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Greetings, and welcome to the third and last part of my project. In the first part of my project, we discussed Willi Herold's early life and gained some understanding about his environment and character.
Final part of the Willi Herold story covering his trial, release, and execution amid WWII chaos.
Key Takeaways
- Willi Herold’s trial was marked by conflicting views on justice amid WWII’s chaotic end.
- Herold’s release was influenced by military leaders who valued his decisiveness despite his crimes.
- The failure to inform the court of Herold’s release led to a miscarriage of justice.
- Herold’s self-portrayal during the trial was manipulative and self-serving.
- The case exemplifies how war can distort legal and moral standards.
Summary
- This video concludes the Willi Herold project by detailing his arrest, trial, and eventual execution.
- Herold was imprisoned for four days with minimal food, resorting to eating his paybook.
- The Navy military court in Norden tried Herold, with conflicting opinions on his guilt and punishment.
- Josef Urbanek, a Waffen-SS officer, advocated for Herold’s release despite his known crimes.
- Herold was conditionally released and sent back to the front, a decision made by Navy Chief Justice Horst Franke and Rear Admiral Weyher.
- The court in Norden was not informed of Herold’s release, causing confusion and outrage among the judges and prosecutor.
- Herold portrayed himself as honorable during the trial, though he distorted facts to appear more heroic.
- The video highlights the miscarriage of justice due to chaotic wartime conditions and differing views on Herold’s actions.
- Major Pantcheff’s book 'The Emsland Executioner' is referenced as a key source for the trial details.
- The story reflects on Herold’s youth, potential, and the tragic consequences of his choices and environment.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Overview of Willi Herold’s Life
- 03:06Herold’s Imprisonment and Initial Legal Proceedings
- 05:45Trial Begins: Judges, Defense, and Prosecution
- 10:22Conflicting Opinions and the Role of Josef Urbanek
- 14:12Herold’s Conditional Release and Court Confusion
- 21:00Herold’s Self-Portrayal and Reflections on the Trial
- 27:32Consequences and Final Thoughts on Justice and War
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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In the second part, we followed him through the Emsland region during that fateful month of April 1945 and witnessed his spine-chilling crimes. And now we will occupy ourselves with the last year and a half of Herold's life: his trials, the exhumation of his victims, and his execution.
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We will pick off right where we left: Willi Herold was just brought into a cell, where he will stay for the next four days. He doesn't really have much to do outside lengthy talks with his lawyer and catching up on some sleep. He claims that he did not receive any
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food during this time, and his hunger drives him to take his lance corporal paybook, which he had hidden in his boot and had remained undetected, tear it to small pieces and eat it. When Major Pantcheff would later ask him how it tasted, Herold would earnestly answer that "a paybook
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tastes like white bread without butter." As far as Otto Hübner, the officer who apprehended him, is concerned, the case is pretty clear cut: Herold impersonated an officer and used that authority to commit murders and plunder. He believes that all they have to do is decide which tree
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they will hang him from. His indignation aside, however, Hübner follows the rules by the book: he informs Horst Franke, the Navy Chief Justice of the East Frisian Military District Command about the arrest. Hübner wants to have Herold judged in Aurich, but Franke comes by,
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reads the documents pertaining to the case and decides to bring Herold in front of the Navy military court in Norden. Since Herold has not caused any damages to the Wehrmacht, Franke doesn't necessarily agree with the death penalty. He also has many of Herold's
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men released under the explanation that they were following the orders of somebody whom they believed was a legitimate officer. This decision will have disastrous consequences, as many of them disappear and are never brought to justice. The trial began on the 3rd of May 1945.
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The chairman was Dr. Ludwig Kremer, an experienced attorney who had been the public prosecutor for the town of Neustrelitz before the war. With him were a Luftwaffe Colonel called Hemmer and an able seaman. Herold was defended by a non-commissioned officer who was a lawyer in his civilian life.
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Major Pantcheff remarks in his book, "The Emsland Executioner," that it was a wonder the trial took place to begin with, given that Germany's surrender was only a week away.
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Herold is fairly honest and admits to his deeds even if he can't resist lionizing his actions and exaggerating his courage and magnanimity here and there. The prosecutor, Werner Herrmann, is so outraged by Herold's heinous crimes that he recommends death by hanging for the first time
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in his career. Our cruel protagonist must have felt death's cold touch brush against his cheek.
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The court withdraws for counsel. The main judge agrees with the prosecutor - Herold should be hanged. But Colonel Hemmer feels that Herold was not that much out of line, considering the context of the chaotic days their country was experiencing. Besides, the fact that Herold
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stood at attention for four hours without moving an inch left quite an impression. Now there's a good soldier! The seaman doesn't really have the courage to argue with the Colonel, and therefore remains silent. Two and a half hours pass, and the court still hasn't reached a conclusion.
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The judge and the prosecutor point at the crimes - the Colonel eerily echoes Herold's way of thinking and emphasizes that hard times demand hard choices. Eventually, they agree to bring forth more witnesses to get more information about how Herold organized the executions.
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And here is where the figure of Josef Urbanek appears in our story. He was in his early thirties and hailed from Posen, in Poland. Major Pantcheff describes him as follows: "Previously a member of the guards in the Emsland camp and then a motorcyclist for District Leader
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Buscher in Aschendorf, Urbanek had in the meantime become a Untersturmführer in the Waffen-SS, in the Sonderbataillon Emsland under Hauptsturmführer Buscher (not to be confused with our Gerhard Buscher - Hauptsturmführer Buscher was a distant relative of Gerhard Buscher), which so many released camp prisoners had joined. One of Buscher's buddies told Urbanek that,
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according to reports, Herold was on trial in Norden for the shooting of two Wehrmacht members, and Urbanek was instructed to go there and arrange his release." Urbanek shows up in Norden in the early morning hours of May 4th and meets with
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the court representatives during breakfast. The prosecutor is absolutely livid at the idea of releasing Herold and opposes fierce resistance. Colonel Hemmer, however, shares Urbanek's admiration for Herold's initiative and martial appearance. Urbanek goes on and on about Herold's
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leadership and officer-appropriate behavior in Aschendorfermoor, and paints a glowing, if completely inaccurate picture of the young man. I didn't mention this in my previous video because I wanted to keep the story concise and easy to follow, but Urbanek had been in the camp during
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Herold's massacre and witnessed his cruelty and amateurish executioner skills firsthand.
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Since Urbanek and Hemmer alone are not able to turn the tide in Herold's favor, Urbanek goes to see Horst Franke, the Navy Chief of Justice whom we mentioned before and who, if you recall, was also of the opinion that the death penalty was a bit exaggerated in Herold's case.
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The two men agree that Herold is a great guy, and Franke discusses the case with his superior, Rear Admiral Weyher. Their decision is to spare Herold's life and to send him back to the front.
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They believe that the Wehrmacht needs men like Herold, decisive, though, who think outside of the box and display courage and leadership. That says a lot, doesn't it?
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Franke orders the trial documents to be destroyed, since they were no longer necessary. Herold is released. The court back in Norden is, however, NOT informed of Herold's conditional release and so they could not discuss it or object to it. When they meet again in the afternoon,
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the prosecutor is the only one who has some idea about what had just happened and begins to shout at the judge for letting Herold go. The judge is confused, and joins the prosecutor in his indignation when he finds out that their accused has been released.
