Execution of war criminals in Ukraine in January 1946.

From January 17 to 28, 1946, a meeting of the military tribunal of the Kyiv military district was held at the Kiev House of Officers of the Red Army, during which a large criminal case was considered about the atrocities of the Nazi invaders on the territory of Ukraine.

15 people appeared before the court, who during the Second World War, as part of the German army and collaborationist formations of the occupation regime on the temporarily occupied Ukrainian land, committed unheard-of crimes against peace and humanity.

Before the court of the military tribunal of the Kyiv military district appeared:

Scheer Paul- lieutenant general of the police, former head of the security police and gendarmerie of the Kyiv and Poltava regions;

Burckhardt Carl- Police lieutenant general, former commandant of the rear of the 6th army in the territory of the Stalin (now Donetsk) and Dnepropetrovsk regions;

Von-Chammer und Osten Eckardt Hans- major general former commander 213th security division, operating in the Poltava region of the Ukrainian SSR, and later - the commandant of the main field commandant's office No. 392;

Heinisch Georg- Ober-Sturmführer of the SS, former gebitskommissar (district commissar) of the Melitopol district;

Walliser Oscar- Captain, former Ortskomendant (local commandant) of the Borodyansk inter-district commandant's office of the Kyiv region;

Trukkenbrod Georg- lieutenant colonel, former military commandant of the cities of Pervomaisk, Korostyshev, Korosten and other settlements of the Ukrainian SSR;

Gellerfort Wilhelm- Chief Scharführer, former head of the SD (security service) of the Dneprodzerzhinsky district of the Dnepropetrovsk region;

Knol Emil Emil- lieutenant, former commander of the field gendarmerie of the 44th infantry division and commandant of prisoner of war camps;

Beckenhof Fritz- Sonderführer, former agricultural commandant of the Borodyansky district of the Kyiv region;

Isenman Hans- chief corporal, former soldier of the SS division "Viking";

Jogshat Emil Friedrich- chief lieutenant, commander of the field gendarmerie unit;

Mayer Willie Willie- non-commissioned officer, former company commander of the 323rd separate security battalion;

Lauer Johann Paul- chief corporal, soldier of the 73rd separate battalion of the 1st German tank army;

Shadel August- chief corporal, former head of the office of the Borodyansk Interdistrict Ortkomendatura of the Kyiv region;

Drachenfels-Calyuveri Boris Ernst Oleg- police officer, former deputy. company commander of the Ostland police battalion.

The whole of Ukraine and the whole world then followed the process, which was not at all ordinary.

The people present in the courtroom witnessed the complete exposure of the crimes of the Nazi executioners and their accomplices in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory. They could evaluate the organization of the process, the completeness of the preliminary and judicial investigation, the irrefutable guilt of the defendants, the validity and legality of the verdict.

The public execution of German war criminals, these first Nazi murderers of Soviet citizens, took place on 02/02/1946.

Leningrad. January 5, 1946 Public execution of fascists at the cinema 'Giant'

Father's memory...

In early January 1946, gallows were placed on the square not far from the Kondratievsky market. The trial of 11 German war criminals went on for a long time. Detailed reports were made in all the newspapers, but my mother and I did not read them - what to list, who and how they killed ... We saw with our own eyes how the Germans treated the civilian population and did not tell us anything new. We were shot from airplanes and from long-range guns, and the peasants in the Pskov region - from rifles and machine guns - that's the only difference. The Germans were the same.

But I went to look at the execution, especially since there were cases in this area. The crowd was quite large. They brought the Germans. They kept calm - but in general they had no choice. There was nowhere to run, and the gathered people were almost all blockades and nothing good would shine for the Germans if they got into the crowd. Yes, and they did not have to count on sympathy.

They announced what and how these convicts did. The captain is a sapper who killed several hundred civilians with his own hands. This struck me - it seemed to me that the sapper - a builder, not a murderer, but here he himself - without any coercion, on his hunt, killed people with his own hands, moreover, defenseless, unarmed - and after all, there were few men there - in the main mass - women and children ...

The cars, in the backs of which the Germans were standing, drove in reverse under the gallows. Our soldiers - escorts deftly, but without haste, put nooses on their necks. The cars slowly drove forward this time. The Germans swayed in the air - again somehow very calmly, like dolls. The same sapper captain wagged a little at the last moment, but the guards held him back.

The people began to disperse, and a sentry was posted at the gallows. But, despite this, when I passed there the next day, the Germans' boots were already torn at the back at the seams, so that the tops turned around, and the boys threw pieces of ice at the gallows. The sentry did not interfere.

Almost everyone who stood in the crowd, by the grace of such Germans, lost one of his friends and relatives. Yes, there was no fun, there was no jubilation. There was a gloomy bitter contentment - that at least these were hanged.

It’s also worth adding that my friend - she was older than me and stood closer in the crowd (definitely Leningrad is a big village!) - told me later that they seemed to want a Pskovite woman who had suffered from one of these Germans to speak from the people.

She remained alive, although she was tortured for a long time, her breasts were cut off, but they were not finished off, and she survived. But when she saw her executioner, she was literally beaten up and it became clear that she was not capable of performing. So it seems that one person from the crowd was really horrified. Only not from the execution, from the sight of the German who civilized it ...

Son's note.

I decided to go to the Public Library and dig into the newspapers of the time. Yes, almost every day - until the execution - newspapers published reports from the courtroom. It's stifling to read. Evil suffocates. And even with the cloth language of judges and the same cloth language of journalists.

For many years we have been blamed for 24 killed, it’s not clear who the Germans and German women in the village of Nemmersdorf ... We only had hundreds of such Nemmersdorfs in the Pskov region ... Moreover, they were burned to the ground ... Together with the inhabitants. At first they mocked, raping those who are younger and prettier, taking economically what is more valuable ...

Here is the list of hanged:

1. Major General Heinrich Remlinger, was born in 1882 in Poppenweiler. Commandant of Pskov in 1943-1944.

2. Captain Shtrüfing Karl, born in 1912 in the city of Rostock, commander of the 2nd company of the 2nd battalion "special purpose" of the 21st airfield division.

3.Oberfeldwebel Engel Fritz, born in 1915 in Gera, platoon commander of the 2nd company of the 2nd "special purpose" battalion of the 21st airfield division.

4. Oberfeldwebel Bem Ernst, born in 1911 in Oshweileben, platoon commander of the 1st "special purpose" battalion of the 21st airfield division.

5. Lieutenant Sonnenfeld Eduard, was born in 1911 in Hannover, a sapper, commander of a special engineering group of the 322nd infantry regiment.

6. Soldier Janike Gerhard, was born in 1921. In the town of Kappe, 2 companies of the 2 "special purpose" battalion of the 21 airfield division.

7. Soldier Gerer Erwin Ernst born in 1912, 2nd company of the 2nd "special purpose" battalion of the 21st airfield division.

8. Oberfreitor Scotky Ervin, born in 1919, 2nd company of the 2nd "special purpose" battalion of the 21st airfield division.

Sentenced to capital punishment - hanging.

Three others:

Oberleutnant Wiese Franz, Born in 1909, commander-1, 2nd "special purpose" battalion of the 21st airfield division - - 20 years old, l / s;
Feldwebel Vogel Erich Paul, platoon commander of his company - 20 years of hard labor.
Soldier Duret Arnaud 1920 Births from the same company - 15 years hard labor.

