Law enforcement in the past

National-socialist justice in Germany
and warcrimes commited by the Wehrmacht
1933-1945

In the years 1928 to 1932 the number of executions had dropped to 2 or 3 a year, with the raising of the national socialist party in 1933 there was a sudden increase in the applications of death penalty

1933 :     64
1934 :     79
1935 :     94
1936 :     68

But that was just the beginning : as soon as Hitler had installed his dictatorship he ordered the construction of 20 guillotines and reinstalled hanging as ignominious method of capital punishment.
If before 1933 the law punished only murder and high treason with the death penalty , the Nazis added a long list of crimes to be sanctioned either with the guillotine or with the gallows . The estimated figures are 16.000 capital sentences of which 12.000 were applied , not including 25.000 executions carried out by court-martials !

The execution room in St. Pancras Prison in Prague
During the german occupation victims of the NS-Justice
where beheaded with the guillotine
or hanged on one of the iron-hooks

We have to consider that these executions were carried out according to a law after a ( normally very quick) trial , besides this there were at least 6.000.000 ( six million! ) people mostly Jews, Sinti, Roma, Homosexuals, Ukrainians, Russians or opponents to the regime who where murdered in concentration camps by hanging, beating to death , gassing or simply by mistreatment ...

Gestapo Prison, Berlin , 1942

Another facette of the Nazi- Terror were the warcrimes on the civil population in the occupied countries perpetrated not by the SS, but by the regular german army , the Wehrmacht .