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Finally, the seaman, who had been quiet all this time, admits that he too wanted the death penalty for Herold, but that he had been intimidated by the Colonel and didn't dare express himself. Some injustices are perpetrated because some men dare too much. Others, because some dare too little.
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For his part, Herold will remember his trial as follows: "A few days later I was committed for trial at a court martial in Norden on a charge of: usurpation of office, wearing a uniform to which I was not entitled, favoring Prisoners of War and desertion. The
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prosecutor asked for the death penalty, but my counsel was very clever and proved that I had not discarded my uniform and therefore I was not guilty of the crime of desertion.
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Besides, I had stood at attention for 4 and a half hours without turning a hair and my smart bearing impressed the court very much in my favor. The Court adjourned to the next day, when already the capitulation was taking place and the armistice was proclaimed. I was then acquitted."
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He is, of course, twisting the truth to Major Pantcheff to make himself look better, but I do get the feeling that he genuinely believed that the judgment behind his acquittal was sound, and not the terrible miscarriage of justice it really was. And the fact that he keeps
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emphasizing his standing at attention for four and a half hours as if it mattered or had any bearing on his guilt shows just h
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At every step of the way, his vices find an echo in men who are older and have much more authority.
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Urbanek takes Herold to the headquarters of the battalion, located in the small town of Friedeburg. Herold finds the time to visit Chief Justice Franke and thank him personally for releasing him. It's really the least he could do.
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Not every day you get to walk away with mass murder. The leaders of the special battalion to which Herold had been assigned have great ambitions - in spite of all the hopelessness around them, they want to keep fighting, and liberate Berlin.
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Herold, whose reputation as a firecracker precedes him, is invited to join Operation Werwolf, a guerilla force often involved in dangerous missions. The men see Herold as someone equally invested in his homeland and willing to go above and beyond in order to fight the enemy.
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Willi Herold quickly realizes that these guys are deluded. In his statement, he would say that they had no fuel or vehicles and wanted to go to Berlin on foot. Even someone like Herold can clearly see that their plans are doomed to fail and get everyone killed. And our protagonist thinks
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that he hasn't come this far and slipped through so many close calls and a noose to die like an idiot. He has survived a war and literally gotten away with murder: leaving these suckers behind should be a piece of cake. And so he smiles and shakes hands and
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pretends to agree with the plan, but secretly begins to make preparations for an escape.
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Shameless as ever, Herold first attempts to retrieve the 10,000RM he had illegally taken from Master Baker Janßen in Leer, but the officers who had arrested him and confiscated his Captain's uniform refuse for obvious reasons. Therefore, our protagonist has to get crafty.
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Perhaps Herold manages to sneak into an office where blank discharge papers were being stored, and would later fill one out one for himself - as you can see here, he even fakes Captain Gramse's signature. Although Herold would later claim in his official statement that
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the discharge papers contained his correct and real personal information, he was lying as usual.
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If one looks at the paper, one immediately notices that he had promoted himself yet again, this time to non-commissioned officer. Perhaps he felt he deserved a promotion after his heroic deeds. He is also careful to collect rations, give himself 125RM as a
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discharge salary - probably his salary as a Lance Corporal and clothing tickets. Discharged soldiers would normally receive brand new clothes so they could return home in a dignified manner and not looking like scarecrows in their filthy, torn uniforms. They
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also received food and cigarette rations to help them on their long way back home. Thus equipped, Herold runs away to Wilhelmshaven one night, probably after stealing a bicycle. Friedeburg was about five hours away from Wilhelmshaven by foot, but about one hour by bycicle. Herold claims that
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he did the document forgery once he reached Wilhelmshaven - it could very well be true.
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There is also the possibility that he bought the blank discharge papers from somebody. In any case, this survival artist has succeeded in getting away from yet another uncomfortable situation.
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The men must have been surprised when they woke up the next day and saw Herold's cot empty.
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They had no way of knowing that Herold's actions as a self-appointed captain were not exclusively motivated by a sense of patriotism.
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Herold only cared about people as long as they served him in some way or another.
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When he was impersonating a captain, he only cared about his men in as much as they allowed him to fulfill his long standing fantasy to be the man in charge. There was little in him of the sense of duty and protectiveness that a good officer would have felt towards his men.
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Herold makes his way to Wilhelmshaven and finds a room on Horst Wessel Strasse 30. Since the war, the names of the streets have changed, and the street is now called Wilhelm-Krüger Strasse.
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You can see here that it is located somewhere towards the outskirts of the city. There would have been even less houses there in the 1940s. It makes sense that he would find somewhere cheap, as he did not have much money on him. Herold begins to earn a living as a chimney sweep.
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Since he does not have neither the uniform or the tools, it's possible that he uses some of his money or trades some of his cigarette rations for them. Wolfgang Bönitz has a haunting passage in his essay, where he imagines Herold walking down the street, his chimney brush on his shoulder and
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wonders if the men and women who smiled at this cheerful and good looking young man or touched his arm for good luck knew how bloody his hands were. Incredibly, Herold is still not done with stealing valor, and goes into a shop and purchases a Knight's cross with a ribbon attached. The
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highest medal that could be awarded to a member of the Wehrmacht. He also purchases an Eastern medal, which had been awarded to "any member of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in recognition of experience in the struggle against the Bolshevik enemy and the Russian winter within the
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period from 15 November 1941 to 15 April 1942." Willi Herold is the patron saint of stolen valor.
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I don't know of anyone else in the military with such a pathological hunger for glory.
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It's his what, fifth act of stolen valor in less than a year? He never learns. And why would he, when the adults around him let him get out of trouble every single time?
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Herold has done well for himself so far, but he has pushed his luck one too many times.
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On the 23th of May, Herold is apprehended by the Royal Marines for the theft of a loaf of bread.
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I have seen quite a few opinions which stated that Herold must have gotten desperate, and this desperation had pushed him to steal that bread. But I had my doubts about it. Herold was a young, capable guy in a country which had suffered a catastrophic loss of manpower.
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Surely, even if he had run out of money, he could have worked for food. He could have went to a church and asked the pastor for food in exchange for work. Or he could have asked the chimney sweep guild for assistance. And it's not as if this would have gone on indefinitely - all
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he had to do was keep himself fed until the mail service stabilized and the trains were back up working again, and his father would have come to pick him up and bring him back home.
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He had been very well fed in the month of April, and aside those four fasting days in the beginning of May, he hadn't really hungered. I didn't think someone like him needed to resort to stealing. Herold's fatal flaw has always been his recklessness - why should this time
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be different? In the course of my research, I have come across documents which supported my theory.
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When they arrested him, the Brits compiled a list of the things he had on him.
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This faded list, signed by Sgt. W.J.Thompson and Herold himself, reads as follows: 40 RM Wehr pay - right off the bat we know that Herold had enough money on him to actually buy the bread that he stole. Food rations - He had rations for more than
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30 eggs. Again, he would have had access to food. Not a lot of food, but still.
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1 Letter to Polish soldier - bit puzzling. Was he trying to contact Kipinsky? 1 Discharge paper - which is forged, as we now know 2 Merkblatts - these are standard issued papers which advised what to do in case you suffer a chemical attack or become a prisoner of war;
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I hope he read the second one well because he would really need it later 1 Letter - this could have been personal. Perhaps he was trying to send it to his family back in Lunzenau 3 invoices - We don't know whether they
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were paid or not, or from who they were. 1 Comb - fairly standard at that time, men wore their hair very neat, and we know that Herold had a touch of vanity to begin with 1 package cigarette paper - we do know that Herold was an occasional smoker
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Cigarette rations: these were a veritable gold mine, since many people smoked back then and the war had severely disrupted the cigarette supply. The black market prices varied, but one could get between 6 and even 20 RM for a single cigarette, and Herold had plenty of rations left.