A total of 11 Germans were judged. For some reason, they crap in the Pskov region, and they were judged and hanged in Leningrad.

The meetings were thoroughly covered by the entire Leningrad press, then the journalists worked more responsibly, but it is clear that censorship worked seriously, so the descriptions of the meetings and the testimony of witnesses are boring and lack particularly “fried” facts. It can also be seen that the amount of material was colossal.

A brief description of the crimes of the Nazis:

1. Major General Remlinger- organized 14 punitive expeditions during which several hundred settlements in the Pskov region were burned, about 8,000 people were killed - mostly women and children, and his personal responsibility was confirmed by documents and testimonies of witnesses - that is, giving appropriate orders for the destruction of settlements and the population, for example - 239 people were shot in Karamyshevo, another 229 were herded and burned in wooden buildings, 250 people were shot in Utorgosh, 150 people were shot on the road Slavkovichi - Ostrov, 180 people were driven into houses and then burned. I omit every trifle like the concentration camp in Pskov, etc.

2. Captain Shtrüfing Karl- 20-21.07.1944 25 people were shot in the Ostrov region. He ordered his subordinates to shoot boys aged 10 and 13. In February 1944 - Zamoshki - 24 people were shot from a machine gun. During the retreat, for fun, he shot Russians who came across on the road from a carbine. Personally killed about 200 people.

3.Oberfeldwebel Engel Fritz- with his platoon, he burned 7 settlements, and 80 people were shot and approximately 100 were burned in houses and sheds, personal destruction of 11 women and children was proved.

4.Oberfeldwebel Behm Ernst- in February 1944, he burned Dedovichi, burned Krivets, Olkhovka, and several other villages - only 10. About 60 people were shot, 6 - personally by him.

5. Lieutenant Sonnenfeld Eduard- from December 1943 to February 1944 burned the village. Strashevo, Plyussky district, 40 people were killed, vil. Zapolye - about 40 people were killed, the population of the village. Seglitsy, evicted to dugouts, were thrown with grenades in dugouts, then finished off - about 50 people, vil. Maslino, Nikolaevo - about 50 people were killed, vil. Rows - about 70 people were killed, vil. Bor, Skoritsy. District, Ostrov and others. The lieutenant took a personal part in all the executions, in total he killed about 200 people.

6. Soldier Janike Gerhard- in the village of Malye Luzi, 88 residents (mostly residents) were herded into 2 baths and a barn and burned. He personally killed over 300 people.

7. Soldier Gerer Erwin Ernst- participation in the liquidation of 23 villages - Volkovo, Martyshevo, Detkovo, Selishche. He personally killed more than 100 people - mostly women and children.

8. Oberfreitor Skotky Ervin- participation in the execution of 150 people in Luga, burned 50 houses there. Participated in the burning of the villages of Bukino, Borki, Troshkino, Housewarming, Podborovye, Milyutino. Personally burned 200 houses. Participated in the liquidation of the villages of Rostkovo, Moromerka, the Andromer state farm.

Execution of fascists in Nikolaev on January 17, 1946

In Nikolaev, in the premises of the Russian Drama Theater named after V.P. Chkalov, 9 fascists were accused:

City commandant G. Winkler,

head of SD G. Sandner,

head of the gendarmerie department of the region M.L. Byutner,

head of the gendarmerie of Kherson F. Kandler,

head of the gendarmerie of the Bereznegovatsky district R. Michel,

head of the security police F. Witzleb,

deputy head of the security police G. Shmale,

Sergeant major of the field gendarmerie R. Berg,

Oberefreytor of the 783rd security battalion I. Hupp.

The materials of the Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) for the establishment and investigation of the atrocities of the Nazis and the data of the investigation found that during the period of occupation 74,600 citizens were shot, 25,000 people were driven away, 30,680 prisoners of war were destroyed, material damage was caused national economy in the amount of more than 17 billion rubles.

As early as January 17, 1946, the defendants were found guilty of these criminal acts. Everything except F. Kandler and I.Happa, who were sentenced to 20 years of hard labor, were hanged on a U-shaped gallows in the center of the Market Square in Nikolaev during a mass gathering of the population.

At first, in frosty silence, the verdict was read out, and at the end of it, one of the officers simply waved his saber. Silence soon formed, through which the death rattles of the hanged could be heard. Immediately people whistled, they began to press forward, but they were held back in place by the mounted police of the city of Nikolaev.

The trial of the fascists and the harsh people's sentence to the traitors to the Motherland. Public execution of fascists in the city square in Krasnodar, July 18, 1943

On July 14-17, 1943, in the premises of the Krasnodar cinema "Velikan" (at the intersection of the current Krasnaya and Mira streets), Kuban people appeared before the Military Tribunal of the North Caucasian Front:

Kladov, Kotomtsev, Lastovina, Misan, Naptsok, Pavlov, Paramonov, Pushkarev, Rechkalov, Tishchenko and Tuchkov.

They were charged with crimes under Articles 58-1 "a" and 58-1 "b" of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (treason against the motherland).

22 witnesses for the prosecution testified at the trial. During the trial, the active participation of those accused of torture, bullying, mass executions and extermination by gassing of peaceful Soviet citizens was established.

The trial was chaired by Colonel of Justice Mayorov, with the participation of the public prosecutor, Major General of Justice Yachenin. By appointment, the defendants were defended by three lawyers.

The writer Alexei Tolstoy, correspondent Elena Kononenko, journalist Martyn Merzhanov, as well as representatives of the Soviet and foreign press were present as members of the public.

At the trial, the conclusion of the forensic medical expert commission was heard, the members of which were the chief forensic expert of the USSR People's Commissariat of Health, the director of the State Research Institute of Forensic Medicine of the USSR People's Commissariat of Health, Dr. Prozorovsky; chief forensic expert of the People's Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR, head of the department of forensic medicine at the Second Moscow Medical Institute, associate professor Smolyaninov; consultant of the Moscow City Forensic Medical Examination Dr. Semenovsky and forensic chemist Sokolov.

Military tribunal sentenced to death by hanging Tishchenko, Rechkalov, Lastovin, Pushkarev, Misan, Naptsok, Kotomtsev and Kladov. The accused Tuchkov, Pavlov and Paramonov how less active accomplices received a punishment in the form of a link to hard labor for a term of 20 years for each.

The sentence was carried out on July 18 at 13:00 on the city square of Krasnodar. More than 30,000 residents of the city and nearby villages witnessed the execution. On each of the condemned hung a sign:

"Executed for treason."

The Krasnodar trial received a great response in the local and central press. All journalists noted his open character. For example, as political commentator Werth stated on London Radio on July 21, 1943, the public execution in Krasnodar had a deep psychological significance.

“It was, as it were, a signal of the approaching day of reckoning, a stern reminder to those Russians in the occupied regions who are still collaborating with the Gestapo. The execution of traitors was a harbinger of what awaits their German masters,” Werth said.

The importance of the process lay in the fact that the names of persons who had not yet been held accountable for crimes were identified and announced on it. Concreteness in names, in facts was then something unexpected.

Fascism was usually associated with the names of the leaders: Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler. Now the direct executors and participants were indicated: the commander of the 17th German army, Colonel General Ruoff, the chief of the Krasnodar Gestapo, Colonel Kristman, his deputy Captain Rabbe, officers Paschen, Vinz, Gan, Salge, Sargo, Boss, Munster, Meyer Erich, Gestapo prison doctors Hertz and Schuster, translators Eiks Jakob and Sherterlan.

