How the female Nazi soldiers get executed

How the female Nazi soldiers get executed

British hangmen meticulously weighed female Nazi guards to ensure a swift, calculated death. In Poland, executioners just stood the women on cargo trucks and drove forward.

While the Third Reich strictly barred women from combat roles in the Wehrmacht, thousands volunteered or were conscripted into the SS-Gefolge (SS retinue) as Aufseherinnen, or female camp guards. When Allied forces liberated the concentration camps in 1945, they captured these women alongside their male counterparts and put them on trial for war crimes. Those sentenced to death faced execution methods that varied sharply depending on which Allied power held jurisdiction.

In the British occupation zone, military tribunals like the Belsen Trial resulted in death sentences for several high-profile female guards.

Among the most notorious was Elisabeth Volkenrath, the head wardress of Bergen-Belsen. Captured by the British in April 1945, she was held in a makeshift prisoner-of-war cage at Celle to await her tribunal.

Elisabeth Volkenrath, head wardress at Bergen-Belsen, stands in the prisoner courtyard at Celle while awaiting trial in August 1945. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The military court found her guilty of widespread abuse and sentenced her to death, alongside 22-year-old Irma Grese and Juana Bormann.

To carry out the sentences, the women were transferred to Hamelin Prison. The British government brought in their most prolific hangman, Albert Pierrepoint. He employed the traditional British "long drop" method, designed to break the neck and cause instant unconsciousness. The day before the executions, Pierrepoint weighed and measured each woman to calculate the exact length of rope required. On the morning of December 13, 1945, the women were led into the execution chamber individually, their arms pinioned. A white hood was placed over their heads, the noose adjusted, and the trapdoor released.

In Eastern Europe, the executions were far less sterile and often highly public. Following the Stutthof trials in Gdańsk, Poland, a tribunal sentenced several female guards—including Jenny-Wanda Barkmann and Gerda Steinhoff—to death. On July 4, 1946, they were executed at Biskupia Górka before a massive crowd of local citizens. The women were positioned under a large gallows structure while standing on the cargo beds of trucks. Once the nooses were secured around their necks, the trucks simply drove forward. This "short drop" method offered no calculated fall to break the neck, leaving the condemned to die slowly by strangulation.