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1 pair of braces - otherwise known as suspenders, to keep his pants in place. Taking them away from a prisoner was standard practice, as they could be used to hang oneself with Some bits of paper 1 collar stud - which
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is a rather fancy item to have. Photos - again, we don't know of what. His family? Some girl back home? Or maybe of himself, since he must have needed them for his paybook.
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Textile fabrics rations: These are textile rations which he had not yet cashed in - a winter mantle, two pairs of underwear, two undershirts, a hat, a tie, two pairs of socks. Since clothing was very precious during that time, Herold could have cashed those in
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and exchanged them for money or food. A piece of paper with an address: maybe his own address in Wilhelmshaven, in case he forgot it or the address of a customer.
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My feeling was that Herold, in his recklesness and overconfidence, simply took the risk. Perhaps it wasn't even the first time he was stealing bread.
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It's ironic that his pettiest crime would turn out to be the trigger for his spectacular downfall.
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Two days later, the Brits have become wise to Herold's crimes following his confession and Captain J.R. Ede authorizes his transfer to the Civil Internment Camp Number 9, located where the former prison camp Esterwegen had been. The camp was to serve
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as a sort of gathering place for alleged war criminals until they could be placed on trial.
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Once there, his personal information is taken, and he is medically examined. From his file, we find out that he had fair skin, a fresh complexion, brown hair and grey eyes. He was 177cm tall (that's 5 foot 10 for my American friends) and weighed 68kg (150 pounds). He is missing a tooth,
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and the fourth finger on his left hand is stiff and he can't move it - it's unclear whether his hand injury was from the war or from the beatings he received during his interrogations.
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He has scars on his head, back (from the bullet wound he received in early 1944), foot, hand and upper arm. We find out his address in Lunzenau: he lived on Hermann Göring Street number 286K - it's very telling, almost symbolic for Herold, I feel,
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that the same year the Nazis came to power, 1933, when he was only 8, his street in the small village of Lunzenau was immediately renamed after Hermann Göring.
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He does not have a good time in the camp. In a stunning and almost karmic reversal of fate, he is now in the same situation as the Aschendorfermoor prisoners he had abused and murdered. The food in the camp is so poor and so little that his weight takes
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a killdrop of 9 kilograms (that's 20 pounds) and he can barely walk. Over the summer, the Brits begin to hear reports of a bestial massacre committed in a prison camp and hear of Herold's name. Since there was no computer database back in the day,
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and since the Allies had caught more war criminals than they could shake a stick at, it takes a little while for them to realize that they already have the right man in custody.
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By the end of September 1945, Herold has been located by the British Intelligence and a very unpleasant process begins for our already weakened protagonist. During an interrogation by a Secret Service officer he is beaten so badly that he begins to bleed uncontrollably
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and has to be treated by a doctor. Out of fear of further torture, he makes a statement four months later, which he would bitterly reject during his trial. The statement is the following: "I can't really say why I shot those people in the camp. My reason was probably that neither I
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nor my men were very enthusiastic about the war and we had a reason not to return to the front." On the 11th of September 1945, Willi Herold marks his twentieth birthday.
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What a ghastly list of crimes for such a young life. By the end of 1945, something else happened in the Emsland town of Papenburg: Paul Meyer was born, the man who would eventually make the famous documentary about Herold in the
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mid 90s. I find it interesting that by 1945, all the historians who would make significant contributions about the Herold case had already been born: Major Pantcheff, Inge and Heinrich Peters, Wolfgang Bonitz and Paul Meyer. And the last two, as far as I know, are still alive.
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THe man whose team is in charge of gathering evidence against Herold is Theodore Pantcheff.
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It's difficult work. They have to dig around the Emsland for witnesses and they are racing against the clock - as peace uneasily begins to settle in, the people of interest are spreading throughout Germany and disappearing from Emsland. The men perform admirable work, and their tireless
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efforts gather a compelling amount of evidence. Major Pantcheff first meets Herold on the 26th January 1946. He's waiting for the criminal in a small, cell-like room, evidence folder in hand. At any moment, the murderous monster is about to arrive. There are steps on the corridor.
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The door opens. But instead of some evil looking creature, Major Pantcheff is suprised to see an alert twenty year old, who looks him straight in the eye and respectfully clicks his heels.
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His first words are: "May I ask for permission to say something, Major sir? I've been thinking. The bodies need to be exhumed. May I freely volunteer for this?" Major Pantcheff is taken aback at his first taste of Herold's unpredictability. He sits the prisoner
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down and they go over the story. Herold is, for the most part, fairly honest about what happened and states that he doesn't want his men to get into trouble for having followed his orders.
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They have reached the end of their meeting, and the guards come to take him back to his cell.
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Herold gets up to leave, but then turns around to face Major Pantcheff once more.
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"Major sir?" "Well?" asks Pantcheff. "What's going to happen now?" "What do you mean?" "Well, it's not very clear to me.... they're going to kill me, right?" "Yes, I'm afraid they probably will. After all, you have just explained to me in great deal why you deserve this,
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and I don't see how they would have any other course of action. Do you see this otherwise?" "No, Major, sir. Inwardly, I have been aware of this for many months.
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But what happens now? And... when?" "Well, first you'll be put on trial." "When will that be?" The Major gives him an estimate, describes how the trial is going to look like and ends with: "Then your lawyer will hold his plea. I don't believe that he can
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do much towards your exoneration and you will most likely be found guilty. But perhaps he will try to sway the jury away from a death sentence." "Do you think the death sentence will be applied, Major?" Pantcheff looked into Herold's gray eyes.
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"Yes Herold. To be honest, I don't see what could sway the court away from this appropriate verdict." Herold fell silent. Then, he burst out: "But I don't know any lawyer." "You mustn't worry about this. If you do not have a defense lawyer,
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the court will appoint one to you and will do so in a timely manner, as to allow you to have enough time to talk to him and sufficiently prepare." "The court? I don't know the court.
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I don't want the court to find me a lawyer. How will I know what they'll come up with?" "But you must have a lawyer to defend you," said Pantcheff.
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Herold takes a small step towards Pantcheff and declares full of confidence: "You will search one for me. I trust you." He then clicked his heels and stood at attention for a second, after which he left the room together with the guards.
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The interrogator was absolutely dumbstruck by what had just happened and this scene is very enlightening regarding Herold's personality. Here he is, malnourished, beaten, imprisoned and yet still not only looks the interrogator in the eye but charges him, the foreign British
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man who not only outranks him but has also compiled the evidence in his upcoming trial, to find him a lawyer. Willi Herold had truly an astonishing personality. From scenes like this, you sometimes get an inkling of why so many people were bulldozed into submission by him.
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Herold was right when he said that the victims must be exhumed. This was essential for two reasons: first, to give the poor men a dignified burial and to mark their gravesite accordingly.
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Secondly, to see the exact number of victims, and to use this as material against their murderers.
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Major Pantcheff begins to organize the exhumation. He decides to use some of the men in Esterwegen.
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Herold had already volunteered, and Pantcheff assigns others who had more or less something to do with the camp. He asks Major Lock, the Public Safety Officer for Aschendorf-Hümmling for troops to guard the 50 prisoners charged with the exhumation. Major Lock suggests him the assistance
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of Canadian and Polish troops, and agrees to take care of the transport and food for the prisoners.
