On the morning of May 22, 1946, Karl Hermann Frank shuffled out of his prison cell at Pankrác Prison in Prague and was led toward the execution post. This would not be a traditional gallows. The executioners worked quickly and in unison, binding his hands behind his back before hoisting him onto the post itself. A crowd had gathered to witness his death, and for thousands of Czechs, one of the most hated men of the Second World War was about to face his end in full public view.

The condemned man had the blood of thousands on his hands. Inside the lands of Bohemia and Moravia, Frank had ordered reprisals in the aftermath of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The result was that two Czech villages were razed to the ground, their men shot, their women sent to concentration camps, and their children taken or killed. Scores more executions followed.

On this day, the people of Prague had gathered to see vengeance carried out against the man who had terrorized them for years. Karl Hermann Frank had been a long-standing supporter of the Nazi Party, joining in 1923. He was one of the old fighters, present at numerous regional offices for the political party and a witness to Hitler’s speeches many times over. Over the years, he helped spread Nazi propaganda, even setting up a Nazi bookstore to further the cause.

He was trusted at high levels to organize SA and SS men, a significant responsibility within the party’s structure. Notably, he was blind in one eye, a condition that had previously prevented him from joining the military during the First World War. In the Sudetenland, the territory of Czechoslovakia that bordered Germany, Frank helped organize a Nazi splinter group. He was among the most radical Nazis in the region, pushing an agenda that went beyond what many of his contemporaries advocated.

When the Nazis annexed the Sudetenland after Hitler was granted the territory at the Munich Conference, Frank began to rise through the ranks of the Nazi Party more formally. He also joined the SS, Hitler’s paramilitary organization that would later operate and run the concentration and extermination camps across Europe. Frank’s rise continued. He became an elected member of the Reichstag, the German parliament.

In 1939, he was appointed Secretary of State of the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, acting in a capacity similar to a Deputy Prime Minister. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, also made him the Higher SS and Police Leader, a position of enormous authority. Frank now held significant power, and he used it to introduce a reign of terror into the region. He was involved in putting down any resistance the Nazis faced, going after resisters brutally.

Many were arrested, and some were executed using the guillotine within Czech prisons. When Hitler brought in Reinhard Heydrich to oversee the region and suppress the population, Frank and Heydrich worked together with matching brutality. Their aim was to keep the area as productive as possible for the German war effort. Czech factories were making tanks, armaments, and weapons for the German military, and it was vital that these factories remained operational.

Together, Frank and Heydrich deported thousands to concentration camps and arrested thousands more. Hundreds were executed, and many of those bodies were strung up from lampposts in Czech towns and cities, displayed as a stark warning to anyone who might consider resistance. But in 1942, Heydrich was assassinated. Frank remained the Deputy Protector, and alongside Kurt Daluege, he was placed in charge of overseeing the reprisals.

The villages of Lidice and Ležáky were razed to the ground. All of the men were shot. The women were sent to concentration camps, where most of them died. Children deemed worthy of being Germanized were sent back to Germany, practically kidnapped, and raised by SS families.

The other children were killed. Frank’s ruthlessness earned him further promotion. The Nazis viewed him as an able deputy, and he was made a General of the Waffen SS and also a General of the Police. Eventually, he became the most powerful Nazi in Bohemia and Moravia.

He was granted cabinet rank in the Nazi government without being officially known as a Reich Minister, a distinction that brought him into many meetings with Adolf Hitler and other senior Nazis. He regularly rubbed shoulders with Heinrich Himmler. In 1944, Frank continued his ruthless approach. He conducted many anti-partisan attacks, but the Germans began to struggle against the resistance.

At one point, he brazenly lied to Hitler, claiming that the partisan threat in the Czech lands had been dealt with once and for all. This was not the case. He was losing men left, right, and center, and the resistance continued to fight on despite his claims of victory. At the end of the Second World War, Karl Hermann Frank was arrested by the Americans.

He was later tried by the People’s Court in Prague. He was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, forced to face the consequences of his involvement in the slaughter of the people of Lidice and Ležáky. But his execution method was not necessarily standard all across Europe. Karl Hermann Frank was to be pole hanged.

Pole hanging was a method that originated in lands formerly under the control or influence of Austria-Hungary and its empire. It was also known as the Austrian gallows. The method utilized a post three meters tall, and the condemned was suspended from the post, hanged by a noose wrapped around the neck. A system of ropes and pulleys was secured around the top and bottom of the post, and a chest sling held the condemned in place.

When the executioner and his assistant were ready, they released the drop, and it was hoped that death would come quickly. Executioners claimed this method was quicker than using a traditional gallows with a long drop. The evidence suggests otherwise. It was rare that the procedure was actually carried out correctly.

Often, the condemned would struggle and strangle for longer, and death would take many minutes. A noose was secured around the top of the post, and the executioner would guide the fall of the condemned, trying to push the neck to one side. The method was used because it was standard. It had been the standard method of execution against significant criminals in Czechoslovakia before the Second World War and the German occupation.

It may have also been deployed to separate the German methods of execution from the Czech ones. In a sense, it may have been the Czechs feeling liberated. Using pole hanging sent a message to the crowds and people who watched that Czechoslovakia was now free from the Nazis and German occupation. The German methods that had been ruthlessly used, such as the metal guillotine, the fallbeil, would not be used anymore.

Now, 5,000 people flocked to Pankrác Prison in Prague to witness the execution of Karl Hermann Frank. The execution was made very public so that everyone in Prague could see that justice was being carried out upon a man who had brought so much terror to them for many years. It was very much a public showing of revenge, and there would be no doubt to anyone that Frank was dead. There was very little remorse for Karl Hermann Frank at all.

The crowd was rather content and did tend to celebrate when the death sentence was carried out. Karl Hermann Frank was publicly pole hanged, as it was the standard method of execution inside of Czechoslovakia, and it was also a method that separated the Czech methods from the German ones, which were linked to so much suffering and terror during the Second World War. He did take a number of minutes to succumb to his fate on the execution post.

But no one that day who witnessed his death mourned the life of Karl Hermann Frank.