Pierrepoint

[sydmayne]

Am I right in thinking that the film of the life of Britain's most famous executioner states that Pierrepoint was in charge of the executions of the Nazi war criminals sentenced at the Nuremburg Trial?

As far as I was aware it was an American master sergeant who was the hangman and who reputedly bungled the executions.

[mushroom25]

you are correct. for a brief overview of nuremberg, read http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/imt.htm

[Zen]

Such was Pierrepoint's efficiency, he came to the attention of the British Army and Field Marshal Montgomery when an executioner was needed after the Nuremberg trials at the end of the Second World War. The Yorkshire-born hangman was flown secretly into Germany to hang 200 Nazi war criminals, including Josef Kramer, the commandant of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and Irma Grese, a sadistic SS guard at Belsen and Auschwitz who went to her death smiling.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article 356262.ece

[mushroom25]

josef kramer and others arrested at bergen-belsen in april 1945, were tried by a british military tribunal at luneberg in september 1945. 44 were tried and 30 were found guilty. 11 of the guilty were hanged by pierrepoint in december 1945, fully 10 months before the nuremberg trials were concluded.

pierrepoint definitely dealt with nazi war criminals, but not at nuremberg.

[sydmayne]

Many thanks for confirming my understanding.

In fact on the morning of the executions in Germany, Pierrepoint, with his assistant Harry Kirk, was executing Neville George Heath at Pentonville Prison in London.

I find it incredible that the website for the film states that he executed those found guilty at Nuremberg.

[mushroom25]

not really, sydmayne. for many, "nuremberg" has become a generic term for the war trial process that took place at the end of the war, irrespective of the actual trial location or the identity of the tribunal conducting any particular trial, and notwithstanding Nuremberg itself was a "show trial" of those leading nazis still alive at the time.

[sydmayne]

Sorry mushroom 25. "Nuremberg" is not the generic name for all war trials held after Word War II. Don't know where you got this information. It is certainly not accepted. You cannot claim that the Belsen executions, which Pierrepoint carried out, had anything to do with Nuremberg.

You are in danger of re-writing history as the new film about his life has done.