"The monster Germans fled, but the whole bloody Nazi system was on the dock in this trial."

The Soyuzkinochronika brigade, consisting of cameramen from the film group of the North Caucasian Front, filmed a special issue about this trial. The documentary film "The Sentence of the People" was released on the screens of cinemas in Krasnodar on August 31, 1943.

After eight accomplices of Nazi war criminals were publicly hanged in Krasnodar on July 18, 1943, the tribunal of the North Caucasian Front received a huge number of letters from both individual citizens and entire groups of workers, expressing a feeling of deep satisfaction with the just decision of the court .

In the letters, the servicemen expressed not only solidarity with the verdict, but also assured that they would give all their strength to defeat the enemy.

As a result of an open trial, the tribunal of the North Caucasian Front came out with a presentation to the Military Council regarding the publication of sentences on the execution of war criminals, so that the Soviet people would know that their suffering would not go unrewarded, and those responsible for the atrocities would experience the most severe punishment.

The Military Council issued a corresponding resolution with an approved sample of the text of the announcement “on the sentences of the Military Tribunal of the North Caucasian Front on persons sentenced to capital punishment as traitors and traitors to the Motherland.”

Advertisements were posted in conspicuous places for public viewing in those settlements where war crimes were committed.

Later, taking into account the favorable feedback from the population of the Krasnodar Territory, coming from the field, the front tribunal decided to continue to publish sentences against the perpetrators of atrocities.

In total for the period from February 12 to August 1, 1943 in Krasnodar Territory 6680 people were convicted for aiding the Nazis. Of these, 972 were sentenced to capital punishment.

After the Krasnodar events, until the end of 1943, public trials and executions of war criminals with a large gathering of local residents were held in the villages of Gostagaevskaya (October 21), Maryanskaya (October 31 and November 25) and in several other settlements of the region.

The trial of the fascists and the harsh people's sentence to the traitors to the Motherland. Execution of fascist minions. Kharkov, December 1945

On December 16, 1943, the trial of the fascist punishers who shot thousands of civilians began in Kharkov. You are presented with a document of amazing power of influence - its materials. The court hearings took place after the liberation of Kharkov by the Red Army. The initiator and in many ways the organizer this event was a Kharkiv woman, a famous pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union, Hero of Socialist Labor, Colonel Valentina Stepanovna Grizodubova.

Not long ago, a similar procedure took place in Krasnodar, where, during the occupation, there was also a mass extermination of people in "gas chambers". These trials were actually the forerunner of the future Nuremberg trial of villains of the highest rank in the fascist hierarchy.

In Kharkov, international observers, writers and journalists of the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR were present at the trials: A. Tolstoy, L. Leonov, P. Panch, M. Rylsky, I. Ehrenburg, Yu. Smolich, O. Kononenko, P. Tychina, V. Sosiura, D. Zaslavsky, V. Chagovets. Each of them expressed his impressions in articles and assessed the actions of the Nazis during the occupation in Kharkov.

The meetings were held in the building of the Opera House on the street. Rymarskaya. Documents and articles are accompanied by photographs of the opened group graves in the Lesopark area of ​​the townspeople shot and gassed to death.

At all meetings there was a Soviet writer L. Leonov. He was shocked by the calmness of the defendants, giving them "testimony without excitement, in an everyday voice and measured tone."“There were no repentances of the criminals,” although the mothers and widows of the civilians they killed were sitting in the hall.

According to the well-known writer and publicist I. Ehrenburg, “this court not only stigmatized vile non-humans, but also the whole of fascist Germany”, showed its predatory anti-culture, the unfounded claims of the Germans to the title of a superior race. He compared the feelings of the warring Soviet soldiers with the aggression of the Nazis and saw not rude revenge on the invaders, but fair retribution for the attack on the country, the desire to enslave it. According to I. Ehrenburg, revenge cannot calm the bitterness of hearts and conscience of people. Here is a higher scale of feelings.

Publicist V. Chagovets defines the trial as "a terrible tale of inhuman suffering." All four days of the process, the fascist monsters spoke impassively, clearly hoping to get away with it, as happened with their fathers, the criminals of the First World War. V. Chagovets was struck that the brutal child-killers asked for pardon, although they did not have the slightest right to life after the committed fanaticism. Ugly and disgusting is the executioner who “repents, humiliating himself with tearful requests to save his life”, despite the horror of the deed.

“The Teutonic “knights” of the great eastern expanse” (L. Leonov) daily and hourly carried out Hitler’s orders, without feeling good feelings and pity, destroyed civilians, were proud of their implacability and cruelty to the Slavs, considering them subhuman, worthy only of mass destruction. Many thousands of residents of Kharkov were ruthlessly violated their right to life, the right to protection. Sokolniki were turned into a permanent place of executions, where rampant predatory atrocities were boundless.

The task of killing as many civilians as possible is pathological. The fascists who appeared before the court were proud of the “productivity” of the “gas chambers”, the conscientious implementation of the guidelines of the bloodthirsty Hitlerite policy to cleanse the Soviet spaces of their inhabitants. And at the same time they asked for mercy, arguing that they would call on all German soldiers to show mercy.

It is horrifying that now in modern Germany the descendants of these "cannibals of the cave times" (D. Zaslavsky) prove to the whole world that the Germans came to our open spaces quite by accident. They do not bother to argue about this falsification: how exactly did they get there and why? To my deep regret, the cynicism of grandfathers and fathers gave terrible shoots. “Hitler trained the cannibals of the twentieth century, the so-called “superior Aryan race” (D. Zaslavsky). The cynicism of the Germans of the 21st century is striking. He vividly demonstrates boundless hypocrisy as an invariable part of "European values". The accused fascists in 1943 were not able to feel shame and repentance due to their own savagery, being “human slag, scum” (O. Kononenko), proud of their butchery skills. So their descendants took over the baton of hypocrisy, oblivion of the memory of nationalistic "swinishness" and "bestial egoism."

M. Rylsky, angrily denouncing the Nazi criminals, said that the killers of 30,000 Kharkovites had no place among the people. O. Kononenko was also indignant, amazed: how dare child killers live after everything that has been done?! A. Tolstoy echoed her:

“These killers have an atrophy of conscience”.

P. Tychina compared the actions and behavior of the Germans in 1918 and in 1941-43, drawing attention to "their bloodthirstiness and stupid worldview." The answers of the fascist assassins, who claimed that they "honestly carried out the will of the authorities," look horrific. The bitter tears of the children brought to be shot, their requests not to kill, did not touch these executioners, who carried out orders for the mass extermination of civilians, so that Ukraine would become spacious for German landowners to come here. Embodiing their ideal of the German “superman”, the villains, according to witnesses, returning from executions, sang cheerful German songs. And what can look more blasphemous than the evidence of the defendants of the “humanity” of the invention of “gas chambers” that hasten the death of Kharkiv residents?! They also tried to appear kind and sympathetic to the victims.

P. Punch was sure that the humble appearance of the executioners at the trial was nothing more than the "hypocrisy of geeks" who destroyed innocent people. The writer believed that the Ukrainian people would never forget or forgive the Nazis for these victims. Yu. Smolich joined this message, calling the fanatics "creatures". The depth of the "abomination of Hitlerism and the abomination of fascist ideas" should shock the whole world. People around the world must do everything to ensure that this never happens again.

