This article explains the “Genickschuss” (neck shot) execution method used by Nazi Germany during World War II – a method employed in concentration camps, by Einsatzgruppen death squads, and inside specialized execution facilities. The content is for educational and historical documentation only, based on trial records, survivor testimonies, and historical archives. It does not aim to glorify violence or advocate for any political ideology.
During World War II, millions of people were executed using a method known as “Genickschuss” – the shot to the back of the neck. This method was used inside concentration camps, and it was also used by the mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen. It was horrifying and cruel. Was this truly the most brutal execution method of the Second World War? This article explores the history, mechanics, and scale of the Genickschuss – from the secret execution facilities disguised as medical examination rooms, to the open-air mass shootings behind the Eastern Front.
1. The Mobile Killing Squads and the “Neck Shot”
The Einsatzgruppen were paramilitary death squads that followed the German army as it advanced into Eastern Europe. First deployed during the invasion of Poland in 1939 and then during Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, these units had a clear mission: to eliminate political opponents, Communist party members, Jews, and other “undesirables.”
Most of the victims murdered by the Einsatzgruppen – an estimated 1.5 million people – were civilians shot at close range. One common method was the Genickschuss: a single bullet fired from a pistol pressed directly against the base of the skull.
The diary of Felix Landau, a member of an Einsatzgruppe, recorded a typical execution on July 12, 1941. He wrote that 23 people, including women, were forced to dig their own graves. They were then led to the edge of the pit and turned away. Six soldiers were assigned to shoot – three aiming for the heart and three for the head. Landau aimed for the heart. Most of the victims fell silently, although two did not die immediately and screamed for a long time before succumbing. Landau noted with unsettling detachment: “Curiously, absolutely nothing disturbed me. No pity, nothing.”
Even hardened SS officers recognized that this method was taking a severe psychological toll on their men. SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski warned Heinrich Himmler that close-range killing was traumatizing his troops. He said: “Reichsfuhrer, these men are finished for the rest of their lives. What kind of followers are we producing here – either neurotics or brutes?”
This concern directly contributed to the Nazis’ search for “more efficient” killing methods, eventually leading to gas vans and the gas chambers of Operation Reinhard.
2. Secret Execution Facilities: Industrialized Murder
In addition to open-air shootings, the Nazis built specialized indoor execution facilities inside concentration camps, primarily to murder Soviet prisoners of war. These facilities were designed to deceive victims until the very last moment.
According to testimony from the 1970 trial of Sachsenhausen SS guards, the process unfolded as follows. Prisoners were led to a barrack containing several rooms. In the first room, they were told to undress. In the second room, guards pretended to conduct a “medical examination.” Prisoners who wore dental prosthetics were marked with a cross on their chest – so that after death, the gold fillings could be extracted. In the third room, the victim was placed against a wall that had a measuring stick with a horizontal slit. From the neighboring room, an SS man aimed a pistol through the slit and fired a single shot into the back of the victim’s neck. To prevent other prisoners from hearing the gunshots, loud music was played from radios and record players throughout the facility.
At Buchenwald concentration camp, a repurposed horse stable became the site of the largest mass murder in the camp’s history. The facility was disguised as a medical examination room. The floor was painted red to conceal bloodstains that might arouse suspicion in the next victim. Prisoners were told they were being “measured.” As they stood against the measuring stick, a shot was fired through a hidden hole in the wall. The so-called “Kommando 99” – an execution squad of prisoners forced to assist the SS – operated the facility. At least 8,000 Soviet prisoners of war were murdered there between 1941 and 1944.
Sachsenhausen concentration camp had the most advanced Genickschuss facility. According to the 1970 judgment of the Cologne Regional Court, the camp commander personally explained the planned “action” to his staff in late August 1941. From September to mid-November 1941, at least 6,500 Soviet prisoners of war were killed in this facility – approximately 250 to 300 per day. The bodies were burned in the crematorium, but the ovens were so overloaded that the execution operation had to be temporarily suspended to allow the burning to catch up. Guards played loud music to drown out the screams and gunshots. The SS painted blue crosses on prisoners’ chests if they had gold fillings – after they were shot, the precious metal was wrenched from their mouths and collected.
