Kharkov War Crimes Trial

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The Kharkov war crimes trial took place from December 15 to 18, 1943 in the Ukrainian city of Charkow (ukr .: Charkiw ) against three German military personnel and a Ukrainian collaborator. It was the first public war crimes trial of the Second World War against German soldiers. In contrast to the show trials of the 1930s, criminally relevant offenses did not have to be specially invented, so that one speaks of a demonstration trial.

background

The Wehrmacht occupied South Kharkov in October 1941 and in December the Jewish population was interned in a ghetto and shot by Einsatzgruppe C (Sonderkommando 4a under Paul Blobel ) mainly in the Drobyzkyj Jar gorge . Political commissars, partisans, saboteurs and Jews were shot according to the commissar order of the High Command of the Wehrmacht . Millions of Russian prisoners of war died in German captivity of insufficient supply and the cold. The Russian side carried out civil executions of German prisoners, but a public trial only took place against collaborators in Krasnodar in July 1943.

On November 1, 1943, the Foreign Ministers of the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed in the Moscow Declaration that Germans who had been involved in atrocities, massacres and executions would be prosecuted in the countries in which they had carried out the acts .

accusation

After a few changes, three Germans and one Soviet Russian were on trial in Kharkov. The Moscow Declaration, which provided for the conviction of war criminals in the respective crime scene, was used as the international legal basis for the first time, and Ukas 43 of April 1943 formed the national legal basis. The charges related to the murder of thousands of Soviet citizens by gas vans , the systematic destruction of cities and the shooting of wounded prisoners of war .

accused
Surname Age Rank and function
Wilhelm Langfeld 52 years Captain in the defense
commander of a POW camp
Hans Ritz 24 years SS-Untersturmführer at the security service
deputy. Company commander special command
Reinhard Retzlaff 36 years Sergeant of the Secret Field Police
Mikhail Bulanov 26 years Security driver

All of the accused pleaded guilty and pointed out that the main guilt lay with the criminal Nazi regime and their superiors, as they had acted on orders. In his closing argument, the chief prosecutor Dunayev once again expressly pointed out that the defendants had acted on higher orders, but that acting on orders according to the Leipzig ruling of 1921 in the Llandovery Castle case did not exempt them from personal guilt.

The verdict stated: Langfeld, as a defense officer, had caused the shooting of around a hundred innocent people by extorting and torturing civilians and prisoners of war and by falsifying investigations. As a member of the SD Sonderkommando, Ritz participated in the torture and shooting of civilians in the Podvorki area and Taganrog , and also extorted false statements. Retzlaff extorted false statements through torture and put people in the gas truck. Bulanov took part in the shooting of sixty children and was a gas truck driver.

On the night of December 18-19, all four defendants were sentenced to death and publicly hanged in the main square of Kharkov that same day .

Documentation of the German atrocities

The organized character and extent of German crimes should be presented in Kharkov. According to the Soviet Code of Criminal Procedure, the defendants had to describe their deeds again in court and it was emphasized that they were involved in the deeds on their own responsibility, but on higher orders. According to the defendants, who were only stationed in Kharkov for a relatively short time, residents (including hospital staff) as well as German prisoners of war and forensic experts who were involved in the investigation of mass graves testified about the events in the Kharkov area. The number of people murdered was provisionally estimated at 33,000 based on the testimony of witnesses.

Publicity

War correspondent Konstantin Michailowitsch Simonow at the trial

The trial was held in front of a large audience in the Kharkov Theater on the 2nd anniversary of the Drobyzkyj Yar massacre. A film The Trial Goes On was shot and shown in Moscow cinemas, foreign journalists and diplomats were invited and the negotiation text was published entirely in English.

The journalistic goal was different groups:

  • The own population should be strengthened in the fight against the criminal fascists and the effective punishment of the perpetrators should be demonstrated.
  • The hitherto unimaginable extent of the Soviet victims and the lawful actions of the Soviet Union should be demonstrated to the Western allies and their citizens, and potential loss of reputation through existing or future executions should be prevented. In addition, the public pressure on the Western Allies to prosecute German war crimes should be increased.
  • The German troops and their commanders were to be deterred from further atrocities as they withdrew from the Soviet Union.

Reactions

The American side and the British feared that the German side would use the situation to take countermeasures against Allied prisoners of war to provoke tension between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies. After a German protest in January, it was announced in March 1944 that trials, especially against bomber crews for terrorist attacks, were well prepared, but would be postponed if no trials were started by the Anglo-American side.

When two British newspapers cautiously criticized the trial, the Russian criminal lawyer Aron Naumowitsch Trainin responded. He sarcastically stated that newspaper writers in England could wait more patiently for the trials of Hitler's evildoers than the residents of Kharkov and Kiev, who would have witnessed the atrocities of the occupation. He emphasized two legal aspects: Soldiers would lose their right to humane treatment, as provided for in the Hague Land Warfare Code (Art. 4), when committing such serious crimes, since martial law does not allow the dual role of bandit and military person. The atrocities would have been carried out by the accused themselves and acting on orders does not justify exclusion from punishment.

Web links

literature

  • Michael J. Bazyler, Frank M. Turekheimer: Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust . New York University Press 2014, ISBN 978-1-4798-9924-1 , p. 15 ff.

Movie

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Hilger : Let justice take its course . In: Norbert Frei (ed.): Transnational politics of the past. How to deal with German war criminals in Europe after the Second World War. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89244-940-9 , p. 215.
  2. ↑ Michael J. Bazyler and Frank M. Turekheimer: Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust . P. 16 ff.
  3. ↑ Michael J. Bazyler and Frank M. Turekheimer: Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust . P. 22.
  4. ↑ Andreas Hilger: Let justice take its course . S 218.
  5. ↑ Michael J. Bazyler and Frank M. Turekheimer: Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust . P. 24.
  6. ^ Arieh J. Kochavi: Prelude to Nuremberg . University of North Carolina Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8078-2433-X , p. 66.
  7. ↑ Michael J. Bazyler and Frank M. Turekheimer: Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust . P. 31.
  8. ^ "The people's verdict: a full report of the proceedings at the Krasnodar and Kharkov German atrocity trials" . Full negotiation text in English.
  9. ↑ Michael J. Bazyler and Frank M. Turekheimer: Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust . P. 34.
  10. ↑ Andreas Hilger: Justice take its course , p. 221.
  11. ↑ Michael J. Bazyler and Frank M. Turekheimer: Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust . P. 29.
  12. ↑ Arieh J. Kochavi: Prelude to Nuremburg , p. 67.
  13. ↑ Michael J. Bazyler and Frank M. Turekheimer: Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust . P. 35 f.
  14. ↑ Arieh J. Kochavi: Prelude to Nuremburg , p. 68.
  15. ↑ Arieh J. Kochavi: Prelude to Nuremburg , pp. 70 ff.
  16. ↑ Arieh J. Kochavi: Prelude to Nuremburg , p. 69.