All those present were especially outraged by the sigh of one of the accused that "it is not easy to be a German now." The invaders' maniacal dream of world domination, their predatory policy was oriented towards turning Ukraine into a colony. With German pedantry, the methods of brutal destruction of the Soviet people were thought out in the offices of the Nazi sadists long before the war. And the fascist "hordes" then carefully carried out their plans. The secondary and higher legal education of the defendants who appeared before the court was not an obstacle to their actions. Those present had the impression that the criminals could not understand how it happened that they, Aryans of the highest race, demigods who did not let go of their weapons, found themselves in the dock.

M. Rylsky was indignant: everyday murders and executions entered the flesh and blood of the executioners - the Gestapo and SS. They were absolutely alien to the idea of ​​good, they have no body for its perception.

The fascists, who escaped retribution and returned home after the war, according to their grandchildren, kept silent. And to persistent requests to tell how they fought, they answered that they did not commit atrocities here. So who killed, executed, poisoned, tortured, mocked civilians here, if not them?!

Everyone at the hearings of the court turned to stone with grief hearts. Heard from these living machines for mass murder and the traitor-Kharkovite - the driver of the "gas chamber" shocked to the core, everyone was struck by the revealed routine of killing people. During the process, confidence was formed that justice would win and the tormentors of Kharkovites would be punished. This is what happened.

From January 15 to January 29, 1946, the trial of Nazi war criminals took place in Minsk.

Many Nazi criminals were held accountable for their atrocities on our soil. Moreover, they were responsible for their deeds at the crime scene - in Belarus. It would be no exaggeration to call Minsk Nuremberg the trial of the Nazis, which took place exactly 70 years ago - January 15 - 29, 1946 - in Minsk.

On October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced 12 Nazi leaders to death by hanging. After the execution of the sentence, the bodies of the executed - under the guise of American soldiers who died in hospitals - were transported to Munich, burned in a local crematorium, and the ashes were secretly scattered in the wind.

Those who were caught or thought to be alive were judged. Martin Bormann, who managed to escape from justice, was sentenced to death in absentia. After the verdict was passed, the defendants, through their lawyers, applied to the Control Commission for Germany with a request for a mitigation of the sentence.

One of the main accusers at the Nuremberg trials, lawyer Robert Jackson, who led the American delegation of 200 people, was ready to grant their request. Three other accusers even before the verdict was pronounced that the death of the main criminals - Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler - allows to reduce the punishment for the rest. However, prosecutors from the Soviet Union - the country that suffered the most losses in World War II - insisted on the death penalty. As a result, within the next two weeks, all applications were rejected. In the prison gym american soldiers three gallows were built to carry out the sentence.

Everyone dies alone

The prisoners were in separate prison cells, each of them was vigilantly monitored. And yet, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering managed to get a capsule with potassium cyanide. On the eve of his execution, at noon on November 15, 1946, he took poison and died. This happened after the former Reichsmarshal was denied his request to replace the hanging by execution.

A few hours later, at about one in the morning on November 16, 1946, a security soldier pushed back the bolt on the cell door. former minister Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop. Colonel Andrus entered the cell and read out the verdict. Two guards tied Ribbentrop's hands behind his back with a black cord and led him to the gallows. He climbed 13 steps to the platform, and here his feet were tied. As is customary in such cases, he was asked about his last wish. And Ribbentrop, according to witnesses, answered in a firm voice: “God will protect Germany, God will be merciful to my soul. My last wish is the unity of Germany, which can only be restored with a mutual understanding of East and West, and let freedom guide the world ... "

When Ribbentrop finished speaking, Master Sergeant John Woods of Texas, who had considerable experience in such executions (he carried out more than 300 of them!), put a black hood on the head of the condemned man and pulled a noose tied around his neck with his own hands. He acted according to the instructions read before the execution by the prison doctor Ludwig Pflucker: “The convict stands on the hatch, which opens with a rope. The condemned falls to the lower tier. Therefore, the very process of death is hidden. Two American doctors certify the death of the executed .

Following Ribbentrop, it was the turn of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel. The last words of the chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces were: "All for Germany!"

The third to be executed was the head of the Nazi secret service, Ernst Kaltenbrunner. He behaved very reservedly, in the last words he was brief. The former Gauleiter of Thuringia, Fritz Sauckel, while still in his cell, began to lament that he was not guilty of anything. Former Reich Minister of the Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg is the only one among those executed who died in silence, refusing even the last pastoral blessing. The rest of the executed did not show themselves. The Gauleiter of the Netherlands Arthur von Seyss-Inquart was the last to be executed. "Ten people in 103 minutes, said Sergeant Woods later. - Fast work» . True, he later admitted that after the execution "required strong drinks" .

A stretcher with the body of Goering was brought into the hall so that he would take a symbolic place under the gallows, and also so that journalists would be convinced of his death.

Intrigues around the execution

The execution took place under the supervision of the so-called "Committee of Four", which included one general from the American, British, French and Soviet armies.

But representatives of the prosecution were not allowed to be executed. It was a kind of revenge of the "Committee of Four" for the fact that during the reading of the guilty verdict in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, the generals were not given places of honor.

The presence of the press was also in question for a long time: representatives of the UK strongly objected. The press waited for a decision in the "Pencil Castle", in the suburbs of Nuremberg. In the end, it was agreed that two representatives from the American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones would be allowed to be executed. In the presence of witnesses, the bodies of the executed were photographed twice in clothes and twice undressed.

To exclude the possibility of worshiping the burial places of executed Nazi criminals, the command of the allied forces decided to burn their bodies and scatter the ashes to the wind.

At the East Munich Cemetery

On October 17, 1946, at 0400, two army trucks drove up to the gymnasium of the Nuremberg prison, accompanied by a limousine and a jeep with a machine gun. The procedure for loading corpses into coffins and coffins into cars was led by American and French generals.

The day before, the US military administration informed the Munich Burial Bureau that a crematorium on the territory of the Eastern Cemetery would be used for the needs of the American army: it is necessary to cremate 12 American servicemen who died of an infectious disease. The number 12, according to the intention of the Americans, was to exclude the potential possibility of linking this action with the execution of the sentence of the Nuremberg Tribunal.

The cars left the prison and headed down the road to Fürth. They were followed by cars with journalists from almost all publications in the world. On the highway near Erlangen, a military jeep blocked the way for journalists. An American officer who left it said that the further advancement of journalists could be dangerous for their lives: the military police had been ordered to shoot to kill if necessary.

At 4:15 p.m., American trucks arrived at Munich's East Cemetery. The crematorium and the territory adjacent to it were cordoned off by American soldiers in advance.
The guards brought in 12 coffins, eleven of which contained the corpses of Nazi criminals. The cremation process was supervised by four American officers. After the burning of the corpses, the remains were crushed by one of the workers of the crematorium, the only German who participated in this procedure. Ashes were poured into 11 black tin urns with serial numbers 1723-1733. The second burial bureau, under the indicated numbers, instead of the names of the hanged Nazi leaders, the fictitious names of American military personnel appear:

• 1723 - Corporal Adam Johnson instead of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering;
• 1724 - Senior Lieutenant Robert Metzor instead of Joachim von Ribbentrop;
• 1725 - Captain Jackson Jackson instead of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel;
• 1726 - Corporal Thomas Marey instead of SS Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunzer;
• 1727 - Corporal Richard Robinson instead of Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg;
• 1728 - William Riley, representative of the administration, instead of the Governor-General of Poland, Hans Frank;
• 1729 - Henry Osborn of the 1/4 division instead of the Minister of the Interior, Dr. Wilhelm Frick;
• 1730 - Abram Goldstein from the 1/4 unit instead of Gauleiter Julius Streicher;
• 1731 - Staff Sergeant Theodore Argyrtopoulus instead of General Manager Fritz Sauckel;
• 1732 - Major Archibald Struthers instead of Colonel General Alfred Jodl;
• 1733 - Senior Sergeant Rex Bailey instead of Reich Minister Arthur Seys-Inquart.