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One of the fears Major Pantcheff had was that the local population wouldn't believe the massacre actually happened. There had been rumors that the Allies were secretly planting bodies to make the Wehrmacht and the third reich look bad, and Major Pantcheff wanted to avoid that at any cost.
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He wanted the German people to see that the earth was unbroken, that the massacre really happened, and that Willi Herold was truly guilty and not some innocent scapegoat. As a result, the following announcement appeared around Papenburg and Aschendorf on the 30th of January:
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On the orders of the military government, all members of the Nazi party, SS, SA from Papenburg and Aschendorf need to be at the Prison Camp II Aschendorfermoor on the 1st of February 1946 at 9:30AM. All persons who have to work are excused from their job for this purpose.
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The first of February 1946 is a very cold day. The prisoners arrive from Esterwegen and make their way to the ruins of the camp. You can see Willi Herold here, in the middle, smiling for the camera. All the other prisoners are somber, serious, keep their head down or look blankly
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ahead. But Herold is facing the photographer and smiling cheerfully. Unmistakable, the leader of the pack. Why did Herold volunteer? Did he feel some amount of guilt for the botched way in which he conducted the massacre? Did he think it would simply look good on his
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record? Was he hoping to be able to escape? Did he just want to get out of the camp for a day? Major Pantcheff saw his volunteering as positive, a small gesture of atonement.
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But Herold never publicly expressed regret about his deeds, so I am skeptical of this.
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Hundreds of men, women and teenagers arrive to witness the exhumation. For hours, they must slowly circle the digging men and watch the sad process take place. There is no sign of emotion on the spectators' faces. No pity or sadness, or shock. Only an eighteen year old girl begins
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to cry, and she is immediately silenced by her mother, with a slap across the face.
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Some male witnesses find the exhumation rather funny, and begin to crack jokes - they are swiftly handed shovels and ordered to start digging.
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It must be said, the Germans come off as pretty cold-hearted in this scene in Pantcheff's book.
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I have once read an essay about Herold where the author made the point that the reason the Germans showed no emotion was because the British were the conquering enemy, and the population instinctively wanted to keep a stiff upper lip in front of them. The historians whose work I read have
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different views on the purpose of this invitation. Heinrich and Inge Peters believed it was a method of inculcating mass guilt into the German people. Wolfgang Bönitz on the other hand, agrees with Pantcheff's idea and seems to criticize the lack of emotion, drawing a connection between their
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perceived lack of empathy and the dehumanization inflicted by the Third Reich on so many people.
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The exhumation progresses slowly. The stench is horrific. Since it has been a while since the massacre, the bodies have decomposed to the point of being unrecognizable. Only a few documents have survived, sometimes enough to be able to tell
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whether a body had once been a German or a Pole. You can see Herold here, shovel in his hand, trying to shield his nose from the smell, looking down at the terrible results of his actions.
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The work goes on quietly until Polish documents are discovered on a body. A Polish guard has an emotional breakdown at the sight of his murdered countryman and jumps sobbing into the open pit and begins threatening the workers. He is restrained by
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his fellow guards and eventually calms down, and the exhumation team continues their grim work.
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Herold's instinct for leadership makes him the unofficial leader of the diggers, and Major Pantcheff, who likened himself in his journal to an orchestra conductor who presided over the exhumation, called Herold his first violin, and mentions that he had "a few extraordinary solos".
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Around midday, Herold asks for permission to get out of the pit and speak to Major Pantcheff.
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"Major Sir, I have been thinking. My men will work better if they have some food in their stomach. Can we have lunch?" It's really interesting to see here how Herold not only considers them HIS men and acts like their leader and spokesperson but also doesn't
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really behave like a prisoner. Prisoners don't decide when they're going to get something to eat.
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His entire life philosophy seems to be that fortune favors the bold. Major Pantcheff writes that somehow, he managed to remain serious in the face of such a request.
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"No, Herold. You and your men have a task to complete. You know this as well as I do, if not better. You will receive something to eat when you have completed your task, not before." "Yes Major sir!" Herold clicked his heels and ran back to the pit to motivate his men
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to work harder so they could receive their lunch sooner. The day's work yields the following results: Pit 1: 98 victims - the first massacre, 12 April, 19:00-20:00PM Pit 2: 23 victims - the second massacre, the murder of the
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prisoners marked for desertion or escape attempts, 13 April, morning Pit 3: 15 victims - the recaptured prisoners which had been killed on the 13th of April after the second massacre There is also another pit containing 46 victims, and another one near the camp entrance containing
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13 victims which are split between victims of the Allied bombing and victims shot by Herold's men as they were trying to save food from the kitchen. It's unfortunately impossible to separate the exact number of bombing victims from the shooting victims.
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Herold and the others are ordered to dig proper graves for the victims and the men are laid to rest in the presence of two priests, one Catholic and the other Protestant, who hold a moving service for the souls of the departed. In his journal, Major Pantcheff ends the entry
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for that day with the following words: "Wherever you are up there in heaven, you Germans and Poles who were killed by bullets or hand grenades or buried alive in those April days of last year, it should not make much difference to you in what kind of grave your mortal remains are rotting.
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But I hope it gives you satisfaction to know that here we remember you and have acknowledged your death before God. We still have the other part of our task: the recognition of your death before humanity, the death that you and millions of your kind have suffered."
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Herold is sent to London to be interrogated yet again. On the 30th of May 1946, Col. Jackson, the man in charge of the POW Camp 17 Lodge Moor receives the following letter from a British official whose name I unfortunately cannot descipher:
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"Dear Col. Jackson, We have another three prisoners held on the major charge ready to send to your camp for safe keeping. They are: HEROLD, BUSCHER and SCHÜTTE. They know that we are going to charge them with murder and that the bulk of the evidence against each one has been supplied by the other two.
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To prevent any accident on the way up, a special escort will be sent from here and they will have instructions not to allow the prisoners to talk while traveling.
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In my view they should be held in your cells until transferral to Germany for trial." So Herold, Schütte and Buscher are shipped together and not allowed to talk to each other.
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You can imagine what an almost hilariously uncomfortable ride that must have been. Herold deceived both Schütte and Buscher, and ran away from Buscher relative's battalion.
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I imagine the two older men sitting there glaring daggers at Herold, who was probably sitting there looking very smug. After being interrogated in London, Herold is transfered to the prison in Oldenburg in July 1946. There, he is medically examined once
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again and from those documents we can gather that his weight went back to its usual 68 kilograms in the spring of 1946, and he is no longer underweight. Our protagonist also meets with his lawyer, Dr. Karl Allihn from Nordenham. Dr. Allihn spoke German as well as perfect English,
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had a good reputation and took his challenging job as Herold's defender very seriously. He would later recall his first meeting with Herold as follows: "My first impression, I remember, was so startlingly different from what I had expected. I had read of all things
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he was supposed to have done, and then there was this boyish-looking figure... cheerful, bright and alert. It really was a total surprise." Dr. Allihn has an exceedingly difficult task before him. Not only are Herold's crimes heinous and proven, but Herold doesn't really seem to
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want to cooperate with a defense strategy where he had to show a crumb of humanity and regret.
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From his perspective, he had been tried and released by a German court. This trial imposed upon him by the Allies, the enemy, must have had little legitimacy in his eyes.
