Chinese guerrilla fighter Cheng Benhua smiling moments before execution by the Japanese. She was 24.
Sgt. Leonard Siffleet moments before being executed by a Japanese officer in WWII.
A Liberian army soldier stands ready to execute a former cabinet minister following the 1980 coup.
Execution by cannon, Shiraz, Iran, 1890s.
A woman condemned to die of starvation in pre-Soviet Mongolia.
Chinese women about to be executed for drug smuggling, facing their last moments with a smile.
Partisan before being hanged by the Nazis, shouting: "Death to fascism, freedom to people."
Execution of a German Communist in Munich, 1919.
Photo of Muhammed al-Maghrabi, convicted of raping and killing 3-year-old Rana Almatari, screaming just before he was publicly executed by being shot at close range with an AK-47.
Georges Blind, a member of the French resistance, smiling at a German firing squad, 1944.
Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, is hanged next to the crematorium at the camp, 1947.
A man convicted of murder imprisoned in a wooden cage on a street in China. He was left to die of thirst, starvation, and exposure, circa 1930.
Japanese troops using prisoners of war for target practice, 1942.
Different expressions of six Polish civilians moments before death by firing squad, 1939.
Photo from 2017 of an Iraqi officer named Abu Bakir al-Samarayi. The picture shows him with a defiant, fearless expression on his face moments before an ISIS militant executed him.
Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi is given the last rites before being hanged as a collaborator, 1946.
Joe Arridy was a mentally challenged man who was wrongfully accused and arrested for murder and rape. This is a photo of him giving his toy trains to a fellow inmate preceding his execution, 1939.
A prison guard feeding a female drug dealer some lychees the night before her execution.
An Iranian man smiles as he is about to be executed by hanging from a crane.
German General Anton Dostler before his execution by a firing squad in Italy, December 1945.