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...