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Until now, we have received very little information about Herold's state of mind during his imprisonment. He seems to have held up rather well, all things considered. It was perhaps the energy of his youth and his strong character which kept him upright all this time. But in
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the archives of Wolfenbüttel, I have found a page which suggests that in July 1946, one month before his trial, something cracked inside Willi Herold. The page was a form filled out whenever a prisoner would misbehave. It would describe his offence and his punishment. On the 8th of July 1946, Herold
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is accused of "disturbing the peace among the POW by attempting to injure himself." A certain private Parson witnessed his attempt and stopped him. Herold was medically remanded and placed in custody. Of course, Herold's suicidal state could have begun long before that month - perhaps it's
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only in July that he found what he believed was a good opportunity to end his life. But when the trial begins, there is no sign of this turmoil on his face. He knows that he is a dead man walking,
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as he had been aware of that as early as the second half of 1945, as he told Major Pantcheff.
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All that remained for him was to decide what kind of behavior to display at the trial. He could grovel and lie that he regrets his deeds, but he is much too proud and he knows that realistically, his chances of escaping the executioner are close to nul. So he decides to go ahead and be defiant.
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Herold's trial is the first trial organized by the British in occupied Germany, and a prototype for the following trials. Therefore, the British want the trial to be absolutely by the book.
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They want the German people and the future generations to look at the trial and be able to say that it was fair. Therefore, they are very careful to accuse Herold of things they know they can prove without a sliver of doubt. Unfortunately, this means granting immunity to
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witnesses such as Dr. Thiel and Buscher. Major Pantcheff recalls being outraged at the idea of letting men like Buscher walk free, but agrees to leave the matter in the hands of the court.
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Dressed in a plain uniform, not a hair out of place and a sign with the number 1 around his neck, Herold makes his first appearance at the trial, which began on the 13th of August 1946 and was held at the Augustenum in Oldenburg. The trial is a sensation. The courtroom is overflowing with
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spectators - you can see here a photograph found in the local newspaper - people are crowding even outside the Augustenum in Oldenburg. Everybody wants to see Herold. Dr. Allihn would later state: "Herold was a star! There wasn't any doubt about it. He was much younger than any of the others,
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he was the main attraction. And he was aware of it. He liked it. He was always very, very neat, not a hair out of place. He looked around the courtroom and smiled at people. I recall one occasion when I watched him, covertly
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and he became aware that I was looking at him and he gave me a wink across the court room, as if we were some old friends. And in that way, he was a truly irresistible character.
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It perhaps goes to explain why so many people fell for him when he'd donned a captain's uniform and transformed from an apprentice chimney sweep [sic] and Lance-Corporal to a Captain in the German Luftwaffe. I mean, he was totally different from all the others
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who were with him. They were all pale and blank, but Herold was unmistakable, I mean, he was the leader of the pack, when he was barely 19 years old [sic]. Very, very remarkable young man." Herold's defiant attitude at the trial manifested in his habit of answering questions
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in an overly loud voice - a way of expressing his frustration and defiance. This was noticeable enough to be written about in the press, but all it did was get on everybody's nerves.
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In spite of the August heat and the many people in the courtroom, Herold appears every day in what the local newspaper would describe as "his usual radiant freshness." The Nordwest Zeitung, the newspaper which covered the trial, describes Herold as follows in their 16th of August edition:
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The defendant Herold listens to the charges with an indifferent placidity, takes notes now and then, and smiles when confronted with a witness and recognized as the man who posed as "Captain Herold" and became the sole reason why this terrible court martial takes place."
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The Brits are exceedingly careful with their language - in the case summary, the mention the following: "Herold's rather vivid imagination and sense of his own importance often play havoc with his memory and whilst he is perhaps not deliberately lying, he cannot be
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trusted when accounting for his own movements. ("The Herold Case" page 10, WCIU/LDC/1160) I didn't even think it was possible to sneak such a burn in an official document, but note how careful they are with their words - they grant Herold the presumption of not lying intentionally
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but do warn the President that he is unreliable. Numerous witnesses take the stand, and affidavits are read. It's fascinating to see how unreliable human memory is. Josef Urbanek, for example, the one who toiled to save Herold from the hangman's
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noose in his first trial, mistakenly believed that he had met Herold back in 1940. He stated: "When I saw Herold for the first time that afternoon, I thought I recognized in him a lieutenant of the Air Force with whom I had a squabble in May 1940 during the French campaign, and after I returned
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from my duty trip [...] I mentioned to Buscher on that occasion that I knew Herold from 1940." Lieutenant Heinz Muller, who had come to the camp together with Hans Dahler-Kaufmann, swears in his statement taken on December 1945 in London that "I knew Herold from Creta personally, although I
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do not think he has recognized me again." This was of course impossible, as Herold only joined the Wehrmacht in 1943 and never took part in the Creta campaign or fought in France.
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But it's a strange coincidence that not only one but two people confused Herold for someone else.
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Even though her statement was given on the 2nd of February 1946, so less than a year after the events of April 1945, Annelies Thiemann, the young woman who lived at the Schützengarten Inn and convinced Herold to spare the life of the two desertors, remembers that Herold's men
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lodged at the inn for three weeks, though in reality they had been there for only one week.
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Although I'm with Annelies on this one - if those jerks were living in my house, every day would seem three times as long for me too. Other witness statements contradict each other.
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Some state they saw Herold shoot a certain prisoner himself, others that Freitag shot instead. It's understandable that during a time of utter terror, memories begin to distort. Some statements offer tantalizing fragments of a picture we can only guess at: Ernst Eder, a
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political prisoner of Aschendofermoor swears that a prisoner called "Ulzak did in fact know that Herold was a Lance Corporal, for he had told me in the cell [after they were arrested in Aurich] that he had already seen Herold's paybook in the camp giving his rank as that of a Lance Corporal.
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Also Ulzak was the first to be promoted on the 19th of April to the rank of Corporal." Benard Schmidt, Oberleutenant of the Schutzpolizei Leer swore on the 14th of March 1946 that "Herold proved his identity to me through an officer's identity card which carried a photo."
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We find out that Herold spoke with a pronounced Saxon dialect, that he had the habit of addressing everybody he met with the informal "du", that in Leer he had a diferent woman on his arm every night and that when he said goodbye to Annelies and
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her mother in April 1945, he told them that he intends to fight his way through to his mother.
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Over and over again though, the same character appears in the statements of the former inmates of Camp II Aschendorfermoor: the young paratrooper captain, sometimes sober, other times drunk, ordering murder or committing it with his own hands.
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On the 18th of August, Dr. Allihn puts Herold on the witness stand. It was a desperate move, as Herold's unpredictability and untrustworthiness made him a terrible witness. But Dr. Allihn obviously still wanted to try and get something out of him that could be used to his defense.
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Dr. Allihn: "Could you please explain how it came to be that you, so to say, promoted yourself to Captain?" Herold: "At that time I still believed in the German victory. I put on the Captain uniform at the beginning of April
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1945 at the Dutch-German border." Dr. Allihn: "Why did you do that?" Herold: "I wanted to form a combat squad and stop the advancing British troops, and I succeeded." Dr. Allihn: "You could have also taken part in combat as a Private,
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you didn’t need to promote yourself to Captain." Herold: "As a Private I couldn’t command anyone." Dr. Allihn: "So you believed that by exercising authority you could transform your unit into a competent combat squad?" Herold: "Yes. At the time, the German troops
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weren’t running away from the British troops. They were running blindly from the fighter bombers and the strafers, and in that moment I had the luck of finding a soldier by the name of Freitag, who destroyed sixteen tanks in Normandy, and other men who feared nothing. With these men I was able
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to perform operations which did not change the outcome of the war but still stopped the enemy." So here Dr. Allhin is trying perhaps to portray Herold's motivation as noble and to explain to the jury why Herold disguised himself as a Captain. He's not entirely wrong, but of course there was much more to
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Herold's self-promotion than that. It also had an all-devouring personal ambition behind it. Herold describes the events up to him arriving outside the barbed wire enclosed portion of the camp together with Schütte. "I answered to them that I would see if I could do that...
