The Spectacle

On June 17th, 1939, past midnight, a crowd of people began to form outside of this nondescript building in Versailles, France. The atmosphere in the crowd was electric, they all knew why there were there, and they all knew what they were about to see. However, even still, there was a lot of nervous anticipation, and so as such some people were coping with these nerves by drinking alcohol, and trying to laugh and have a good time. Others were much more subdued and were trying to be respectful about what they were about to witness.

Between 1-2 AM, the building door opened, and a group of men dressed in the same dark uniforms came out and didn't say a word to the crowd, and the crowd immediately went silent and started to back away from it them. The men walked out in front of this building, and they had lots of lumber and tools with them, and they began constructing this strange, wooden structure. So the crowd wanted to get up close to see what the men were doing, but at the same time, they didn't want to get too close.

As so as the crowd formed a sort of half-moon around these men, these men that were doing the construction were moving so seamlessly like all of them have built this structure dozens of times before.

By about 3 AM, the structure that the men were constructing was finished, and they placed this large basket next to the structure, and these men packed up their tools and remaining pieces of lumber, went back into the building, and were gone.

At this point, the crowd has become quite sizable outside this building and were growing kind of restless, because they knew now that this structure was built, that the next time those doors opened, the show is going to start. The spectacle they are all there for is about to happen, and the crowd all knew that this event couldn't happen if the sun was up because the press would be able to take pictures, and film it, and that's not what officials wanted, they wanted this to happen in the darkness.

After when the crowd was getting restless, drunker, louder, and disruptive, at around 4:45 Am, the sun had come up, so the press was out in full force with their cameras trained at the doors of this building, so the crowd was really at this point is not expecting this event to take place, because at this point it just seems unlikely, but at 4:50 AM, the doors finally opened and standing in the threshold was 31-year-old Eugene Weidman, who was a convicted serial killer.

His arms were tied behind his back, and the collar of his white shirt had been tucked down inside because they needed his neck to be free and clear because he was about to be beheaded. So the two guards on either side of Eugene had pulled him forward, out towards the crowd so the executioners behind him dressed all in black could filter out and take up positions alongside the guillotine, which was the wooden structure that had been built earlier in the morning

As Eugene is being brought out towards the crowd, and everything was getting set up for his execution, the crowd went wild. They were shrieking, howling, laughing, pointing, booing, and just generally being completely bloodthirsty. Eugene kept his head down because he didn't want to look at the crowd, and he did not want to look at the guillotine.

Eventually, the two guards turned him and walked him towards the base of the guillotine, at which point the executioner grabbed him and slid him forward so he was on his stomach on top of this wooden platform. They slid him forward until his head poked through the guillotine opening at the very far end, at which point his neck was positioned right under the blade.

At this point, the crowd was at a fever pitch and one of the executioners pulled the lever, and the blade came soaring down and removed his head into the bin that they placed before the execution started.

Afterward, all of the executioners and the prison guards gathered up Eugene's remains and went right back inside the building which was a prison.

Because of the sun being out throughout the whole spectacle, all of this was caught on film. So later that day, and for the next couple of days, the headlines all over France were about this bloodthirsty crowd that was cheering as this man was beheaded and it just overall made France look bad, and so French leaders decided from that point forward, they could no longer do public executions.