Soviet Execution Of SS Men

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Bob Coleman
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Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#1

Post by Bob Coleman » 28 May 2009, 21:58

Many years ago, I saw a short film clip regarding a group of SS men who had been hanged in 1944 in Red Square. The clip included a short clip of an evidently terrified LAH Sturmfuhrer asking mercy for his crimes in a Soviet court. Does anyone have any information regarding the crimes these men were convicted for and how many were hanged?

ansata1976
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#2

Post by ansata1976 » 28 May 2009, 22:55

D you have more details?


J. Duncan
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#3

Post by J. Duncan » 29 May 2009, 10:46

I think the clip you are referring to came from a PBS documentary titled "Russia's War: Blood on the Snow". This documentary had some great footage taken from Soviet archives. The men on trial were said to be Russians who fought for the Germans - the clip shows one of these recruits who defends his actions before a Soviet court - he is later shown to be unloaded from a van or closed truck, surrounded by an angry mob. He is forcibly taken up to the top of a scaffold and hanged....his body shown in death, hanging from a gibbet. It's an intense scene, almost like witnessing a crucifixion, and one can feel the anger of the crowd and the immense fear in the man executed. I have no idea who the man was.

Bob Coleman
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#4

Post by Bob Coleman » 29 May 2009, 16:05

I have also seen a couple of still pictures of the same execution that were published in a 1944 Life Magazine. It shows numerous Waffen SS men all executed at the same time. The clip you refer to is the one I saw. However, I remember the officer shown on trial was definitely wearing a SS uniform. As he being loaded on to the back of the flat bed truck, he is wearing a SS officer's field cap with the eagle on the side.

ansata1976
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#5

Post by ansata1976 » 30 May 2009, 19:45

Image


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Bob Coleman
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#6

Post by Bob Coleman » 31 May 2009, 05:10

Do you have any information regarding who these men are and why they were hung?

ansata1976
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#7

Post by ansata1976 » 31 May 2009, 13:11

Sorry but i know only that this executions took place in Russia and that the men are German prisoners of war.

nineinchtrent
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#8

Post by nineinchtrent » 31 May 2009, 15:17

Only a month after the Tehran Conference, the Soviets set out to demonstrate in practice their determination to punish war criminals. In December 1943, a military tribunal in Khar'kov charged four alleged culprits—three Germans and a Soviet collaborator—with war crimes. Although by the time of the trial a substantial number of German officers and soldiers had fallen into Soviet captivity, only a few were tried in open or closed military tribunals. As a rule, these trials did not receive much publicity beyond the areas where they took place. 24 In contrast, the Khar'kov trial was reported in the principal Soviet newspapers, which referred to it as "the beginning of the great and terrible trial of all Germans who have transgressed human laws." 25 By grouping the defendants together the tribunal sent an unequivocal message to the Allies, the Germans, and the Soviet people: Soviet justice will punish all foreign and domestic war criminals.

The German defendants were selected to represent an assortment of military ranks and branches of the German armed forces: an NCO of the Secret Field Police, a captain of military counterintelligence, and an SS second lieutenant. They appeared in court in full military regalia—a rare practice in Soviet trials. Such a display, however, did not betoken that the tribunal would take into consideration the defendants' low ranks in the German military hierarchy. On the contrary, the prosecution pointed out that the decorations were rewards received for the atrocities committed against the Soviet people. The Soviet defendant, a chauffeur at the Khar'kov SD, was charged with high treason, and his fate was to serve as a grim warning to residents of the German-occupied territories. Closely following the pattern established in Krasnodar, the prosecution stressed the culpability of the entire German army in war crimes. The defense pleaded that the main guilt rested with those who had inspired these crimes—the Nazi regime. While a dozen witnesses appeared in the courtroom, they were not asked to identify the defendants but rather to describe German crimes in the Khar'kov region. As in the Krasnodar case, the defendants fully admitted their guilt. All four were sentenced to death and promptly hanged in public.
It makes sense that you mention they were LAH and hanged in the red square, since the square in Kharkov was known as the "red square" and it was renamed Platz der Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler because of the heavy fighting for the city by the division.

