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Johann Reichhart (29 April 1893 – 26 April 1972) was a German state-appointed judicial executioner in Bavaria from 1924 to 1946. During the Nazi Germany, he executed numerous people who were sentenced to death for their resistance to the German government. After the war, he was employed as executioner by the US Military Government in Germany. In total, he executed 3,165 people.
Executions decreased during 1924–1928, and Reichhart executed only 23 people (only one in 1928), and he had difficulty making a living for his family. He negotiated the right to take on other work domestically and abroad, and was released from the requirement of local residence. His business ventures failed, however; he gave up his wagon transport business in 1925, and in 1926 his inn at Mariahilfplatz. He sold Catholic treatises in Upper Bavaria as a traveling salesman. In 1928, he attempted but failed to resolve his contract with the Bavarian Ministry of Justice. He moved his residence to The Hague and became a successful independent greengrocer.
In the spring of 1931 and in July 1932, Reichhart travelled to Munich to carry out death sentences at Stadelheim Prison. In July 1932, several Netherlands newspapers described his "other activities" and revealed his identity, which was normally kept . As a result, Reichhart's business dwindled, and in the spring of 1933 he returned to Munich, where he considered ending his work as executioner.
From 1 September 1933, Reichhart joined the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK), the National Socialist War Victim's Care (NSKOV), the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), and the German Labour Front (DAF). In April 1937, he joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP).
The Reich Ministry of Justice ( Reichsjustizministerium), by decree of 25 August 1937, reassigned its areas of responsibility and named three executioners. was responsible for the central execution sites in Berlin, Breslau, and Königsberg; was responsible for executions in Butzbach, Hamburg, Hanover and Cologne; and Reichhart was named for executions in Munich, Dresden, Stuttgart, and Weimar. On 19 February 1939, after the Anschluss, the Reich Minister of Justice ordered a change of territories: Reichhart gave Weimar to Friedrich Hehr, and added Vienna and Frankfurt to his territories (Frankfurt replacing Butzbach). Reichhart temporarily suffered from depression.
During his service, Reichhart worked to accelerate the execution process and make it "less stressful" for convicted people. Beginning around 1939, he had the tipping board (bascule) on the guillotine replaced by a fixed bench. The condemned was held by his assistants, without restraint devices, until the hatchet blade was dropped. Reichhart abolished the black blindfold; instead, one of his assistants held the convict's eyes closed. These measures shortened the duration of the actual execution to 3–4 seconds (time specified by Johann Reichhart).
Reichhart also carried out executions in Cologne, Preungesheim, Berlin-Plötzensee, Brandenburg-Görden, and Breslau, where central execution sites had also been constructed. From 1938 to 1944, he was also executioner for central execution sites in Vienna and Graz. From 1924, during the Weimar Republic and the period of Nazi Germany, he executed 2,951 people (250 of them women) via guillotine, and 59 by hanging. He also executed Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl (d. 22 February 1943), members of the resistance group White Rose. Reichhart later said he had never seen anyone die as bravely as Sophie Scholl.
After the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944, executions rose sharply. In December 1944, in the administrative divisions of central execution centres, Reichhart was designated as the executioner of the "execution centre for the execution district VIII", which included Munich-Stadelheim (Stadelheim Prison), Remand Prison Stuttgart and Penitentiary Bruchsal.
Reichhart spent one week in Stadelheim Prison for the purposes of denazification. He was not tried for carrying out his official duties as judicial executioner. He was subsequently employed by the U.S. Office of Military Government, until the end of May 1946, to help execute dozens of Nazi war criminals on the gallows at Landsberg am Lech. The technique required for this must have been known to him since 1942 at the latest, when he submitted a design proposal for British-style gallows with trapdoor (Long drop), which was rejected by the Reich Ministry of Justice. (Hanging had been introduced in Germany as an additional form of execution on 29 March 1933 by President Hindenburg after the Reichstag Fire; the method used was the Austro-Hungarian short drop pole method of strangulation hanging).
In August 1945, Reichhart was Denunciation to the Munich city administration: he would live comfortably in a villa and had several cars. Formally, he was still a judicial executioner of the Free State of Bavaria without acting in this capacity.
He subsequently retired as an executioner and served only as a consultant. According to some sources, he assisted American Master Sergeant John C. Woods in managing the gallows, and was commissioned by the United States Military Government to supervise the construction of the gallows in Nuremberg. Others claim that he was not in fact involved in the construction of the Nuremberg gallows. On 16 October 1946, Woods hanged the war criminals convicted in the Nuremberg trials, assisted by Joseph Malta. Reichhart assisted the U.S. military with the executions of Nazi war criminals at Landsberg Prison.
Impoverished and despised by many, Reichhart lived on a small military pension from the First World War. In 1963, during a series of murders of taxi drivers, when public demands increased for the reintroduction of capital punishment, Reichhart spoke out against it. Quote: Nach 3010 Exekutionen und mit 71 Jahren ist Johann Reichhart heute ein Gegner der Todesstrafe. ("At 71 years old and after 3010 executions, Johann Reichhart is now against the death penalty.")
Reichhart was temporarily confined in psychiatric hospital. He died on 26 April 1972, at a hospital in Dorfen, at the age of 78.
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