GERMANY: Case Closed

Former SS Colonel Paul Blobel was the first to go. Shortly after midnight, four husky MPs led him across the floodlit yard of Landsberg Prison. On the gallows platform, a U.S. Army hangman was waiting for him. Blobel (responsible for the killing of 30,000 Jews at Kiev in 1941) got 90 seconds for his last words. Thrusting out his spade-bearded chin, he cried: "I die in the faith of my people. May the German people be aware of its enemies!"

"Attention!" called Colonel Walter R. Graham, Landsberg's U.S. commandant. Blobel stiffened; the hangman...

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