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[solving the problem with the prisoners] Hansen told me I should contact the Camp President, and so I drove to Dr. Thiel in Papenburg." Here Dr. Allihn interrupts Herold and gives him a warning to watch what he says. " Before I pursue the questioning further, I would like to make
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something clear to you. Dr. Thiel is available as a witness and will be questioned soon.
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Then we shall see if your story is confirmed or not. In your own interest and in the interest of the defense, I advise you to make your statement in such a way as to be confirmed by Dr. Thiel."
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The message is clear here: Be very careful. Don't lie. The prosecutor then had his turn with Herold. Prosecutor: "Tell me if you believed that the shooting of all those people without any trial was just?" Herold: "The crimes of the people who were supposed
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to be shot had been proven without any doubt." Prosecutor: "Wait a minute. How were they proven without any doubt?" Herold: "Because the people who were brought in the camp from outside were dressed as civilians and back then nobody
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was giving away civilian clothing willingly." Prosecutor: "Has the shooting of all these men weighed at any point heavily on your conscience?" Herold: "No." Herold is also grilled in regards to the murder of the five Dutchmen, and although he said in his
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statement in January 1946 that he does not want his men to get in trouble for having followed his orders, he takes advantage of the fact that Freitag was not there and tries to blame him for the murders. The prosecutor does not buy it. Prosecutor: "The court has heard three
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witnesses who all claim that you have sentenced those men to death." Herold: "Yes." Prosecutor: "Did you sentence them to death?" Herold: "No." Prosecutor: "Did those Dutchmen say to you why they had been sentenced to death?" Herold: "They did not know it themselves."
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Prosecutor: "You do remember the witness statement where it was said that you came outside later and ordered someone to get five shovels? Miss Pieper stated this. " Herold: "I remember that Miss Pieper said I allegedly ordered five shovels to be collected
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from the anti-airtcraft battery Lieutenant." Prosecutor: "Did you give this order?" Herold: "There wasn't any anti-aircraft gun there." Prosecutor: "Why do you think these women would come here and state that they heard you sentence the Dutchmen to death if this was not true?"
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Herold: "I don't know." Prosecutor: "I am trying to get to the following point: there is no apparent reason why these women would bear any ill will or hate towards you. On the contrary, they appear to have had a great time with some of your men."
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Herold: "I would like to say the following in regards to this: if I had sentenced the Dutchmen to death, I would have admitted it and suffered the consequences." Prosecutor: "Does it not surprise you, that the well-disciplined Freitag shot them
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without having received an order from you?" Herold: "I do not know if Freitag shot these people, I only know that he went to the execution." Prosecutor: "Did such things happen often in your unit without your knowledge?" Herold: If I had given the order for the Dutchmen
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to be shot I would have gone there myself, and no women would have been allowed to witness.
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If they were there, I do not know." Prosecutor: "You were not present at the execution of Sommer and Schrammek and yet you gave the order for them to be executed. This is why there doesn't seem to be any particular reason why you should have been present at
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the execution of the five Dutchmen." Herold: "No, I was not present as they were shot. I know with certainty that I would have been there in that case. " Prosecutor: "Did you discuss the matter with Freitag? What explanation did he give you
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for the execution of the Dutchmen?" Herold: "Freitag only said that five Dutchmen had been shot. Why they had been shot I already knew through the statement they made." Prosecutor: "A minute ago you told us that neither you nor the Dutchmen themselves knew
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why they had been sentenced to death." Herold: "The Dutchmen said that they believed they had been sentenced to death because they were caught with weapons, they were not in uniform and they were suspected of being Dutch nationals and therefore surmised
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that, according to the Geneva convention, men who weren't in uniform and did not have a paybook could be shot immediately without a trial." Prosecutor: "Herold you just made this up on the spot, didn't you." Herold: "I did not make this up,
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I left it out of my statement." Prosecutor: "Listen, you explained already two or three times that you could not find a reason for why the Dutchmen had been sentenced to death, that the Dutchmen themselves did not know it, and now you are giving long and detailed reasons for
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why they were sentenced to death... Don't you think that the following interpretation for the shooting of the five Dutchmen is more plausible? They were sentenced to death by you, as both women and Eder stated. You ordered the five shovels, and the five were taken outside and shot by Freitag
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and Hoffmeister, just like Sommer and Schrammek, with a few interested witnesses present."| Herold: "No. I did not sentence the Dutchmen to death and did not order their shooting.
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I have also given no orders for shovels to be collected and gave no orders in this case, as the witnesses claim." Prosecutor: "According to you, at least half of the prosecution witnesses are telling lies, which not only differ in the most
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minor details but are completely made up. Do you agree that only this conclusion can be drawn from your statement this afternoon?" Herold: "Yes. Several points are also contradicted by my own witnesses." Prosecutor: "Finally, I would like to read
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you a short paragraph from your own statement, Herold: "I can't really say why I shot those people in the camp. My reason was probably that neither I nor my men were very enthusiastic about the war and we had a reason not to return to the front." A good summary of your entire mindset,
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no? Does this not correspond to the truth?" Herold: "The statement is true but I have contested it. At that time, I asked the officer who interrogated me if I had to make that statement under oath." Prosecutor: "Herold, are these two sentences
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which I have just read true or not?" Herold did not answer. The trial went on. Dr. Allihn pleaded for a lighter sentence, pointing out to the circumstances which had made Herold their victim. To begin with, he was very young,
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and his upbringing had not steeled him against the devastating psychological effects of war and the destructive influence of the totalitarian system he had grown up under. He was surrounded by evil, bloodthirsty weaklings during that fateful, dark month in 1945, who corrupted him
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and pushed him to go further and further. At the end, the President asked all the accused to stand up and said the following: "I do not intend to add anything further to what your defenders have expressed in such eloquent terms on this bitter occasion. Herold,
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your esteemed defense attorney Dr. Allihn has spoken about how you would have not succeded in committing all your crimes if others had done their duty. This may be, but of course it does not diminish your fault. It may be that the witnesses whom we have seen before this court
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and who belonged to the Nazi party were more than willing to use your energy and cold-blooded nature in order to murder their own countrymen, but it was painful to see government officials, men with a once impeccable behavior and reputation,
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be so neglectful of their duty. Surely, the demoralisation brought on by the Nazi party is to blame for toppling them from their once pristine standards.
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Your crimes are so horriffic that one is tempted to contrast them with those of your co-defendants, but one must be aware that these co-defendants have also committed unspeakably heinous crimes.
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The other six co-defendants were all employed in the German prison system, which enjoyed a good reputation amongs similar institutions in the world, until it was demoralized in the last years. One can only suspect that you, Herold, could commit
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your crimes only thanks to the (exaggerated) respect Germans have for uniforms and alleged authority, judging from your testimony before this court, from the way you bellowed "Yes!" and snarled "No!" And if nothing else comes from this case, hopefully it will bring the ordinary German to
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the realization that he must have the courage to stand alone and defy dishonorable orders, that he must decide to refuse obedience when orders, regardless from whom, are clearly unlawful.
