Editing Capital punishment (section)

===20th century===
[[File:Mexican execution, 1914.jpg|left|thumb|Mexican execution by [[firing squad]], 1916]]
In [[Nazi Germany]], there were three types of capital punishment; hanging, decapitation, and death by shooting.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gN0QgcW4Td0C&pg=PA289|page= 289|title=The criminal law of Japan: the general part|author=Dando Shigemitsu|year=1999|publisher= F.B. Rothman|isbn= 9780837706535}}</ref> Also, modern military organisations employed capital punishment as a means of maintaining military discipline. In the past, [[cowardice]], absence without leave, [[desertion]], [[insubordination]], shirking under enemy fire and disobeying orders were often crimes punishable by death (see [[Decimation (Roman army)|decimation]] and [[running the gauntlet]]). One method of execution, since firearms came into common use, has also been firing squad, although some countries use execution with a single shot to the head or neck.

[[File:German announcement General Government Poland 1944.jpg|thumb|50 Poles tried and sentenced to death by a ''[[drumhead court-martial|Standgericht]]'' in retaliation for the assassination of 1 German policeman in [[Nazi crimes against the Polish nation|Nazi-occupied Poland]], 1944]]
Various authoritarian states employed the death penalty as a potent means of [[political repression|political oppression]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=1992-06-15 |title=Internal Workings of the Soviet Union – Revelations from the Russian Archives {{!}} Exhibitions – Library of Congress |url=https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html |access-date=2023-04-03 |website=www.loc.gov}}</ref> Anti-Soviet author [[Robert Conquest]] claimed that more than one million [[Soviet Union#Stalin era (1927–1953)|Soviet citizens were executed]] during the [[Great Purge]] of 1936 to 1938, almost all by a bullet to the back of the head.<ref>Conquest, Robert, ''[[The Great Terror]]: A Reassessment'', New York, pp. 485–86</ref><ref>{{Cite magazine |date=2019-09-19 |title=The Desperate Plight Behind "Darkness at Noon" |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/the-desperate-plight-behind-darkness-at-noon |access-date=2023-04-03 |magazine=The New Yorker |language=en-US}}</ref> [[Mao Zedong]] publicly stated that "800,000" people had been executed in China during the [[Cultural Revolution]] (1966–1976). Partly as a response to such excesses, civil rights organisations started to place increasing emphasis on the concept of human rights and an abolition of the death penalty.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}