3. Why the Neck Shot? Three Strategic Purposes
The Genickschuss method was not arbitrary. It served several strategic purposes. First, speed: a single bullet to the brain stem caused instantaneous death or immediate unconsciousness, ensuring the victim did not suffer prolonged agony. Second, deception: by disguising the killing as a medical examination, victims were less likely to resist; they entered the execution room completely unaware. Third, trauma reduction for the killers: shooting from behind a wall meant executioners did not have to look into the eyes of their victims – a psychological distance that made mass murder easier.
The executioners themselves were often traumatized by close-range killing. Himmler’s search for alternative methods – gas vans, carbon monoxide chambers, Zyklon B – was driven in part by this understanding. The gas chamber was cheaper, more “efficient,” and, crucially, it spared the shooter from having to see the face of the person he was killing.
4. Was This the Most Brutal Execution Method?
The question of which execution method was “most brutal” depends entirely on perspective. Technically, the Genickschuss was very efficient. A single bullet to the brain stem caused near-instantaneous death. Compared to methods like starvation, beating, or slow suffocation, it was fast. It was also highly deceptive: victims often did not know they were about to die until the shot was fired.
However, what makes the Genickschuss uniquely brutal is its personal nature. Unlike the gas chamber, which depersonalized killing, a Genickschuss required a shooter to aim at a specific human being. The shooter could see the back of the victim’s head, hear the bullet strike, and watch the body fall. The gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka killed far more people – up to 3,000 per hour. By comparison, the 250-300 prisoners shot per day at the Sachsenhausen facility seems almost inefficient. Yet, the intimacy of the neck shot – the deliberate aim, the concealed deception, and the knowledge that the shooter was a single person, not an industrial process – gives the Genickschuss a unique horror.
5. Legacy and Post-War Trials
After the war, those who operated these execution facilities were brought to justice. In 1970, the Cologne Regional Court in West Germany convicted multiple SS guards from Sachsenhausen for their roles in operating the Genickschuss facility. The court detailed the precise construction of the facility: the measuring stick on the wall, the hidden slit, the neighboring room where shooters stood, and the loud music to cover the shots.
In 2021, a 100-year-old former SS guard was tried for complicity in the systematic killings at Sachsenhausen, including the Genickschuss executions of Soviet prisoners of war. The diaries of perpetrators like Felix Landau became key evidence in post-war trials. Landau was arrested after the war, fled, and lived under a false name before being unmasked and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1963.
The Genickschuss was not a single method but a family of killing techniques united by one principle: a bullet to the back of the neck. It was used in open-air massacres by Einsatzgruppen death squads in Eastern Europe. It was used inside the precursor facilities to the gas chambers at concentration camps like Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald.
By some measures – speed, efficiency, deception – it was less brutal than slow deaths by starvation, torture, or gassing. But the intimacy of the neck shot – the fact that each victim was shot by a specific person, often while being deceived into thinking they were receiving a medical examination – adds a layer of psychological cruelty that is difficult to measure.
Perhaps the true brutality of the Genickschuss lies not in the method itself, but in its perpetrators. Those who operated these facilities were not faceless industrial processes. They were men who put on white coats, pretended to be doctors, asked prisoners to undress, and then shot them in the back of the neck from behind a hidden slit in a wall – while playing loud music to drown out the screams. That level of calculated, deceptive cruelty may be as brutal as anything devised during the Second World War.
Primary Sources:
Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Vol. XXXIII, No. 729a, Cologne Regional Court, April 20, 1970
Buchenwald Memorial – Horse Stable Execution Facility
Wikipedia – Genickschussanlage
PBS – The Killing Evolution / Einsatzgruppen
The Jewish Chronicle – 100-year-old SS guard trial
NZ Herald – Nazi “Death Book” records
German History in Documents and Images – Felix Landau diary