Except for the sound of footfalls on the wooden stairs, the room was eerily silent as von Ribbentrop ascended to the platform and stood with the thick rope dangling before him.
Master Sergeant Woods placed a black hood over the condemned man’s head, then slipped the noose over that. He adjusted the rope knot against the neck, then could be heard asking von Ribbentrop something. It was unintelligible. And if there came an answer, it went unheard by Cronley, who then watched as the hangman, forcing himself to walk erect, shuffled to the lever and without ceremony yanked on it.
The door in the floor opened—BAM!—which reverberated through the gymnasium, and von Ribbentrop dropped through the opening, his entire body unseen as the hangman’s rope snapped taut.
Woods then shuffled to the wooden stairs and down them.
Cronley, without at first realizing it, automatically began silently reciting the Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father, Who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . . .
Cronley heard the heavy footfalls of Woods ascending the steps of the second gallows and raised his head to look as he finished the prayer. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are Yours now and for ever. Amen.
Two minutes later, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel entered the gymnasium. The guards escorted him to the second gallows.
Remembering Keitel’s cruel crimes, Cronley heard words from the prayer again in his mind: . . . Deliver us from evil.
Woods casually double-checked the noose knot as Keitel, with a look of defiance, stared straight forward. Woods then slipped on the hood and noose.
As the knot was tightened, Keitel loudly declared from beneath the hood, “I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German people. More than two million German soldiers went to their death for the Fatherland before me. I follow now my sons—all for Germany!”
Without a word, Woods shuffled to the lever.
BAM!
After some ten minutes had passed, there appeared beside the gallows two doctors, an American and a Soviet, who each carried a stethoscope. They disappeared behind the canvas curtains of the separate gallows.
There then came a deep commanding American voice—Cronley didn’t see him but recognized that it was that of Brigadier General Homer Greene, chief of Army Security Agency Europe—who announced that it was now permissible to smoke.
A glow grew above the witnesses as at least a dozen flames came from Zippo lighters and wooden matches. Master Sergeant Woods lit a Chesterfield as he came down the wooden stairs.
After a moment, Cronley detected an unexpected but familiar odor above that of the cigarettes and the sulfur of the matches.
He leaned in toward Cohen, and said, “That smell?”
Colonel Cohen nodded, and turned to quietly reply. “Death by hanging causes the spincter muscle to lose its elasticity.”
The doctors reappeared, and then each went under the other gallows.
When they had emerged and individually confirmed to Woods that the hanged men were indeed dead, the general ordered smoking to cease.
Woods, taking his time to finish his cigarette, then ascended the steps of the first gallows. At the rope, he pulled the long-bladed knife from its scabbard on his belt and with a smooth swing cut von Ribbentrop free. The rope disappeared through the hole.
Woods then went and tied a new rope with a noose to the crossbeam and then repeated the process for Keitel.
The bodies of von Ribbentrop and Keitel, draped by U.S. Army blankets and the heads still covered by hoods, were then carried by stretchers to a corner of the gym and placed behind a black curtain.
When guards escorted Ernst Kaltenbrunner to the gallows next, Cronley saw by his wristwatch that it was now 1:36. Kaltenbrunner, an Austrian, had been chief of the Reich Security Main Office, where he oversaw the mass murders of the concentration camps. Adolf Eichmann, of the Final Solution, and Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz, had reported to him.
As Woods readied the noose to be placed over Kaltenbrunner’s head, Cronley expected another outburst of anger like Keitel’s.
Kaltenbrunner, instead, announced in an even tone, “I have loved my German people and my Fatherland with a warm heart. I have done my duty by the laws of my people and I am sorry my people were led this time by men who were not soldiers and that crimes were committed of which I had no knowledge.”
As Woods put on the black hood, Kaltenbrunner added, “Germany, good luck.”
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