Who was the Commander of the Luftwaffe who avoided execution by committing suicide by cyanide ingestion the night before he was due to be hanged in October 1946?
"Göring committing suicide, von Ribbentrop became the first of those sentenced to be executed; he was hanged on 16 October 1946. Burgess meanwhile often visited the Green Dragon when he stayed in Flaunden with his boyfriend, Peter Pollock, who lived in the Sharlowes farmhouse not far from the pub. Burgess would defect to the Soviet Union in May 1951, however, he is reported to have met with fellow Cambridge Five member Donald MacLean in the taproom of the Green Dragon the day prior to their defection. The Green Dragon has been under the custodianship of one family for three generations,"
"children would support the decision [to commit suicide] if they were old enough to speak for themselves. Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide on the afternoon of 30 April. On the following day of 1 May 1945, Magda and Joseph Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz, to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of cyanide could be then crushed in each of their mouths. According to Kunz's later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda and SS-""Obersturmbannführer"" Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor, who administered the cyanide."
"Haase suggested the ""pistol-and-poison method"" of combining a dose of cyanide with a gunshot to the head. When the head of the Luftwaffe, ""Reichsmarschall"" Hermann Göring, learned about this, he sent a telegram to Hitler asking for permission to take over the leadership of the Reich in accordance with Hitler's 1941 decree naming Göring his successor. Hitler's influential secretary, Martin Bormann, convinced Hitler that Göring was threatening a coup. In response, Hitler informed Göring that he would be executed unless he resigned all of his posts. Later that day, he sacked Göring from all of his offices and ordered his"
"was to unceremoniously sack general after general, a routine which ultimately affected the field marshals promoted at the ceremony. Erwin von Witzleben and Günther von Kluge were both involved in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler. After it became clear that the assassination attempt had failed, Kluge committed suicide by taking cyanide poison on 17 August 1944. Witzleben was to have become Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht if the attempt had succeeded. He was arrested, stripped of his rank and expelled from the Army so that he could be tried in a civilian court, and sentenced to death; the execution"
"hanging. The judgment stated: Göring made an appeal asking to be shot as a soldier instead of hanged as a common criminal, but the court refused. Defying the sentence imposed by his captors, he committed suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule the night before he was to be hanged. One theory as to how Göring obtained the poison holds that US Army Lieutenant Jack G. Wheelis, who was stationed at the Nuremberg Trials, retrieved the capsules from their hiding place among Göring's personal effects that had been confiscated by the Army and handed them over to the prisoner, after being"
"an air-raid shelter known as the ""Vorbunker"". The ""Vorbunker"" was connected by a stairway down to the ""Führerbunker"", which had become a de facto Führer Headquarters. On 23 April 1945, Hitler's personal physician Theodor Morell and several others left Berlin by aircraft for the Obersalzberg leaving behind medications prepared for Hitler, which Haase and Heinz Linge, Hitler's valet, administered during Hitler's last week of life. SS physician Ludwig Stumpfegger distributed cyanide capsules to the various military adjutants, secretaries, and staff in the bunker. Doubting the efficacy of the cyanide capsules, Hitler ordered Haase summoned to the ""Führerbunker"" to test one"
"Death of Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and ""Führer"" (""Leader"") of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. He killed himself by gunshot on 30 April 1945 in his ""Führerbunker"" in Berlin. Eva Braun, his wife of one day, committed suicide with him by taking cyanide. In accordance with Hitler's prior written and verbal instructions, that afternoon their remains were carried up the stairs through the bunker's emergency exit, doused in petrol, and set alight in the Reich Chancellery garden outside the bunker."