At 22.00 the convoy left the territory of the cemetery. On a truck, accompanied by four American officers, the urns were transported to the villa at the address. Munich-Solln, Heilmansch-trasse 25. The building belonged to the American military authorities and was listed as "Mortuary No. 1". On the evening of October 18, American soldiers cordoned off the area around the Marienklausen Bridge over the Isar River and the Isar Canal.

At about 11:00 pm, an armored car drove out of morgue No. 1, in which there was a metal box with mixed ashes of executed criminals. Under the control of the same four officers, the box was carried to the middle of the bridge. Around midnight, American soldiers slowly poured the ashes into the canal...

After the operation was completed, an official communiqué was issued: “The bodies of Hermann Goering, together with the bodies of criminals executed by the verdict of the International Military Tribunal on October 16 in Nuremberg, were burned, and their ashes were secretly scattered in the wind ...”

This secret is still unknown to the thousands of Munich residents who, on fine days, pass and cycle over this bridge to their favorite resting places on the Isar.

The international trial of the former leaders of Nazi Germany took place from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946 at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (Germany). The original list of defendants included the Nazis in the same order that I have in this post. On October 18, 1945, the indictment was handed over to the International Military Tribunal and transmitted through its secretariat to each of the accused. A month before the start of the trial, each of them was served with an indictment for German. The defendants were asked to write on it their attitude towards the prosecution. Raeder and Lay didn't write anything (Ley's response was, in fact, his suicide shortly after the charges were brought), and the rest wrote what I have on the line: "Last word."

Even before the start of the court hearings, after reading the indictment, on November 25, 1945, Robert Ley committed suicide in the cell. Gustav Krupp was declared terminally ill by the medical board, and the case against him was dismissed pending trial.

Due to the unprecedented gravity of the crimes committed by the defendants, doubts arose whether all democratic norms of legal proceedings should be observed in relation to them. The UK and US prosecutions proposed not to give the defendants the last word, but the French and Soviet sides insisted on the opposite. These words, which have entered into eternity, I will present to you now.

List of accused.

Hermann Wilhelm Göring(German: Hermann Wilhelm Göring), Reich Marshal, Commander-in-Chief of the German Air Force. He was the most important defendant. Sentenced to death by hanging. 2 hours before the execution of the sentence, he was poisoned by potassium cyanide, which was transferred to him with the assistance of E. von der Bach-Zelevsky.

Hitler publicly declared Göring guilty of failing to organize the air defense of the country. April 23, 1945, based on the Law of June 29, 1941, Goering, after a meeting with G. Lammers, F. Bowler, K. Koscher and others, turned to Hitler on the radio, asking for his consent to accept him - Goering - as head of the government . Goering announced that if he did not receive an answer by 22 o'clock, he would consider it an agreement. On the same day, Goering received an order from Hitler forbidding him to take the initiative, at the same time, on the orders of Martin Bormann, Goering was arrested by an SS detachment on charges of treason. Two days later, Goering was replaced as commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe by Field Marshal R. von Greim, stripped of his ranks and awards. In his Political Testament, on April 29, Hitler expelled Goering from the NSDAP and officially named Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz as his successor in his place. On the same day he was transferred to a castle near Berchtesgaden. On May 5, the SS detachment handed over Göring's guards to the Luftwaffe units, and Göring was immediately released. May 8 arrested by American troops in Berchtesgaden.

The last word: "The winner is always the judge, and the loser is the accused!".
In his suicide note, Goering wrote "The Reichsmarshals are not hanged, they leave on their own."

Rudolf Hess(German: Rudolf Heß), Hitler's deputy in charge of the Nazi Party.

During the trial, lawyers declared that he was insane, although Hess gave generally adequate testimony. Was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Soviet judge, who issued a dissenting opinion, insisted on the death penalty. He was serving a life sentence in Berlin in the Spandau prison. After the release of A. Speer in 1965, he remained her only prisoner. Until the end of his days he was devoted to Hitler.

In 1986, the government of the USSR, for the first time since Hess was imprisoned, considered the possibility of his release on humanitarian grounds. In the autumn of 1987, during the presidency of the Soviet Union in the Spandau International Prison, it was supposed to take a decision on his release, "showing mercy and demonstrating the humanity of the new course" of Gorbachev.

On August 17, 1987, 93-year-old Hess was found dead with a wire around his neck. He left a testamentary note handed over to his relatives a month later and written on the back of a letter from his relatives:

"A request to the directors to send this home. Written a few minutes before my death. I thank you all, my beloved, for all the precious things you have done for me. Tell Freiburg that I am extremely sorry that since the Nuremberg trial I have to acted as if I didn't know her. I had no choice, because otherwise all attempts to gain freedom would have been in vain. I was so looking forward to meeting her. I did get her photo and all of you. Your Senior."

The last word: "I don't regret anything."

Joachim von Ribbentrop(German: Ullrich Friedrich Willy Joachim von Ribbentrop), Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler's adviser foreign policy.

He met Hitler at the end of 1932, when he gave him his villa for secret negotiations with von Papen. With his refined manners at the table, Hitler impressed Ribbentrop so much that he soon joined the NSDAP, and later the SS. On May 30, 1933, Ribbentrop was awarded the title of SS Standartenführer, and Himmler became a frequent visitor to his villa.

Hanged by the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal. It was he who signed the non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, which Nazi Germany violated with incredible ease.

The last word: "Wrong people charged."

Personally, I consider him the most disgusting type that appeared at the Nuremberg trials.

Robert Lay(German: Robert Ley), head of the Labor Front, by whose order all trade union leaders of the Reich were arrested. He was charged with three counts - conspiracy to wage a war of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He committed suicide in prison shortly after the indictment, before the actual trial, by hanging himself from a sewer pipe with a towel.

The last word: refused.

(Keitel signs the act of unconditional surrender of Germany)
Wilhelm Keitel(German: Wilhelm Keitel), Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces. It was he who signed the act of surrender of Germany, which ended the Great Patriotic War and the Second world war in Europe. However, Keitel advised Hitler not to attack France and opposed the Barbarossa plan. Both times he resigned, but Hitler did not accept it. In 1942, Keitel dared to object to the Fuhrer for the last time, speaking in defense of the defeated Eastern Front Field Marshal List. The Tribunal rejected Keitel's excuses that he was only following Hitler's orders and found him guilty of all charges. The sentence was carried out on October 16, 1946.

The last word: "An order for a soldier - there is always an order!"

Ernst Kaltenbrunner(German: Ernst Kaltenbrunner), head of the RSHA - SS Imperial Security Main Office and State Secretary of the German Imperial Ministry of the Interior. For numerous crimes against the civilian population and prisoners of war, the court sentenced him to death by hanging. On October 16, 1946, the sentence was carried out.

The last word: "I am not responsible for war crimes, I was only doing my duty as the head of the intelligence agencies, and I refuse to serve as a kind of Himmler's ersatz."