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The court sentences you Herold, Hagewald, Meyer, Schütte, Euler, Brandt and Peller to death. The time, place and manner of performance shall be decided at a higher level." The public was pleased with the verdict, although angry that men like Thiel and Buscher were not
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placed among the co-defendants. The NW-Zeitung, the newspaper which we quoted before and who covered the trial extensively, published an article called "The Slave in Us," astonishing in its moral clarity, which I would like to read to you here:
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"Mass murderers have existed in all time periods and in all nations. This nineteen year old boy however, who went ahead and murdered hundreds of people, who savagely intoxicated himself with the screams of the shredded victims, is an apparition born in
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the years in which injustice and legal uncertainty sunk a once great people to a lamentable spiritual low. There is a strong connection between him and the men on trial at Nuremberg. His hands, bloody, and their hands, glittering with rings at the time, have committed the same crime.
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As they took him in their school, he wasn't even ten years old. He is the personification of their teachings, the prototype distorted by murder of the youth they envisioned. The fact that so much good still exists in the German youth is not thanks to them. If they had remained in control of
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the German destiny, this young man would have had a career ahead of him just like the one he faked for himself in his pompous megalomania, as he put on a Captain's uniform so he could murder.
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This is one point of view. There is however another, of equal importance. A nineteen year old fake Captain comes and orders the slaughter of hundreds of people.
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And not a single one amongst those who committed the slaughter felt compelled to reject the order.
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They didn't know him, they obeyed the uniform. This is the consequence of the slavish obedience, of the failure to think independently which has consumed our souls like a cancer. Much has been spoken for and against this obedience. Those horrific days have provided the most appalling
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examples for it. There is no escape - there we have it, in the most gruesome meaning of the word.
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We have often been the subject of grotesque exaggerations, in which we were portrayed as capable of saluting even a mailbox if ordered to do so. We laughed. We should't have done that, because the deeper meaning behind this comparison was that we have abandoned
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every human dignity. This began hundreds of years before Hitler. He merely used that. This is the core of the problem. However, to remove this moral corruption requires a longer time than the one year that lies behind us, and a greater effort than the one we have already made.
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There is a Chinese proverb which says "One tyrant doesn't create a hundred slaves, but a hundred slaves create a tyrant." When we have thrown away the slave in us, we will find the human in us. This is certain." Scorched earth. A truly atonishing article for
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that time, written by someone who cut right through the heart of the matter. Among the spectators at Herold's trial was also Herold's father. When Mr. Herold came back to Lunzenau, he was reported to have said "Somebody who did something like this deserves to die."
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Being confronted with his son's crimes was a shattering blow for Mr. Herold, and he struggled with his son's profound and horrific betrayal of everything he tried to teach him.
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It's unclear if the British authorities ever informed the Herold family in detail about Herold's crimes. From the letters he sent them from prison, Willi could have only given them an overall idea of what had happened. In an ironic turn of events, Schütte,
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who had greeted pastor Lüning with the words "It doesn't matter if these guys pray or not, they're going to be shot anyway", has found solace in religion. His pastor even writes a plea for clemecy on his behalf. Schütte's lawyer also sends a plea, and his wife does as well,
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begging the judge to spare her beloved husband. Schütte's family tries every recourse - the wife and daughter go to the mayor of their town and get character witnesses for themselves.
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Schütte himself goes one step further and writes a plea himself. He seems terribly scared of death, for someone who was so eager to get so many people killed.
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Other clemency requests go out. Otto Peller is spared the death penalty on the grounds of a witness contradicting the evidence. Some pleas feel almost like a formality - for example, that of Bernhard Meyer, whose lawyer Rudolf Hein can only muster up the following to his defense:
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"Meyer has confessed to have given the order for shooting of 8 prisoners at Burlage.
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He only has carried out the order because Herold threatened him to shoot himself within one hour if he does not carry out his order.
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Meyer is a baker master by profession, 50 years old and hitherto not punished. In the high court proceedings his superior Dr. Öttinger has declared that complaints are not known in regards to Meyer." Nothing comes for Herold on behalf of his family. But Dr. Allihn doesn't give up
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and writes a passionate plea to Col. Bowen on the 6th of September 1946. I am going to read a few fragments out to you as a sign of recognition to Dr.
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Allihn's work ethic and his tireless efforts in the service of his undeserving client. "As the defender of the condemned I ask to change the given capital punishment into life imprisonment in a house of correction by an act of grace. I reason the petition for
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review as follows: Naturally the done punishable offence itself does not justify an act of grace.
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But with respect to the youth of the condemned and the time and other circumstances under which the deed was done, an act of grace seems desirable. Being 17 years old, Herold was levied to the RAD (labour-service of the Reich). In his 18th year of life he was already at the front.
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From a very unripe age Herold was taken into the military and to war and placed straight into the middle of the hard craft of war. Once cannot deny that many young men - in spite of such an education and rough adventures at the front - have not left the firm ground
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which they have gained by good education of parents or excellent tutors. But the danger is very great, that a youth who does not own the necessay firmness of character glides off in a thinking, feeling and doing which is suitable in a fight at the front but not for the other life.
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There is no doubt, Herold did not possess this firmness of character. He succumbed to the circumstances of that time, namely to the sinister and corrupting influences of life on the battlefield and the then systematic education of youth to ruthlessness and extreme harshness, especially against everything that even apparently opposed
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militarism and National Socialism. Moreover there is to be considered that Herold was not hindered by the competent offices, on the contrary - they supported him. Already the supervisor of the camp encouraged Herold in his doing instead of stopping it. District leader Buscher had a willing ear
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for that what Schütte and Herold wanted. [...] Now I ask in the given statement of the facts, who has the greater guilt, all these responsible or better, irresponsible officials or a boy of 19?
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When Herold committed the deed, he was still so young that he nearly would have fallen under the "Underage Youth Law". This young man, with his considerable energy, would have been able to lead a proper and successful life, if his education would have shown him the right way.
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As Herold's defender I ask to give him a chance that he may become a beneficial member of society in further times, and to not extinguish his young life on account of the events on the 11th and 12th of April." Colonel Bowen's reply signed
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on the 11 of September 1946, Herold's 21st and last birthday, is short and to the point.
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"Tee record shows that when he put on the Captain's uniform Herold immediately became the prototype of the traditional truculent Prussian officer. In court were no signs of remorse; on the contrary, a keen appreciation of his own prowess; enjoyment at the rehearing of his cruelties, and amused
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contempt for those administrators and officials whom he found willing tools and accomplices. Many as young as Herold have died nobly in the service of their country and mankind. The German defence counsel referred to him as a potentially appropriate evil successor to Hitler. The exercise
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of the prerogative of mercy would shock even the German conscience and in the present state of man's mind and social structure would be the opposite of a deterrent to German youth." Herold's fate is now sealed. He is transferred in October to
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Wolfenbüttel prison, where he is waiting for his sentence to be carried out. In the meantime, on the 24th of October, he is medically examined and declared fit to work.
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He is, however, not assigned to the kitchen. Too many knives. On the 2nd of November 1946, Sholto Douglas, Marshall of the Royal Air Force signs the death warrant for Herold. The document takes about a week to arrive.