"of the Luftwaffe, but I have no Luftwaffe"". Greim committed suicide in prison in Salzburg on 24 May. Notes Bibliography Robert Ritter von Greim Robert Ritter von Greim (born Robert Greim; 22 June 1892 – 24 May 1945) was a German Field Marshal and pilot. In the last days of World War II, Adolf Hitler appointed Greim as commander of the ""Luftwaffe"" (German Air Force) in place of Hermann Göring, whom he had dismissed for treason. When Germany surrendered, Greim was taken prisoner by American forces; he committed suicide in prison on 24 May 1945. Born as Robert Greim on"
"across Europe. On 21 May 1945, the British captured Himmler, who was in disguise and using a false passport. At an internment camp near Lüneburg, he committed suicide by biting down on a cyanide capsule. Several other leading members of the SS fled, but some were quickly captured. Kaltenbrunner, chief of the RSHA and the highest-ranking surviving SS main department chief upon Himmler's suicide, was captured and arrested in the Bavarian Alps. He was among the 24 defendants put on trial at the International Military Tribunal in 1945–46. Some SS members were subject to summary execution, torture, and beatings at"
"of knowledge of the Holocaust remain a matter of debate among scholars. In 1944, Rommel was implicated in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Due to Rommel's status as a national hero, Hitler desired to eliminate him quietly instead of immediately executing him, as many other plotters were. Rommel was given a choice between committing suicide, in return for assurances that his reputation would remain intact and that his family would not be persecuted following his death, or facing a trial that would result in his disgrace and execution; he chose the former and committed suicide using a cyanide"
"Hermann Göring Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German political and military leader as well as one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party (NSDAP) that ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. A veteran World War I fighter pilot ace, he was a recipient of the ""Pour le Mérite"" (""The Blue Max""). He was the last commander of ""Jagdgeschwader"" 1 (Jasta 1), the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen. An early member of the Nazi Party, Göring was among those wounded in Adolf Hitler's failed Beer Hall"
"that Hitler rescinded his directive that the Me 262 be used as a fighter-bomber. Galland ignored the order and formed ""Eprobungskommando 262"" to test the Me 262 against high-flying Allied reconnaissance aircraft. He selected the highly decorated pilot Werner Thierfelder as its commander. Hitler heard of the experiment through Milch and ordered Göring to put a stop to it at a meeting on 29 May 1944. Galland persisted with the experiments and ordered operations to be continued. They achieved isolated successes until Thierfelder was shot down and killed by P-51 Mustangs on 18 July 1944. On 20 August, Hitler finally"
"each of their mouths. According to Kunz's later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda Goebbels and SS-""Obersturmbannführer"" Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor, who administered the cyanide. At around 20:30, Goebbels and his wife, Magda left the bunker and walked up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they committed suicide. There are several different accounts of this event. According to one account, Goebbels shot his wife and then himself. Another account was that they each bit on a cyanide ampule and were given a coup de grâce immediately afterwards. Schwägermann testified in 1948 that the"
"able to make it, especially with a leg like mine...' "" On the evening of 1 May, Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz, to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of cyanide could be then crushed in each of their mouths. According to Kunz's later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda Goebbels and SS-""Obersturmbannführer"" Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor, who administered the cyanide. At around 20:30, Goebbels and Magda left the bunker and walked up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they committed suicide."
"concentration camp. From there, he was put onto a transport of SS special detainees and on 5 April incarcerated in the Flossenbürg concentration camp. On 9 April 1945, after an SS flying court-martial, Gehre and Bonhoeffer along with Admiral Canaris, General Oster, General Sack and Captain Theodor Strünck were executed at Flossenbürg by hanging. In 1946, the individuals who had participated in the flying court-martial were brought to justice for murder. However Otto Thorbeck, the presiding officer, was exonerated after appeal. The decision was rescinded by the Berlin State Court in 1996. Ludwig Gehre Ludwig Gehre (5 October 1895 –"
"been picked up. I wouldn't say it changed my view of the war, but it showed me that there are [He did not finish the statement.] . . . Well, I questioned all that we knew about these vicious people."" Göring was convicted of war crimes and committed suicide in October 1946 by taking a cyanide capsule before he could be hanged by the Nuremberg authorities. By October 1945, Foster was back in the United States, having flown seventy reconnaissance combat missions during his wartime service. He returned to his adopted home state of Montana, where he was appointed lieutenant"