Bob Coleman
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#9

Post by Bob Coleman » 31 May 2009, 19:33

Thank you for that information. The third picture that was posted is likely from the trial of the four. I am positive that was the action I originally inquired about. i recall seeing one of the hanged was a SS NCO. Likely, this was the SD man referred to. Possibly someone has information on the two pictures of the twelve men that were executed.
We all know how fairly justice was handed out under the Stalin regime. Still, one must consider the times and the terrible hardships placed upon the people of Eastern Europe by the Nazi Regime. Those who were available likely paid the price for the misdeeds of their government's policies.

nineinchtrent
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#10

Post by nineinchtrent » 01 Jun 2009, 16:16

Here is the information for the trial of the dozen or so men that you inquired about.
On the morning of July 14, 1943, the court in the Northern Caucasus city of Krasnodar was packed with notable citizens anxiously awaiting the beginning of the much-publicized trial of eleven men accused of collaborating with the Nazis during the German occupation of the city. Notably, the defendants were not German officers but Soviet citizens.

Several months earlier, on February 13, 1943, L. I. Yachenin, the State Prosecutor in the Krasnodar trial, had indicted eleven men for breaching Articles 58–1(a) and Article 59–1(b).23 Together, these men represented a relatively uniform segment of the population: all eleven defendants were male, all came from peasant backgrounds, and most came from poor families. All but one were between the ages of 20 and 34, and the average age was 29.


1. Vladimir Tischenko : The Death Sentence (Executed on the 18th July 1943)
2. Ivan Kotomtsev : 20 Years Imprisonment
3. Nikolai Pushkarev : The Death Sentence (Executed on the 18th July 1943)
4. Mikhail Lastovina : The Death Sentence (Executed on the 18th July 1943)
5. Georgi Misan : The Death Sentence (Executed on the 18th July 1943)
6. Ivan Kladov : The Death Sentence (Executed on the 18th July 1943)
7. Vassily Pavlov : The Death Sentence (Executed on the 18th July 1943)
8. Ivan Paramonov : 20 Years Imprisonment
9. Gregori Tuchkov : The Death Sentence (Executed on the 18th July 1943)
10. Ivan Rechkalov : 20 Years Imprisonment
11. Yakov Naptsok : The Death Sentence (Executed on the 18th July 1943)

All but one of the defendants worked—either voluntarily or involuntarily—for Sonderkommando 10a, an SS unit responsible for conducting mass exterminations and, later, for exhuming and destroying the victims' remains. As the indictment noted, Sonderkommando 10a was charged with several major tasks: "guarding Gestapo buildings that held arrested Soviet citizens, executing arrests, going on military searches and expeditions against the partisans and peaceful Soviet citizens, [and] exterminating Soviet citizens by hanging, mass shootings, and use of poison gases."24 The extent to which the eleven Soviet citizens were involved in committing these crimes is difficult to determine on the basis of the sources available. Most did not order arrests or conduct mass exterminations, but simply guarded Soviet citizens who were under arrest.

Although we cannot determine whether particular defendants willfully and energetically cooperated with the Germans or did so only under extreme pressure, we can say that all were, for various reasons and to varying degrees, participants in German atrocities. According to Martin Dean, who has written extensively on collaboration during World War II, "ideal collaborators" were "those men who volunteered for local police service during the first months of the German occupation and actively participated in the anti-Jewish measures. ... The process of volunteering, requiring active personal initiative, reinforces the treasonous nature of wartime service with the enemy."25

It would be wrong, however, to accept unquestioningly the words of prosecutor Yachenin, who declared that all of the defendants "voluntarily joined the German police force."26 For three of the defendants—soldiers in the Soviet army who had been captured and held in German POW camps—working with the Germans was a matter of life and death.27 Forced to live in the unbearable conditions of a German POW camp, they were "asked" by the Nazis to work for the Gestapo in return for better living conditions, prestige, and some degree of power.28 Had they not joined, these men might well have perished alongside millions of their companions. As Dean has aptly noted, most Soviet soldiers caught in POW camps "obeyed German orders, but their loyalty was in many cases half-hearted, their main aim being survival ... . [They] recognized their slim chances of surviving if they did not ‘volunteer.’"29 Other defendants in Krasnodar appear to have been motivated by opportunism. For example, 29-year-old Vladimir Tishchenko explained his decision to join the Gestapo as follows: "I was convinced that eventually the Germans would win the war ... and I wanted to provide for myself and my family."30 Still others, such as 32-year-old Ivan Kladov from Sverdlovsk and 32-year-old Ivan Rechkalov from the Cheliabinsk region, joined out of what they described as "rabbit cowardice"31 or "the influence of fear."32