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We do no not have a detailed description of the execution at our disposal. Executions tend to be very solemn events, and many people who witness them feel an aversion towards describing them in too much detail. There's an element of respect towards the ending of a life
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and witnesses don't want to break this strange sort of intimacy and dignity - since the British authorities employed a German executioner who had been active for many years, it's safe to assume that the process put in place by the Germans was used. Therefore, based on my
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research regarding executions in the Third Reich and a fragment found in Major Pantcheff's book, I will try and piece together Herold's last hours. On the night of November 13th, 1946, Willi Herold went to bed without knowing that he will die the next day. Originally, prisoners were informed 24
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hours in advance, but having to oversee so many executions, the German authorities had observed that the waiting time was so agonizing for the condemned that they had mental breakdowns, went into hysterics, tried to hurt themselves and overall suffered so greatly that the authorities
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decided to shorten the time to three or four hours. Enough time to prepare oneself for death.
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Herold was woken up at either six or seven in the morning and informed that he was going to be executed that day at 10 in the morning. From that moment on, according to the established process, he was not left alone for a second, partly to prevent any attempts at
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suicide or self-mutilation and partly to have someone by him in those trying hours. He was offered the services of a priest, but we do not know if he accepted the offer to talk.
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He was also allowed to write final letters to his loved ones, letters which would be sent off immediately after his execution - but again, we do not know if he sent anything.
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Finally, he had to strip naked, fold his clothes carefully on the bed and dress in a wide, pajama-like outfit, complete with braided rope shoes. According to Major Pantcheff, Herold "showed more courage than the others in those agonizing hours before the execution."
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The curtain draws on the final scene in our story. Pale and exhausted, the Emsland Executioner is about to meet a real executioner - any not just any one, but the most important executioner in Germany. Friedrich Hehr, a man in his late sixties who had been an official executioner since 1925,
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the year of Herold's birth, and had overseen the execution of over five hundred people, had secretly arrived the day before with his three assistants, according to protocol. The executioner was supposed to be kept far away from the prison population and especially from the condemned,
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to avoid the circulation of panicked rumors and the onset of terror in the death row inmates.
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Unlike Herold, Hehr was a true professional - his goal was not to torture the condemned, but to conduct the execution in a fast, efficient and painless way. When Herold entered the execution chamber, he saw the guillotine, its raised blade hidden between two wooden panels.
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The authorities had also remarked that if the condemned saw the exposed blade, they would freeze interror and would have a difficult time moving towards the instrument of their death, sometimes having to be carried - hence why they resolved to hide it. Herold's hands were tied behind his back.
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He was asked to confirm his name, which he did, and thus uttered the last words he would ever say.
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Two of the executioner's assistants took him by the upper arms and laid him face down on the guillotine, dragging him upwards on the smooth bench until his neck was in the lunette.
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Then they held his upper arms in place. A third assistant held his head in place, to avoid any suden movements that might have complicated the process. The moment the upper part of the lunette snapped onto Herold's neck, the blade was released by Hehr
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and Willi Herold went to meet his maker. He had a lot of explaining to do.
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Between Herold entering the room and the moment his head was separated from his body, six seconds had passed. Herold's body was stripped of the clothes and shoes he had been wearing and placed in a simple wooden coffin, with his head between his legs for stability. While an assistant
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was hosing off the guillotine to remove the blood, two others were carrying his coffin into the next room, where it would wait until all the others had been executed. The executions of Herold and his accomplices took sixteen minutes in total. Precision work, as Major Pantcheff remarked in
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his book. Since nobody claimed Willi Herold's remains and the anatomical institute didn't need them for educational purposes, they are handed over to the police for burial. A Protestant pastor asked for the bodies of Herold and 4 of his other accomplices to be put aside until Saturday so he
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could bury them according to the Protestant rite. And so, on the 16th of November 1946, at 10 o'clock in the morning, Willi Herold is laid to rest at the Central Cemetery in Wolfenbüttel.
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In Lunzenau, news of Herold's execution was made public through a newspaper announcement in the winter of 1946/47. This started a wave of gossip around the village.
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Nobody knew the full picture, as the details of Herold's crimes had not been fully communicated.
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Interest in the case however, remained fairly small. Many families in Lunzenau had lost men, and they were struggling to get through the winter, which had been made incredibly harsh by the economic collapse of their country. There was also the suspicion, born of out a lack of information,
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that Herold might have been a victim of Allied revenge. The Herold parents remained in Lunzenau.
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I'm not sure what happened to Herold's brother, but his sister had four children, who then scattered throghout Saxony. Wolfgang Bönitz writes "Herold's mother would often say that she lost her son in the war. Who dared contradict her?" While yes, technically her son died after the war,
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I don't think she was wrong is saying that she lost him in the war. In those dreary weeks of April 1945, under the poisonous influence of the Nazi regime, the horrors of war and his own ambitions, Willi Herold had mutated into something his family wouldn't have recognized.
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Even today, historians struggle to understand the reasons behind his cruelty. This includes Wolfgang Bönitz, who as of August 2021 was still alive and can tell you first hand about how Herold tried to bully him. In his essay, he pondered what could have pushed Herold to turn
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from an average German soldier into a horriffic war criminal. He thinks, like many others, that the war was to blame, for taking the taboo out of killing and for unhinging something in Herold. He wonders what path Herold's life could have taken, had he not done what he did.
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"One may wonder how Willi Herold's life would have continued if this meeting in the Aschendorfermoor camp had not taken place.
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Perhaps he would have treated his apprentices coldly and brutally as a master chimney sweep, "geschnickt" as they call it in his homeland. But then an apprentice's father would certainly have interfered or the guild would have issued a warning in case he took things too far.
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But he would never have been able to act out his predispositions as he did in those unfortunate days in Emsland. And he would have kept his head!" Major Pantcheff, who labored to bring Herold to justice, nevertheless believed that it was
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a terrible shame that his life ended the way it did. "Under more fortunate circumstances, he would have made a great officer's orderly," he writes in the conclusion of his book.
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His lawyer Dr. Allihn, who also labored to do the impossible and save Herold from the executioner's blade, said that Herold "was a very, very personable young man and it is very, very sad that his life ended the way it did. He could have had a great future if he had not done what he did."
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Well, many people could have had a great future if Herold had not done what he did. Many children would have grown up with their fathers present, many wives would have had their beloved husbands home, many parents would have gotten to see their sons again, many families wouldn't have
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struggled financially. In the end, we are the sum of our choices and we bear responsibility to them. Willi Herold could have been 96 year old today. Some cranky great-grandfather with sunken, watery blue eyes and shaky hands, asking his grandchildren what on earth a TikTok is and
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cracking jokes about his upcoming funeral. What a terrible way to go down in history.
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But I don't think he cared about that. He had the time of his life during that April month in 1945, and the only regret he might have had... was that he was caught.
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And we have reached the end of this long journey. I hope I was able to shed a bit more light on this case, and that you found it as interesting as I did. If you have any questions regarding the events, the witnesses or just want to
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tell me what you think about Willi Herold and his motivations, feel free to comment.
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The final resting place of the Aschendorfermoor massacre victims is now a war cemetery, colloquially called the Herold cemetery.
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Willi Herold is buried somewhere in the Wolfenbüttel central cemetery. There are people alive today who still grieve over the family members he has murdered.
Topics:Willi HeroldEmsland ExecutionerNazi war crimesWWII military trialNavy military courtJosef UrbanekHorst FrankeMajor PantcheffGerman military justice1945 trial