"of the execution of Mussolini, which presumably increased his determination to avoid capture. On 30 April 1945, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler shot himself in the head and Braun bit into a cyanide capsule. Their bodies were carried outside to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were placed in a bomb crater, doused with petrol, and set on fire as the Red Army shelling continued. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels assumed Hitler's roles as head of state and chancellor respectively. Berlin surrendered on 2 May. Records in"
"himself. The group headed along the U-Bahn tunnels, but their route was blocked so they went above ground and later joined hundreds of other German civilians and military personnel who had sought refuge at the Schultheiss-Patzenhofer Brewery. Upon arriving at the holdout on 2 May 1945, Hewel made remarks to the effect that he planned to commit suicide. Despite the efforts of Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenck, who attempted to talk him out of it, Hewel killed himself in the same manner that Professor Dr. Werner Haase had instructed for Hitler, biting down on a cyanide capsule while shooting himself in the"
"detained. The three men were taken to an Allied barracks in Lüneburg on May 23. During a routine interrogation, Himmler admitted who he was; thereafter, at the headquarters of the Second British Army, during an attempted medical examination Himmler bit into a hidden cyanide pill and died. After Himmler's suicide, Macher and Grothmann were arrested. Macher appeared publicly in April 1966, along with other former SS officers, at the funeral of Josef Dietrich, displaying the medals of the late SS leader. He died on December 21, 2001 in Schenefeld, Pinneberg. Heinz Macher Heinz Macher (December 31, 1919 – December 21,"
"on his dog Blondi on 29 April. A cyanide capsule was crushed in the mouth of the dog, which died as a result. Hitler, in conversations with Haase during this timeframe, asked the doctor for a recommended method of suicide. Haase instructed Hitler to bite down on a cyanide capsule while shooting himself in the head. Haase remained in the ""Führerbunker"" until Hitler's suicide the following afternoon. Haase then returned to his work at the emergency casualty station. In the seven days they worked together, Schenck and Haas performed some ""three hundred and seventy operations"". Haase, Helmut Kunz and two"
"the assassination attempt—committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide near Metz on 19 August. He left Hitler a frank letter in which he advised him to make peace, and to show ""the greatness that will be needed to put an end to a hopeless struggle"". Hitler reportedly handed the letter to Alfred Jodl and commented that ""There are strong reasons to suspect that had not Kluge committed suicide he would have been arrested anyway."" According to Polish journalist Kazimierz Moczarski (who was persecuted by the Polish Communist Government and imprisoned in the same cell with Stroop), SS Commander and convicted war"
"committed suicide once the war ended. Along with Rohde, Dr. Heinrich Plaza assisted in the executions using lethal injections. Plaza was never captured. In 1954, he was sentenced to death ""in absentia"" in France, but continued to live and practise as a doctor in Altötting (Bavaria). He died in 1968. Rohde was sentenced to death and was hanged on 11 October 1946 at Hameln (Germany). Peter Straub was the SS officer in command for the executions. According to testimony Straub was said to be drunk the night of the executions because of a party thrown for the departure of Plaza."
"police arrested him on 1 August 1945. In exchange for his testimony against his former superiors at the Nuremberg Trials, Bach-Zelewski never faced trial for any war crimes. Similarly, he never faced extradition to Poland or to the USSR. During his testimony at the Nuremberg Trials, Bach-Zelewski stated that he disapproved of Himmler's aim to exterminate 30 million Slavs. Bach-Zelewski left prison in 1949. In 1951, Bach-Zelewski claimed that he helped Hermann Göring commit suicide in 1946. As evidence, he produced cyanide capsules to the authorities with serial numbers not far removed from the one used by Göring. The authorities"
"Wilhelm Keitel Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (22 September 1882 – 16 October 1946) was a German field marshal who served as Chief of the Armed Forces High Command ( or OKW) in Nazi Germany during World War II. According to David Stahel, Keitel was ""well known and [...] reviled as Hitler’s dependable mouthpiece and habitual yes-man"" among his military colleagues. Following the war, Keitel was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. He was found guilty, sentenced to death and executed by hanging in 1946. He was the third highest-ranking German"