Of the eleven defendants, Tishchenko achieved the highest rank, gaining the confidence of the German officers around him and ultimately becoming a sergeant-major in charge of more than fifty men.33 In his role as an investigator for the Gestapo, he oversaw more than twenty cases. In a number of these, he ordered and personally carried out the execution of Soviet citizens.34 What motivated Tishchenko, a poorly educated worker from a lower-class background, to become an investigator for the Gestapo remains unclear. Over the course of ten interrogations between February 15 and June 30, 1943, the investigators tried to force Tishchenko to explain. During an especially heated exchange that took place on June 17, the interrogator accused Tishchenko of lying to cover up other serious crimes:

Question: You are clearly lying. If you didn't betray anyone to the Germans, then why were you promoted to the post of investigator for the Gestapo?

Answer: I can't explain it.

Question: More precisely, you don't want to because to explain this would force you to explain subsequently other acts of betrayal, which you have consistently tried to hide.35

Perhaps more surprising than Tishchenko's steadfastness in refusing to explain his quick rise within the Gestapo, however, was the Soviet NKVD interrogators' inability to extract an answer from him.

As a result of his responsible position, Tishchenko was indicted on specific charges, including "beating Kotova and Dotzenko during an interrogation with the help of Salge, a Gestapo officer, and Scherterlan, a translator."36 In contrast, most of the other defendants faced general charges such as "guarding arrested Soviet citizens"37 or "assisting in the arrest of partisans, communists, and those loyal to the [Communist Party]."38 Of the eleven defendants, only Tishchenko, Ivan Rechkalov, Georgi Misan, and Ivan Kotomtsev were indicted on specific charges: Rechkalov of acting as a secret agent for the Gestapo and forcing Soviet citizens into vans where they were gassed, Misan of murder, and Kotomtsev of hanging a young girl. The remaining defendants at Krasnodar were charged with having played "active roles" in unspecified crimes.

The defendants in Krasnodar knew that there was little chance of acquittal, but they also recognized that their lives hung in the balance. During the hours spent in interrogations, they all admitted their guilt. On the witness stand, they repeated what they had said during their interrogations. One after the other, the defendants begged for forgiveness during the closing statements and asked the court to "send them to the fiercest area of the Front" as penance for their actions.39 The defendants begged for leniency on various grounds: they were young;40 they were "criminal[s], but uneducated";41 they had turned themselves in and testified against their codefendants.42

The pressure that interrogators placed on the defendants to confess sooner or later took its toll. During the interrogations and trials, some defendants even embellished the details of their crimes.43 That all the defendants, both foreign soldiers and Soviet collaborators, admitted their guilt is one of the distinctive aspects of Soviet war crimes trials during this period. As Alexander Prusin has astutely observed, Soviet defendants' readiness to acknowledge their guilt during the trials was "in sharp contrast to their Nuremburg and Tokyo counterparts who, in spite of documentary evidence, professed ignorance of atrocities or blatantly denied their involvement."44 Some historians, including Hostettler, have noted that Soviet interrogators used coercive methods to extract confessions: "The methods used during months of interrogation included confinement in a punishment cell too small to move in, intolerable pressure by teams of inquisitors working for hours and days at a stretch, savage beatings, prolonged deprivation of sleep, and promises of leniency or pardon in return for co-operation."45 Prusin suggests further that, at least for more senior individuals, "the descent from a position of authority to the status of helpless prisoner gravely undermined their moral strength."46 Documents from the trial in Krasnodar suggest that the defendants relinquished their claims of innocence only as a result of grueling interrogations and out of a sense of hopelessness. For example, during his first interrogation, on March 25, 1943, Tishchenko told his interrogators that he was innocent of most of the crimes with which he was charged; only after three months of interrogations did he plead guilty to all.47 Yet for Soviet authorities, everything was much simpler: only the guilty would confess.48

Evidence directly implicating the defendants was not a critical component of the trials. During the trials, experts from the ChGK and eyewitnesses were called upon to testify. Tellingly, the tribunals did not require that those testifying have direct knowledge of, or any relationship to, any of the defendants. In many cases, witnesses did not know what the defendants' role had been in the German Occupation Authority and provided only general information. For example, one witness spoke generally about her recollection of the execution of Soviet civilians in a ravine close to her home, but did not mention any of the defendants in connection with the crime.49 In fact, only one witness directly implicated Tishchenko, recalling that "he was in the room while I was questioned by the Gestapo."50 Experts from the ChGK testified regularly at the tribunals, providing what was considered credible analysis and evidence. At the Krasnodar tribunal, a court-appointed forensic expert confirmed that the bodies of over six hundred Soviet citizens had been exhumed after the city was recaptured. Medical officers of the ChGK examined the remains and determined that the victims had been killed by gas.51 However, not once did the medical experts in the trial in Krasnodar directly connect any of the defendants to the murders.