(on right)

Alfred Rosenberg(German Alfred Rosenberg), one of the most influential members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), one of the main ideologists of Nazism, Reich Minister for the Eastern Territories. Sentenced to death by hanging. Rosenberg was the only one of the 10 executed who refused to give the last word on the scaffold.

The last word in court: "I reject the 'conspiracy' charge. Anti-Semitism was only a necessary defensive measure."

(in the center)

Hans Frank(German Dr. Hans Frank), head of the occupied Polish lands. On October 12, 1939, immediately after the occupation of Poland, he was appointed by Hitler as head of the administration for the population of the Polish occupied territories, and then as governor general of occupied Poland. He organized the mass destruction of the civilian population of Poland. Sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on October 16, 1946.

The last word: "I view this trial as a God-pleasing supreme court to sort out and bring to an end the terrible period of Hitler's rule."

Wilhelm Frick(German Wilhelm Frick), Minister of the Interior of the Reich, Reichsleiter, head of the NSDAP deputy group in the Reichstag, lawyer, one of Hitler's closest friends in the early years of the struggle for power.

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg held Frick responsible for bringing Germany under Nazi rule. He was accused of drafting, signing and enforcing a number of laws prohibiting political parties and trade unions, creating a system of concentration camps, encouraging the activities of the Gestapo, persecuting Jews and militarizing the German economy. He was found guilty on counts of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. On October 16, 1946, Frick was hanged.

The last word: "The whole accusation is based on the assumption of participation in a conspiracy."

Julius Streicher(German Julius Streicher), Gauleiter, editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Sturmovik" (German Der Stürmer - Der Stürmer).

He was charged with inciting the murder of Jews, which fell under Charge 4 of the process - crimes against humanity. In response, Streicher called the process "the triumph of world Jewry." According to the test results, his IQ was the lowest of all the defendants. During the examination, Streicher once again told psychiatrists about his anti-Semitic beliefs, but he was found to be sane and capable of answering for his actions, although obsessed with an obsession. He believed that the accusers and judges were Jews and did not try to repent of his deed. According to the psychologists who conducted the survey, his fanatical anti-Semitism is rather a product of a sick psyche, but on the whole he gave the impression of an adequate person. His authority among the other defendants was extremely low, many of them frankly shunned such an odious and fanatical figure as he was. Hanged by the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal for anti-Semitic propaganda and calls for genocide.

The last word: "This process is the triumph of world Jewry."

Hjalmar Shacht(German Hjalmar Schacht), Reich Minister of Economics before the war, Director of the National Bank of Germany, President of the Reichsbank, Reich Minister of Economics, Reich Minister without portfolio. On January 7, 1939, he sent a letter to Hitler stating that the course pursued by the government would lead to the collapse of the German financial system and hyperinflation, and demanded that financial control be transferred to the Reichs Ministry of Finance and the Reichsbank.

In September 1939 he strongly opposed the invasion of Poland. Schacht reacted negatively to the war with the USSR, believing that Germany would lose the war for economic reasons. November 30, 1941 sent Hitler a sharp letter criticizing the regime. January 22, 1942 resigned as Reich Minister.

Schacht had contacts with conspirators against the Hitler regime, although he himself was not a member of the conspiracy. On July 21, 1944, after the failure of the July Plot against Hitler (July 20, 1944), Schacht was arrested and held in the Ravensbrück, Flossenburg and Dachau concentration camps.

The last word: "I don't understand why I've been charged."

This is probably the most difficult case, on October 1, 1946 Schacht was acquitted, then in January 1947 a German denazification court sentenced him to eight years in prison, but on September 2, 1948 he was nevertheless released from custody.

Later he worked in the German banking sector, founded and headed the banking house "Schacht GmbH" in Düsseldorf. June 3, 1970 died in Munich. We can say that he was the luckiest of all the defendants. Although...

Walter Funk(German Walther Funk), German journalist, Nazi Minister of Economics after Schacht, President of the Reichsbank. Sentenced to life imprisonment. Released in 1957.

The last word: "Never in my life have I, either consciously or out of ignorance, done anything that would give rise to such accusations. If, out of ignorance or as a result of delusions, I committed the acts listed in the indictment, then my guilt should be considered from the perspective of my personal tragedy but not as a crime.

(right; left - Hitler)
Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach(German: Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach), head of the Friedrich Krupp concern (Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp). From January 1933 - press secretary of the government, from November 1937 the Reich Minister of Economics and Commissioner General for War Economy, at the same time from January 1939 - President of the Reichsbank.

At the trial in Nuremberg, he was sentenced by the International Military Tribunal to life imprisonment. Released in 1957.

Karl Doenitz(German: Karl Dönitz), Grand Admiral of the Third Reich Fleet, Commander-in-Chief navy Germany, after the death of Hitler and in accordance with his posthumous will - President of Germany.

The Nuremberg Tribunal for war crimes (in particular, the conduct of the so-called unlimited submarine warfare) sentenced him to 10 years in prison. This verdict was contested by some jurists, as the same methods of submarine warfare were widely practiced by the victors. Some of the Allied officers, after the verdict, expressed their sympathy to Doenitz. Doenitz was found guilty on the 2nd (crime against peace) and 3rd (war crimes) counts.

After his release from prison (Spandau in West Berlin), Doenitz wrote his memoirs "10 years and 20 days" (meaning 10 years of command of the fleet and 20 days of the presidency).

The last word: "None of the charges has anything to do with me. American inventions!"

Erich Raeder(German Erich Raeder), Grand Admiral, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy of the Third Reich. On January 6, 1943, Hitler ordered Raeder to disband the surface fleet, after which Raeder demanded his resignation and was replaced by Karl Doenitz on January 30, 1943. Raeder received the honorary position of chief inspector of the fleet, but in fact he had no rights and obligations.

Captured in May 1945 Soviet troops and was transferred to Moscow. By the verdict of the Nuremberg trials, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1945 to 1955 in prison. Petitioned to replace his prison sentence with execution; the control commission found that "it cannot increase the punishment." January 17, 1955 released for health reasons. Wrote memoirs "My Life".

The last word: refused.

Baldur von Schirach(German: Baldur Benedikt von Schirach), head of the Hitler Youth, then Gauleiter of Vienna. At the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He served his entire sentence in the Spandau military prison in Berlin. Released September 30, 1966.

The last word: "All troubles - from racial politics."

I fully agree with this statement.

Fritz Sauckel(German: Fritz Sauckel), leader of the forced deportations to the Reich of labor from the occupied territories. Sentenced to death for war crimes and crimes against humanity (mainly for the deportation of foreign workers). Hanged.

The last word: "The gap between the ideal of a socialist society, hatched and defended by me, in the past a sailor and a worker, and these terrible events - concentration camps - deeply shocked me."

Alfred Jodl(German: Alfred Jodl), Chief of the Operations Department of the Supreme High Command of the Armed Forces, Colonel General. At dawn on October 16, 1946, Colonel-General Alfred Jodl was hanged. His body was cremated, and the ashes were secretly removed and scattered. Yodel hosted Active participation in planning the mass extermination of civilians in the occupied territories. On May 7, 1945, on behalf of Admiral K. Doenitz, he signed in Reims the general surrender of the German armed forces to the Western Allies.