"Wilhelm Zahn Wilhelm Zahn (29 July 1910 – 14 November 1976) was a German ""Kriegsmarine"" officer during the ""Second World War"". He was U-boat First Watch Officer, then became U-boat commander and was finally promoted to ""Korvettenkapitän"" on 1 April 1943. As commander of ""U-56"" he was able to avoid detection by the destroyers surrounding and came in close proximity to the British flagship, launching three torpedoes against her whilst she was carrying Winston Churchill and the high military command of the British Navy. Following that incident he became widely known as the ""Man who almost killed Churchill"" amongst the"
"In his suicide note, he insisted that he was innocent. Kurt Bolender Heinz Kurt Bolender (21 May 1912 – 10 October 1966) was a SS commander during the Nazi era. In 1942, he operated the gas chambers at Sobibór extermination camp, perpetrating acts of genocide against Jews and Romani people during Operation Reinhard. After the war, Bolender was recognized in 1961 while working under a false identity as a doorman at a nightclub in Germany, and subsequently accused in 1965 of personally murdering at least 360 Jewish inmates and assisting in the murder of 86,000 more at Sobibór. He committed"
"Robert Ritter von Greim Robert Ritter von Greim (born Robert Greim; 22 June 1892 – 24 May 1945) was a German Field Marshal and pilot. In the last days of World War II, Adolf Hitler appointed Greim as commander of the ""Luftwaffe"" (German Air Force) in place of Hermann Göring, whom he had dismissed for treason. When Germany surrendered, Greim was taken prisoner by American forces; he committed suicide in prison on 24 May 1945. Born as Robert Greim on 22 June 1892 in Bayreuth, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, a state of the German Empire, the son of a"
"Johannes Steinhoff Johannes ""Macky"" Steinhoff (15 September 1913 – 21 February 1994) was a Luftwaffe fighter ace during World War II, German general, and NATO official. He was one of very few Luftwaffe pilots who survived to fly operationally through the whole of the war period 1939–45. He was also one of the highest-scoring pilots with 176 victories, and one of the first to fly the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter in combat as a member of the Jagdverband 44 squadron led by Adolf Galland. Steinhoff was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and"
"Instrument of Surrender was signed that brought the Second World War in Europe to an end. The location is presently inaccessible to the general public as it lies within a military out-of-bounds area. Only a small monument on a nearby track alludes to the event. On 23 May 1945 Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler took his own life in Lüneburg whilst in British Army custody by biting into a potassium cyanide capsule embedded in his teeth before he could be properly interrogated. He was subsequently buried in an unmarked location in a nearby forest. Even before the Nuremberg Trials took place,"
"recently been vacated by Hitler's personal physician, Theodor Morell. Two rooms in the ""Vorbunker"" were used for food supply. Constanze Manziarly, Hitler's personal cook/dietitian, made meals in the kitchen, which was equipped with a refrigerator and a wine store. On the evening of 1 May 1945, Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz, to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of cyanide could be crushed in each of their mouths. According to Kunz's later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda Goebbels and SS-""Obersturmbannführer"" Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's"
"After being seriously wounded, he was picked up on October 14, 1944 during a recovery leave by the generals Ernst Maisel and Wilhelm Burgdorf. They forced him to sit in their car, then they drove to a place between Herrlingen and Wippingen. There Rommel had to commit suicide by taking Potassium cyanide. The former ""Favorite General of the leader"" had fallen in disgrace with Hitler because he had held critical talks about the situation on the Western Front. He was also suspected to be involved in the attempt on Hitler on the 20 July plot. There is a memorial stone"
"of air operations). One year after, on 1 September 1944, the latter was promoted to ""Generalmajor"" and chief of the Luftwaffe-""Führungstab"" at Hitler's request. Hans Jeschonnek Hans Jeschonnek (9 April 1899 – 18 August 1943) was a German ""Generaloberst"" and a Chief of the General Staff of Nazi Germany′s ""Luftwaffe"" during World War II. He committed suicide in August 1943 after mistakenly ordering anti-aircraft guns to fire upon German fighter planes gathered near Berlin. Jeschonnek was born in the Prussian Province of Posen, the son of a teacher. He studied at the cadet institute of Lichterfelde and was commissioned as"
"condemned were Lutheran clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer, General Hans Oster, Army Chief Judge Dr. Karl Sack, Captain Ludwig Gehre and former head of the Abwehr Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. The prisoners were accused of making an assassination attempt by bombing on Adolf Hitler at his headquarters of Wolf's Lair, which killed four and wounded Hitler himself. The court's prosecution employed torture methods such as thumb screwing and mechanical stretching devices on the accused, who were subsequently sentenced to death after a brief trial and executed by hanging on 9 April 1945, only around two weeks before the camp's liberation. Otto Thorbeck later"