thyssen planned to provide a scientific basis for the ideology of the class state. Thyssen was a supporter of war with the USSR, but protested against war with Western countries and opposed the persecution of Jews. As a result, relations with Hitler followed. On September 2, 1939, Thyssen left with his wife, daughter and son-in-law for Switzerland. In 1940, in France, he wrote the book “I Financed Hitler”; after the occupation of the French state, he was arrested and ended up in a concentration camp, where he stayed until the end of the war.

Financial assistance to the Nazis was provided by the German industrialist and financial tycoon Gustav Krupp. Among the bankers, money for Hitler was collected by the President of the Reichsbank and Adolf Hitler's confidant for relations with his political and financial sponsors in Western countries ah Hjalmar Shakht. This talented organizer headed the private National Bank of Germany since 1916, then became its co-owner. From December 1923 - head of the Reichsbank (led until March 1930, and then from 1933-1939). Had close ties with the American corporation J.P. Morgan. It was he who, since 1933, carried out the economic mobilization of Germany, preparing it for war.

The reasons that forced the German financial and industrial elite to help Hitler and his party were very different. Some wanted to create a powerful striking force against the internal “communist threat” and the labor movement. They were also afraid of external danger - the “Bolshevik threat.” Others were reinsuring themselves in case Hitler came to power. Still others worked in the same group with the global financial international. And everyone benefited from military mobilization and war - orders poured in like from a cornucopia.

After the defeat of the Third Reich in the war and to this day, in the mass consciousness of people, Jewry is a victim of Nazism. Moreover, they turned the tragedy of the Jews into a kind of brand, profiting from it, receiving financial and political dividends. Although much more Slavs died in this massacre - more than 30 million (including Poles, Serbs, etc.). In reality, Jews are different from Jews, some were destroyed, persecuted, and other Jews themselves financed Hitler. The “world community” prefers to remain silent about the contribution of influential Jews of that time to the formation of the Third Reich and the growth of Hitler’s influence. And people who raise this issue are immediately accused of revisionism, fascism, anti-Semitism, etc. Jews and Hitler are one of the most closed topics in the world media. Although it is no secret that the Fuhrer and the NSDAP were sponsored by such influential Jewish industrialists as Reinold Gesner and Fritz Mandel. Hitler received significant assistance from the famous Warburg banking dynasty and personally from Max Warburg (director of the Hamburg bank M.M. Warburg & Co).

Among other Jewish bankers who spared no money for the NSDAP, it is necessary to highlight the Berliners Oscar Wasserman (one of the leaders of Deutsche Bank) and Hans Priwin. A number of researchers are confident that the Rothschilds participated in the financing of Nazism; they needed Hitler to implement the project of creating a Jewish state in Palestine. The persecution of Jews in Europe forced them to seek a new homeland, and the Zionists (supporters of unification and revival Jewish people in his historical homeland) helped organize the creation of settlements in the Palestinian territories. In addition, the problem of the assimilation of Jews in Europe was solved, persecution forced them to remember their origins, unite, and the mobilization of Jewish self-awareness took place.

It is interesting that in fact, Hitler and his party were financed and prepared the ground for the Nazi seizure of power in Germany by the same forces that prepared the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in Russia, sponsored the Bolshevik, Socialist Revolutionary, Menshevik parties, and worked closely with all Russian revolutionary forces. This is the so-called “financial international”, the owners of the banks of the USA, Britain, France and other Western countries, and the American Federal Reserve System.

In addition, it should be noted that the top leadership of the Third Reich itself largely consisted of Jews or people with Jewish roots. These facts are set out in Dietrich Bronder's Before Hitler Came, based on 288 sources (he was general secretary association of non-religious communities in Germany), Henek Kardel "Adolf Hitler - Founder of Israel" (during the war he was a lieutenant colonel and holder of the Knight's Iron Cross). Many facts about Jews in the Third Reich can be found in the works of Willi Frischauer “Himmler”, William Stevenson “The Bormann Brotherhood”, John Donovan “Eichmann”, Charles Whiting “Canaris”, etc. Adolf Hitler himself, such famous Nazis, had Jewish roots , like Heydrich (father Suess), Frank, Rosenberg. Eichmann, one of the authors of the plan “On the Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” was a Jew. The extermination of Poles and Jews on Polish territory was led by the Jew Hans Michael Frank, he was the Governor-General of Poland in 1939-1945. One of the most famous adventurers of the 20th century, Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln, an ardent supporter of Hitler and his ideas, was born into a family of Hungarian Jews.

