John C. Woods: American Hangman Who Executed Nazi Leaders at Nuremberg

World History: True Stories of the 20th Century · May 13, 2026 · 13m

John C. Woods was the American Army executioner who carried out the death sentences of top Nazi officials after the Nuremberg Trials. John Clarence Woods remains one of the most controversial figures of the postwar era—the American master sergeant who carried out the executions of Nazi Germany’s most senior war criminals at Nuremberg. Born in 1911 in Wichita, Kansas, Woods grew up amid poverty and instability, drifting between jobs before briefly joining the U.S. Navy, from which he was dishonorably discharged with a diagnosis of “psychopathic inferiority.” His troubled past, however, did not…