As Albert Speer recalled, "Jodl's accurate and restrained defense made a strong impression. It seems that he was one of the few who managed to rise above the situation." Jodl argued that a soldier cannot be held responsible for the decisions of politicians. He insisted that he honestly fulfilled his duty, obeying the Fuhrer, and considered the war a fair cause. The tribunal found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Before his death, in one of his letters, he wrote: "Hitler buried himself under the ruins of the Reich and his hopes. Let whoever wants to curse him for this, but I can't." Jodl was fully acquitted when the case was reviewed by the Munich court in 1953 (!).

The last word: "The mixture of just accusations and political propaganda is regrettable."

Martin Bormann(German: Martin Bormann), head of the party chancellery, accused in absentia. Chief of Staff of the Deputy Fuhrer "since July 3, 1933), head of the NSDAP Party Chancellery" since May 1941) and Hitler's personal secretary (since April 1943). Reichsleiter (1933), Reich Minister without Portfolio, SS Obergruppenführer, SA Obergruppenführer.

Associated with him interesting story.

At the end of April 1945, Bormann was with Hitler in Berlin, in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery. After the suicide of Hitler and Goebbels, Bormann disappeared. However, already in 1946, Arthur Axman, the head of the Hitler Youth, who, together with Martin Bormann, tried to leave Berlin on May 1-2, 1945, said during interrogation that Martin Bormann died (more precisely, committed suicide) in front of him on May 2, 1945.

He confirmed that he saw Martin Bormann and personal doctor Hitler Ludwig Stumpfegger, who were lying on their backs near the bus station in Berlin, where the battle was going on. He crawled close to their faces and clearly distinguished the smell of bitter almonds - it was potassium cyanide. The bridge over which Bormann was going to escape from Berlin was blocked by Soviet tanks. Bormann chose to bite through the ampoule.

However, these testimonies were not considered sufficient evidence of Bormann's death. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg tried Bormann in absentia and sentenced him to death. The lawyers insisted that their client was not subject to trial, since he was already dead. The court did not consider the arguments convincing, considered the case and delivered a verdict, while stipulating that Bormann, in the event of detention, has the right to file a request for pardon within the prescribed time frame.

In the 1970s, while laying a road in Berlin, workers discovered the remains, which were later tentatively identified as the remains of Martin Bormann. His son - Martin Borman Jr. - agreed to provide his blood for DNA analysis of the remains.

The analysis confirmed that the remains really belong to Martin Bormann, who actually tried to leave the bunker and get out of Berlin on May 2, 1945, but realizing that this was impossible, he committed suicide by taking poison (traces of an ampoule with potassium cyanide were found in the teeth of the skeleton). Therefore, the "Bormann case" can safely be considered closed.

In the USSR and Russia, Borman is known not only as a historical figure, but also as a character in the film "Seventeen Moments of Spring" (where Yuri Vizbor played him) - and, in this regard, a character in jokes about Stirlitz.

Franz von Papen(German: Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen), German chancellor before Hitler, then ambassador to Austria and Turkey. Was justified. However, in February 1947, he again appeared before the denazification commission and was sentenced to eight months in prison as the main war criminal.

Von Papen tried unsuccessfully to restart his political career in the 1950s. In his later years he lived in Benzenhofen Castle in Upper Swabia and published many books and memoirs trying to justify his policies in the 1930s, drawing parallels between this period and the beginning of the Cold War. He died on May 2, 1969 in Obersasbach (Baden).

The last word: "The accusation horrified me, firstly, by the realization of irresponsibility, as a result of which Germany was plunged into this war, which turned into a world catastrophe, and secondly, by the crimes that were committed by some of my compatriots. The latter are inexplicable from a psychological point of view. It seems to me that the years of atheism and totalitarianism are to blame for everything. It was they who turned Hitler into a pathological liar."

Arthur Seyss-Inquart(German: Dr. Arthur Seyß-Inquart), chancellor of Austria, then imperial commissioner of occupied Poland and Holland. In Nuremberg, Seyss-Inquart was charged with crimes against peace, planning and unleashing a war of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was found guilty on all counts except criminal conspiracy. After the announcement of the verdict, Seyss-Inquart admitted his responsibility in the last word.

The last word: "Death by hanging - well, I did not expect anything else ... I hope that this execution is the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War ... I believe in Germany."

Albert Speer(German: Albert Speer), Imperial Reich Minister for Armaments and War Industry (1943-1945).

In 1927, Speer obtained a license as an architect at the Technische Hochschule Munich. Due to the depression taking place in the country, there was no work for the young architect. Speer updated the interior of the villa for free to the head of staff Western District- to the NSAC Kreisleiter Hanke, who, in turn, recommended the architect Gauleiter Goebbels to rebuild the meeting room and furnish the rooms. After that, Speer receives an order - the design of the May Day rally in Berlin. And then the party congress in Nuremberg (1933). He used red panels and the figure of an eagle, which he proposed to make with a wingspan of 30 meters. Leni Riefenstahl captured in her documentary-staged film "The Victory of Faith" the grandeur of the procession at the opening of the party congress. This was followed by the reconstruction of the NSDAP headquarters in Munich in the same 1933. Thus began Speer's architectural career. Hitler looked everywhere for new energetic people who could be relied upon in the near future. Considering himself a connoisseur of painting and architecture, and possessing some abilities in this area, Hitler chose Speer in his inner circle, which, combined with the latter's strong careerist aspirations, determined his entire future fate.

The last word: "The process is necessary. Even an authoritarian state does not remove responsibility from each individual for the terrible crimes committed."

(left)
Constantin von Neurath(German Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath), in the early years of Hitler's reign, Minister of Foreign Affairs, then Viceroy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Neurath was accused in the Nuremberg Court of having “assisted in the preparation of the war, … participated in the political planning and preparation by the Nazi conspirators aggressive wars and wars that violate international treaties, ... authorized, directed and took part in war crimes ... and in crimes against humanity ... including in particular crimes against persons and property in the occupied territories." Neurath was found guilty on all four counts and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.In 1953, Neurath was released due to poor health, aggravated by a myocardial infarction suffered in prison.

The last word: "I have always been against accusations without a possible defense."

Hans Fritsche(German: Hans Fritzsche), Head of the Press and Broadcasting Department in the Ministry of Propaganda.

During the fall of the Nazi regime, Fritsche was in Berlin and capitulated along with the last defenders of the city on May 2, 1945, surrendering to the Red Army. He appeared before the Nuremberg trials, where, together with Julius Streicher (due to the death of Goebbels), he represented Nazi propaganda. Unlike Streicher, who was sentenced to death, Fritsche was acquitted on all three charges: the court found it proven that he did not call for crimes against humanity, did not participate in war crimes and conspiracies to seize power. Like the two others acquitted at Nuremberg (Hjalmar Schacht and Franz von Papen), Fritsche, however, was soon tried for other crimes by the denazification commission. After receiving 9 years in prison, Fritsche was released for health reasons in 1950 and died of cancer three years later.

The last word: "This is a terrible accusation of all time. Only one thing can be worse: the coming accusation that the German people will bring against us for abusing their idealism."

Heinrich Himmler(German: Heinrich Luitpold Himmler), one of the main political and military figures of the Third Reich. Reichsführer SS (1929-1945), Reich Minister of the Interior of Germany (1943-1945), Reichsleiter (1934), head of the RSHA (1942-1943). Found guilty of numerous war crimes, including genocide. Since 1931, Himmler has been creating his own secret service - the SD, at the head of which he put Heydrich.