The Jew was the editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic and anti-communist newspaper Sturmovik, an ideologist of racism and an ardent anti-Semite, Julius Streicher (Abram Goldberg). He was executed in 1946 by the Nuremberg Tribunal for anti-Semitism and calls for genocide. Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda Behrend-Friedlander had Semitic roots. Rudolf Hess and Labor Minister Robert Ley were of Semitic origin. It is believed that Abwehr chief Canaris came from Greek Jews.

Before the war, up to half a million Jews lived in Germany, up to 300 thousand of them left freely. Those who did not leave partially suffered, but the Jews of Poland and the USSR suffered the greatest damage; they were significantly assimilated and they were “put under the knife” as having lost their Jewish identity. Many Jews fought in the Wehrmacht, so about 10 thousand people were taken prisoner by the Soviets.

Thanks to Hitler personally, a category of more than 150 “honorary Aryans” appeared, which included mainly large Jewish industrialists. They carried out personal orders from the leader to sponsor certain political events. The Nazis divided Jews into rich people and everyone else, and there were benefits for the rich.

Thus, we see that through the efforts of the Western media, official historians, and politicians, many interesting pages were cut out of the history of the Second World War and its prehistory. Jews financed the creation of the Third Reich, Hitler personally, were in the leadership of Germany, participated in the “solution” of the Jewish question, the destruction of their fellow tribesmen, and fought as part of the German armed forces. And after the collapse of the Reich, the German people were blamed for the genocide of the Jewish people and forced to pay indemnity. Until now, Germany and the Germans are considered the main culprits for inciting World War II, although the organizers of this massacre remained unpunished.

The USSR and its political leadership like to be accused of anti-Semitism, but Saiko in his book “Crossroads on the Road to Israel” and Weinstock in his work “Zionism against Israel” provide very interesting data. Of the Jews who were persecuted by the Nazis and found salvation abroad between 1935 and 1943, 75% found refuge in the totalitarian Soviet Union. England sheltered about 2% (67 thousand people), the United States - less than 7% (approximately 182 thousand people), 8.5% of refugees went to Palestine.

Adolf Hitler is a Jew, grandson of Rothschild. http://

The main mystery of the past World War II: the connection is Jews and the Nazi regime. Jewry is divided into several large groups, who are very much at enmity with each other. I recommend reading very interesting information that will add understanding to those who are interested in the real reasons for the events taking place... This Jewish bastard destroyed the best Germans and Slavs.
Watch the continuation on Rutube.ru
"Hitler is the founder of Israel"
http://prosvetlenie.net/show_content....

The past and the future are intertwined with a strong thread, but few people think about it in the present.
Every action, every choice made leads to certain consequences, and it is these actions that predetermine the subsequent course of events in life.

But many people make the same mistakes over and over again, not understanding that the past, present and future are connected, and only you can determine what exactly this connection will be.

Love, hope, courage. Death, life, birth. Future, present, past.
All this existed before us and will exist after us.
Everything is interconnected.

150 thousand soldiers and officers of the army, air force and navy could repatriate to Israel under the Law of Return. This suggests that in almost every Jewish family in Germany in the 40s, someone fought on the side of the Nazis.

18.06.2015

Even school textbooks sometimes call Nazi Germany the Third Reich. This name has long been familiar to our ears, but where did it come from? In general, the “Reich” is a number of territories united into one state-political entity. In essence, it is a state.

The division of German history into the periods of the three Reichs appeared in the 20s. last century. Then the First Reich was called the largest state in Europe - the Holy Roman Empire, which included parts modern Italy, Burgundy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Lorraine and other countries. Representatives of the “Reich theory” called Germany the core and unifying force of this powerful empire. The prosperous existence of the huge state lasted from 962 to 1806, that is, several centuries.

Then the time of the Second Reich came. This is a period covering the time from 1871 to 1918 (that is, until the end of the First World War). It is also called the time of the German Hohenzollern Empire. The beginning of the Third Reich is 1933. Hitler, who came to power at a time of severe economic crisis, bet that people tired of hunger and difficult living conditions would follow him - the leader who promised the revival of Germany and happy life"true Aryans".

Unfortunately, his calculation turned out to be correct: the common population of the country believed that the head of the National Socialist Party was really capable of building an ideal state in which they would be rich and cloudlessly happy. To this day it remains a mystery: what it was - some kind of mass hypnosis or simply the fear of being “on the other side of the barricades” (after all, reprisals threatened all dissidents), but the facts dispassionately prove that from 1933 to 1945. Germany really was building its ideal Third Reich, building its own little paradise on millions of ruined human lives.

