They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold. Both the Greeks and Romans found the Celtic decapitation practices shocking and the latter put an end to them when Celtic regions came under their control. However, Greeks and Romans both employed decapitation and other horrific tortures, highlighting a tendency to view practices as more shocking when carried out by an outside group, even if the practices are essentially similar.According to Paul Jacobsthal, "Amongst the Celts the human head was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, centre of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world."
Stellbrink had explained the raid next morning in his Palm Sunday sermon as a "trial by ordeal", which the Nazi authorities interpreted to be an attack on their system of government and as such undermined morale and aided the enemy. In October 1944, Werner Seelenbinder was executed by manual beheading, the last legal use of the method (other than by guillotine) in both Europe and the rest of the Western world. Earlier the same year, Olga Bancic had been executed by the same means. In February 1943, American academic Mildred Harnack and the university students Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst of the White Rose protest movement, were all beheaded by the Nazi State. Four other members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi group, were also executed by the Peoples Court later that same year. The anti-Nazi Helmuth Hübener was also decapitated by Peoples Court order. In 1966, former Auschwitz doctor Horst Fischer was executed by the German Democratic Republic by guillotine, the last executed by this method outside France. Beheading was subsequently replaced by shooting in the neck. Nordic countries
In Nordic countries, decapitation was the usual means of carrying out capital punishment. Noblemen were beheaded with a sword, and commoners with an axe. The last executions by decapitation in Finland in 1825, Norway in 1876, Faroe Islands in 1609, and in Iceland in 1830 were carried out with axes. The same was the case in Denmark in 1892.