During World War II, the Nazi concentration camp system transformed many men and women into figures of extreme cruelty. Among them, one man stood out even within the brutal hierarchy of the SS. Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer, known simply as Martin Sommer, earned the chilling nickname "The Hangman of Buchenwald" for his sadistic actions inside the camp.
Sommer was born in February 1915 and joined the SS shortly after Hitler rose to power. He rose to the rank of Hauptscharführer, a senior squad leader, and began his career in the camp system at Dachau. From the start, he was known as a guard who treated prisoners with exceptional brutality and contempt. He later transferred to Buchenwald, where his most notorious crimes took place.
Prisoners at Buchenwald quickly learned to fear Sommer. They understood that if he looked at them, there was a strong chance they would be tortured or killed within minutes. His reputation preceded him, and his actions inside the camp became routine horrors.
In 1943, SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered a judge named Georg Konrad Morgen to investigate corruption at Buchenwald. The investigation uncovered that camp commandant Karl Otto Koch and his wife Ilse had been stealing money taken from prisoners. But the inquiry also examined Sommer’s behavior. Witness testimony revealed that Sommer kept a secret chamber beneath the floor of his office, filled with torture instruments.
Among these tools were needles he used to execute prisoners by injecting carbolic acid directly into their hearts. This was his final act after prolonged torture sessions in his office. He was also known to inject air into victims’ veins, causing blockages and death. Some accounts claimed he tortured prisoners in the evening, hid their bodies under his bed, and transported them to the crematorium the next morning.
Sommer’s cruelty was so extreme that even fellow SS members found him disturbing. He regularly whipped prisoners at a flogging post in public view. He forced victims to count each lash aloud. If a prisoner made a mistake in counting, Sommer would start the punishment over. Twenty-five lashes were often fatal, leaving prisoners as a mass of blood. In one instance, he reportedly gave a man sixty lashes, killing him on the spot.
When Sommer later stood trial, he made a wooden model of the flogging post and explained his methods. He claimed, "I cannot claim that I struck the last blows with the force of the first ones. You always get a little tired."
His attacks extended specifically to clergy and religious figures. He was seen beating a pastor from Weimar into a bloody heap on the ground. He then allegedly hanged the man outside and poured buckets of cold water over him, leaving him to freeze to death.
Sommer became known as the executioner for his killings in the forest surrounding Buchenwald. The camp’s name literally means "beech forest" in German, and vast woods surrounded the site. Many gallows were erected there, and prisoners called the area the "singing forest" because screams echoed through the night. Many victims died from frost after being left hanging in the winter.
Two well-known Austrian priests, Otto Neururer and Matthias Spannlang, were imprisoned at Buchenwald for resisting the Nazis. Neururer had advised a woman not to marry a high-ranking Nazi official with questionable morals. He was sent to Dachau and then to Buchenwald, where he became a favorite target for Sommer.
Neururer was tortured for performing a forbidden baptism. Sommer took Neururer and Spannlang into the forest and hanged them upside down from a tree. The two men were stripped of their clothes in a final act of humiliation. Over thirty-four hours, Neururer was beaten severely until his body gave out. Spannlang was killed the same way. A witness claimed neither man complained about their impending deaths.
Sommer’s attacks on priests continued. He reportedly beat a Catholic priest to death for performing a religious act for another prisoner. He carried out many hangings in the nearby woods. Large groups were led into the forest daily and never returned. He bound their hands behind their backs and hung them one by one from trees. The position caused painful dislocations, and prisoners screamed and cried for hours, their cries heard throughout Buchenwald.
Sommer even claimed to be an envoy from Dante’s hell, calling himself the devil. Prisoners said he used a victim’s skull with a candle inside to light his office. He killed many through lethal injections and once placed a prisoner’s head in an iron vise, turning it until the skull shattered.
Eventually, Himmler himself heard of Sommer’s brutality. The SS determined that Sommer was too sadistic even for them. He was stripped of his rank and sent to the Eastern Front to fight in a penal battalion. These units were often sent into battle under the harshest conditions.
Sommer was wounded on the Eastern Front, losing his right leg and left arm. He was captured as a prisoner of war by the Red Army. The Soviets released him in 1955, and he returned to West Germany, attempting to live a normal life. He married, had a child, and even received a pension as a wounded war veteran.
However, he was later tried for his crimes. He was charged with causing the deaths of at least 101 camp prisoners and was convicted of responsibility for 25 of those deaths. The Hangman of Buchenwald was sentenced to life in prison. He spent the rest of his life either in prison or in a care facility he was not allowed to leave.
Sommer died in 1988 at the age of 73. He was known across Germany as one of the worst war criminals of World War II. Despite his horrific crimes, he was never sentenced to death. He was tried at a time when prison sentences were favored over executions. He remained a disturbed and sadistic figure, remembered for his treatment of prisoners at Buchenwald. His crimes were countless, and many remain uncovered to this day.