This week in 1945

“I can’t see why this is being done to me.”

— Walter Beyer, convicted of murder, hanging, Kansas.
Executed July 10,1945

A member of German General Rommel’s Afrika Korps during World War II, Beyer was hanged along with four others for murdering a fellow POW at Fort Leavenworth Military Prison. A headline in the New York Times called them “the first war captives executed in the U.S.” The execution was witnessed by only seven reporters. Beyer, who was considered the ringleader of the group, had beaten the POW to death because, in his eyes, he was a traitor.