The Karst Defense Battalion (24th Mountain Division), an SS unit of the Nazi German Army, beheaded a member of the partisan Slovenian Division with an axe on June 11, 1944, in the neighborhood of the Yugoslav village of Karnitza Didria. He executed the brutal beheading with a smile on his face. Other members of the partisans were beheaded as well. Afterwards, the beheaded partisan's head was placed on the table, "Warm greetings from the Karst Battalion of the SS. A man in a green jacket," accompanied by a note. The beheader with the axe was Walter, a German SS officer. The one holding the victim's arm was Francesco McCoy, an Italian civilian soldier. War criminals were identified after the war, but they were not prosecuted and were found innocent.
Beheading is one of the worst methods of execution known to mankind. The head was not beheaded with a swift sword, but on the contrary chopped with an axe. For noble prisoners, they were traditionally beheaded with a single stroke of the sword. Until 1800, the English Code of Blood carried out over 200 mandatory death sentences for the equivalent of only $25. In France, between 1792 and 1794, more than 16,000 Frenchmen were beheaded by the guillotine, known as the nation's razor; the last guillotine was executed in 1977, and the death penalty was abolished in 1981. Even today, beheading remains a legal punishment in Middle Eastern countries, with Saudi Arabia executing about 100 beheadings a year.
In addition to the beheading of criminals by the government, the military also desired the beheading of prisoners of war: in the 1894 drawing, Japanese troops beheaded Chinese prisoners of war during the Sino-Japanese War. The beheadings by sword were executed in the mission to ethnically cleanse occupied Korea. The Islamic State (ISIS) always used video to intimidate its enemies abroad, showing the beheading of captives' heads with horrific saws. ISIS propagated its cruelty around the world with short knives that maximized blood and gore, with victims screaming throughout the killings.