Sometimes this Third Reich is given a certain mystical significance, linking it with the hypothesis of the era of the kingdom of the Holy Spirit on Earth, which appeared in the Middle Ages. This kingdom should last a thousand years. For Hitler, such “mystical support” could only be to his advantage: all this helped him convince people that only the perfect race - that is, the real Aryans - has the right to life, everyone else either should be its slaves, or should be completely destroyed.

The terrible Third Reich spanned “only” 12 years and ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany in the war. But this time - no more than a second in the history of mankind - showed all of humanity how terrible the consequences can be if someone imagines himself to be the master of life on Earth, disposing of life and death at his own discretion. I would like to believe that humanity has learned this terrible lesson and will never allow something like this to happen again.

John Woods was a good executioner. When his victim hung in the air, he grabbed her by the legs and hung with her, reducing the suffering of the dangling noose. But this is in his native Texas, where he has already executed more than three hundred people.
On the night of October 16, 1946, Woods abandoned his principles.

The American pro had to hang the bosses of the Third Reich: Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Jodl, Sauckel, Streicher, Seys-Inquart, Frank, Frick and Rosenberg. In this group prison photo they are almost together.

The Nuremberg prison where the Nazis were held was in the American zone, so the executioner was also provided by the US government. In this photo, American Sergeant John Woods demonstrates his know-how - his legendary 13-knot loop.

Goering was supposed to be the first to ascend the scaffold, followed by Ribbentrop, but two hours before the execution, the Reichsmarshal committed suicide by taking a capsule of potassium cyanide, which (according to one possible version) his wife gave him with a farewell kiss during their last meeting in prison.

How Goering found out about the upcoming execution is unknown; its date was kept strictly secret from the condemned and the press. Before death, the convicts were even fed, offering one of two dishes to choose from: sausages with salad or pancakes with fruit.
Goering bit into the ampoule during dinner.

They were executed after midnight in the gym of Nuremberg prison. Woods built the gallows in just 24 hours: literally the day before, the soldiers were still playing basketball in the hall. The idea seemed good to him: three gallows, replaceable ropes, body bags and, most importantly, hatches in the platforms under the feet of the guilty, into which they immediately had to fall when hanged.
No more than three hours were allotted for the entire execution, including the last word and conversation with the priest. Woods himself later proudly recalled that day: “Ten people in 103 minutes. That’s fast work.”
But the downside (or upside?) was that Woods hurriedly miscalculated the size of the hatches, making them very small. Falling inside the gallows, the executed person touched the edges of the hatch with his head and died, let’s say, not immediately...
Ribbentrop wheezed in the loop for 10 minutes, Jodl for 18, Keitel for 24.

After the execution, representatives of all the Allied powers examined the corpses and signed death certificates, and journalists photographed the bodies with and without clothes. Then the executed were loaded into spruce coffins, sealed and, under heavy escort, transported to the crematorium of the Eastern Cemetery of Munich.
On the evening of October 18, the mixed ashes of the criminals were poured into the Isar Canal from the Marienklausen Bridge.

Interior view of the solitary cell where the main German war criminals were kept.

People like Goering

Lunch of the defendants of the Nuremberg trials.

Goering at lunch in his cell.

Goering during lunch during a break in the Nuremberg trials in the common dining room for the accused.

Opposite him is Rudolf Hess

Goering, who lost 20 kg during the process.

Goering during a meeting with his lawyer.

Goering and Hess

Goering on trial

Kaltenbrunner in a wheelchair

The Foreign Minister of the Third Reich, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was the first to be hanged.

Colonel General Alfred Jodl

Chief of the SS Reich Security Directorate Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Chief of the Wehrmacht High Command Wilhelm Keitel

Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia Wilhelm Frick

Gauleiter of Franconia Julius Streicher

Alfred Rosenberg, head of the foreign policy department of the NSDAP

Reichskommissar of the Netherlands Arthur Seyss-Inquart

Gauleiter of Thuringia Friedrich Sauckel

Governor General of Poland, NSDAP lawyer Hans Frank

The corpse of Heinrich Himmler. The Reichsführer SS committed suicide on May 23, 1945, while being detained in the city of Luneburg, by taking potassium cyanide.

The corpse of German Reich Chancellor Joseph Goebbels. He committed suicide with his wife Magda, having previously poisoned his six children.

Chairman of the German Labor Front, Reichsleiter Robert Ley during his arrest.