Counterintuitively, those whose crimes were better documented did not receive harsher sentences than those whose crimes were not clearly defined. In fact, Kotomtsev and Rechkalov received lighter sentences than many of their co-defendants who were charged with more vaguely formulated crimes. One might suppose that they were spared because they provided evidence against the other defendants; however, even a cursory review of the documents reveals that most of the defendants had informed on others during the interrogations, and that this apparently had little bearing on the eventual verdicts. Tishchenko, for example, provided interrogators with the names of some forty-one collaborators—including some who had served in the Red Army with him and appear to have been his close friends.52

Of the eleven defendants, Mikhail Lastovina deserves special attention. At 60 years of age, Lastovina was much older than the others. Unlike the other defendants, who had been arrested in February or March of 1943, Lastovina was arrested on June 28, just two weeks before the beginning of the trial. Lastovina never worked for the German occupying authorities during their occupation of Krasnodar. His only act of "treason" took place in December 1942, when a group of Nazis came to the hospital where he was working as a doorman and ordered him to verify that everyone had been brought out.53 It seems likely, therefore, that the primary reason for Lastovina's arrest was not his collaboration with the Germans, but rather the fact that he was a former kulak—a rich peasant. Lastovina had escaped Stalin's campaign aimed at deporting the kulaks by fleeing temporarily to the Donbas region in 1932.54 By prosecuting Lastovina along with the other collaborators in Krasnodar, the Soviet authorities demonstrated that those deemed "enemies of the state" included those who had earlier escaped punishment. From the authorities' point of view, the proceedings served not only to deter internal subversion, but also as an instrument in the class struggle.55 As Amir Weiner has observed, "violence was applied within a well-defined ideological framework that earmarked certain groups based on preconceived biases and was incorporated into an all-encompassing drive to purify the socio-national body."56 Thus, Lastovina's case demonstrates that class issues continued to play an important role in determining state violence during and after the war. The Soviets used the military tribunals of Lastovina and those like him as an instrument for cleansing Soviet society of elements perceived as unfaithful.

The three defense attorneys in the Krasnodar proceedings had little impact on the trial's outcome. Because confession was considered the ultimate proof of a defendant's guilt, and all of the defendants had been made to confess numerous times during the pre-trial interrogations, the lawyers could not have mounted a cogent defense even if they had wanted to. The tribunals were structured in such a way as to give the defense attorneys as marginal a role as possible; their participation, it seems, was merely symbolic—intended to demonstrate the fairness of the proceedings. In contrast to the trial in Minsk, at which defendants could select an attorney from a list compiled by the tribunal or defend themselves if they so chose,57 in Krasnodar the defendants were assigned lawyers. Unlike the judges and the prosecutors, defense lawyers were not allowed to cross-examine the witnesses. In accordance with the June 1941 decree, no pre-trial meetings were allowed; defendants and their lawyers met for the first time on the first day of the trial before the proceedings began. As a result, the lawyers could do little in court other than plead for leniency for their defendants—usually by claiming that their clients had been following orders and should not be held personally responsible.58

For their part, the judges' role was to support the prosecutor, intervening only to recapitulate horrific incidents. The three judges in Krasnodar fulfilled this role precisely. Above all, they pressed the defendants for details of the atrocities they had committed. For example, they relentlessly questioned defendant Nikolai Pushkarev, extracting from him details of mass arrests and executions of Soviet civilians.59 Throughout the trial, the judges interjected comments intended to highlight the appalling nature of the defendants' acts of collaboration.

