The Second World War: PART 10 - Otto Krause - Nuremberg (1946) #2

KRAUSE

10.

1946

NUREMBERG

It was blisteringly cold on the morning of October sixteenth in the south-eastern state of Bavaria. 

The Palace of Justice, Justizpalast, was constructed in 1909 and housed the local, regional and, appellate courts.  It had a large prison complex to the side, and at five-forty prompt, an officer of the Gestapo was politely woken from his sleep and his cast-iron bed. 

He was shaved, washed and clothed before breakfasting at the table in his cell.  The meal consisted of two farm eggs, boiled for two minutes and twenty seconds precisely – the only way to have it, garnished with a few shakes of pepper on a bed of buttery brown toast.  The German insisted on a pot of English breakfast.   Of which, he only took a teacup’s full.  A moment prior, one of the more senior guards checked the rim of his cup for cyanide, but there was none. 

A Group Captain, assigned with the RAFP, stood before the west-facing wall in the rear courtyard of the Palace and was anxious.  The judge and firing squad joined him and some minutes later, the German was marched to the wall.  A blindfold was wrapped around the eyes of Otto Krause, blotting out the morning light for the last time.  The judge gave him the right to say some last words but the significance of it was lost on the soldiers cocking four Lee-Enfield rifles.

‘Take your aim,’ the Group Captain called.

When it came, the crash of rifle fire gave no echo in the eastern wing.  Courtroom number 600, where the Nuremberg Trials were heard, was being readied.

The riddled body slumped onto its right side and the Group Captain gave the final coup de grâce with a Smith & Wesson Model 10.  Two shots were delivered cleanly to the chest and head.  Otto Krause was executed.  The nature of his abhorrent crimes was kept from the public.  His role in the murder of the fifty PoWs, including Squadron Leader Bartlett and Flight Lieutenant Andrew MacDonald, as well as many others, went unreported.