In sharp contrast to the groveling lawyers, the State Prosecutor commanded overwhelming authority during the military tribunals. His role was that of director; generally theatrical and overbearing, he set the tone for the trial and orchestrated it. He unyieldingly dramatized and embellished the role of the accused in the crimes committed, but at the same time was careful to implicate the German government and high command, as well as the German officers in charge of a particular region. For example, in his concluding remarks at the Krasnodar trial, State Prosecutor Yachenin declared Hitler "a vile chief of the fascist gangsters, [who] boasted of these bloodthirsty plans with diabolic candor even before the war, and it is on his direct orders that his henchmen kill, strangle, rob, and hang."60 Yachenin described in typically overblown terms the historical importance of trying the defendants: "Today Soviet law will mete out justice to the traitors, fascist hirelings, and boot-lickers now in the prisoners' dock. Tomorrow the court of history, the court of freedom-loving nations of the world, will pronounce its inexorable verdict on the bloodthirsty rulers of Hitlerite Germany and all its associates—on the enemies of mankind who have plunged the world into the welter of the present war. Not one of them will escape stern retribution! Blood for blood, death for death!"61

In the public tribunals that followed Krasnodar, the focus of prosecutions shifted from Soviet collaborators to high-level German officers. By 1946, Soviet prosecutors used collaborators mainly to support their indictments against German soldiers. For example, during the trial in Minsk, prosecutors used evidence provided by Soviet collaborators to prosecute Generalmajor Gottfried von Erdmannsdorff.62 Two or three years earlier, such collaborators in all likelihood would have been publicly tried and executed. The shift in prosecutorial focus simply reflects the fact that the end of the war brought an end to the issue of deterring collaboration. Moreover, Soviet authorities may have come to feel that, by holding military tribunals, they could liken Soviet justice to that of the postwar West.

As we have seen, the trial in Krasnodar established the model for the thousands of trials that followed. Given the extent of the devastation and horror, the task of the military tribunals was enormous. And yet, for the Soviet government, the primary significance of the tribunals lay not in the punishment of the thousands of collaborators and German POWs, but in the propaganda value that could be extracted from them.

Bob Coleman
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#11

Post by Bob Coleman » 02 Jun 2009, 06:32

Thank you for your detailed response.

George Lepre
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#12

Post by George Lepre » 16 Jan 2011, 01:55

J. Duncan wrote:I think the clip you are referring to came from a PBS documentary titled "Russia's War: Blood on the Snow". This documentary had some great footage taken from Soviet archives. The men on trial were said to be Russians who fought for the Germans - the clip shows one of these recruits who defends his actions before a Soviet court - he is later shown to be unloaded from a van or closed truck, surrounded by an angry mob. He is forcibly taken up to the top of a scaffold and hanged....his body shown in death, hanging from a gibbet. It's an intense scene, almost like witnessing a crucifixion, and one can feel the anger of the crowd and the immense fear in the man executed. I have no idea who the man was.
Hi All -

I just watched the documentary in question and saw the scene J. Duncan described. It first shows some young Russians volunteering for German service and receiving new uniform caps, but it then quickly cuts to a completely different scene in which an SS Untersturmfuehrer is on trial. (This courtroom sequence is unrelated to the scene of the young volunteers.) The Untersturmfuehrer is definitely German, as he is shown speaking German to the court. He states that he "was only a boy of thirteen when Hitler came to power," which means that he was born in 1919 or 1920. In any case, J. Duncan and the others who remarked that the defendant looked scared are indeed correct: he was absolutely terrified. A look at his uniform reveals little more that he was an Ustuf. and that he was decorated with the War Merit Cross, second class.

The film intimates (but does not explicitly state) that this scene was shot in Minsk, but I believe that this might be the Kharkov Trial, which took place in December 1943. When the man is being led to the outdoor gallows, it is obviously winter. Three German SS officials were found guilty and executed during this trial. They were:

Wilhelm Langfeld: Death Sentence (Executed 19 December 1943)
Hans Rietz: Death Sentence (Executed 19 December 1943)
Reinhard Retzlaff: Death Sentence (Executed 19 December 1943)

The film of the man's execution shows four men being hanged, and I cannot account for this discrepency, but if anyone has photos of Langfeld, Rietz, or Retzlaff, we might be able to determine if he is the Untersturmfuehrer on trial.

Best regards,

George

George Lepre
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Re: Soviet Execution Of SS Men

#13

Post by George Lepre » 16 Jan 2011, 02:16

Hello again -

I just found the answer, courtesy of our own David Thompson! He posted this information some time ago:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=43263

The man being executed in the film clip is almost certainly SS-Untersturmfuehrer Hans RITZ, born 1919 in Marienwerder.

George

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