From 1943, Himmler became the Imperial Minister of the Interior, and after the failure of the July Plot (1944), he became the commander of the Reserve Army. Beginning in the summer of 1943, Himmler, through his proxies, began to make contacts with representatives of Western intelligence agencies in order to conclude a separate peace. Hitler, who learned about this, on the eve of the collapse of the Third Reich, expelled Himmler from the NSDAP as a traitor and deprived him of all ranks and positions.

Leaving the Reich Chancellery in early May 1945, Himmler went to the Danish border with someone else's passport in the name of Heinrich Hitzinger, who had been shot shortly before and looked a bit like Himmler, but on May 21, 1945 he was arrested by the British military authorities and on May 23 he committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide .

Himmler's body was cremated and the ashes scattered in a forest near Lüneburg.

Paul Joseph Goebbels(German: Paul Joseph Goebbels) - Reich Minister public education and propaganda of Germany (1933-1945), the imperial propaganda leader of the NSDAP (since 1929), the Reichsleiter (1933), the penultimate chancellor of the Third Reich (April-May 1945).

In his political testament, Hitler appointed Goebbels as his successor as Chancellor, but the very next day after the Fuhrer's suicide, Goebbels and his wife Magda committed suicide by poisoning their six young children. "There will be no act of surrender under my signature!" - said the new chancellor, when he learned about the Soviet demand for unconditional surrender. May 1 at 21 o'clock Goebbels took potassium cyanide. His wife Magda, before committing suicide after her husband, told her young children: "Don't be afraid, now the doctor will give you an inoculation, which is given to all children and soldiers." When the children, under the influence of morphine, fell into a half-asleep state, she herself put a crushed ampoule with potassium cyanide into the mouth of each child (there were six of them).

It is impossible to imagine what feelings she experienced at that moment.

And of course, the Fuhrer of the Third Reich:

Winners in Paris

Hitler behind Hermann Göring, Nuremberg, 1928.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Venice, June 1934.

Hitler, Mannerheim and Ruthie in Finland, 1942.

Hitler and Mussolini, Nuremberg, 1940.

Adolf Gitler(German: Adolf Hitler) - the founder and central figure of Nazism, founder of the totalitarian dictatorship of the Third Reich, Fuhrer of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from July 29, 1921, Reich Chancellor of National Socialist Germany from January 31, 1933, Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor of Germany from August 2 1934, Supreme Commander of the German Armed Forces in World War II.

The generally accepted version of Hitler's suicide

On April 30, 1945, in Berlin surrounded by Soviet troops and realizing complete defeat, Hitler, together with his wife Eva Braun, committed suicide, after killing his beloved dog Blondie.
In Soviet historiography, the point of view was established that Hitler took poison (potassium cyanide, like most Nazis who committed suicide), however, according to eyewitnesses, he shot himself. There is also a version according to which Hitler and Brown first took both poisons, after which the Fuhrer shot himself in the temple (thus using both instruments of death).

Even the day before, Hitler gave the order to deliver canisters of gasoline from the garage (to destroy the bodies). On April 30, after dinner, Hitler said goodbye to people from his inner circle and, shaking hands with them, retired to his apartment with Eva Braun, from where the sound of a shot was soon heard. Shortly after 3:15 pm, Hitler's servant Heinz Linge, accompanied by his adjutant Otto Günsche, Goebbels, Bormann and Axmann, entered the Fuhrer's quarters. Dead Hitler sat on the couch; there was a blood stain on his temple. Eva Braun lay next to her, with no visible external injuries. Günsche and Linge wrapped Hitler's body in a soldier's blanket and carried it into the garden of the Reich Chancellery; Eve's body was carried out after him. The corpses were placed near the entrance to the bunker, doused with gasoline and burned. On May 5, the bodies were found on a piece of blanket sticking out of the ground and fell into the hands of the Soviet SMERSH. The body was identified, in part, with the help of Hitler's dentist, who confirmed the authenticity of the corpse's dentures. In February 1946, Hitler's body, along with the bodies of Eva Braun and the Goebbels family - Joseph, Magda, 6 children, was buried at one of the NKVD bases in Magdeburg. In 1970, when the territory of this base was to be transferred to the GDR, at the suggestion of Yu. V. Andropov, approved by the Politburo, the remains of Hitler and others buried with him were dug up, cremated to ashes and then thrown into the Elbe. Only the dentures and part of the skull with the entrance bullet hole (discovered separately from the corpse) survived. They are stored in the Russian archives, as well as the side handles of the sofa on which Hitler shot himself, with traces of blood. However, Hitler's biographer Werner Maser expresses doubts that the discovered corpse and part of the skull really belonged to Hitler.

On October 18, 1945, the indictment was handed over to the International Military Tribunal and transmitted through its secretariat to each of the accused. A month before the start of the trial, each of them was handed an indictment in German.

Results: international military tribunal sentenced:
To death by hanging: Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, Bormann (in absentia), Jodl (who was fully acquitted posthumously, when the case was reviewed by a Munich court in 1953).
To life imprisonment: Hess, Funk, Raeder.
By 20 years in prison: Schirach, Speer.
To 15 years in prison: Neurata.
To 10 years in prison: Denica.
Justified: Fritsche, Papen, Shakht.

Tribunal recognized as criminal organizations SS, SD, SA, Gestapo and the leadership of the Nazi Party. The decision to recognize the Supreme Command and the General Staff as criminal was not made, which caused the disagreement of the member of the tribunal from the USSR.

A number of convicts filed petitions: Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Sauckel, Jodl, Keitel, Seyss-Inquart, Funk, Doenitz and Neurath - for pardon; Raeder - on the replacement of life imprisonment with the death penalty; Goering, Jodl and Keitel - about replacing hanging with execution if the request for pardon is not granted. All of these applications were denied.

The death penalty was carried out on the night of October 16, 1946 in the building of the Nuremberg prison.

Having passed a guilty verdict on the main Nazi criminals, the International Military Tribunal recognized aggression as the gravest crime of an international character. The Nuremberg trials are sometimes referred to as the "Court of History" because they had a significant impact on the final defeat of Nazism. Funk and Raeder, sentenced to life imprisonment, were pardoned in 1957. After Speer and Schirach were released in 1966, only Hess remained in prison. The right-wing forces of Germany repeatedly demanded that he be pardoned, but the victorious powers refused to commute the sentence. On August 17, 1987, Hess was found hanged in his cell.

With the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, their new fascist ideology was reinforced by official legislation. The criminal law was constantly changing in the direction of strengthening repression, expanding the compositions punishable by death, especially on racial, political and religious grounds.

So the atrocities of the Nazis during the Second World War were put on an ideological and legislative basis. And the concentration camps organized by them became real factories of death. For example, on some days in Auschwitz, from 10 to 12 thousand people were exterminated. They were shot, killed with the poison gas "Cyclone-5" in gas chambers and destroyed in other ways. The corpses were burnt in crematoria that were open day and night. The Nazis did not spare even children. Former prisoner Yanov Gerron at the Nuremberg trials said: “In July 1943, 164 boys were selected in the Birkenau camp, taken to the hospital, where they were all killed with injections in the heart of carboxylic acid!”

In the occupied territories, the Nazis used a technique popular in ancient world when the conquerors ensured their immunity with the lives of the hostages. And if this did not help, then in retaliation for the attack, a massacre of local residents was simply arranged. At times, entire settlements were subjected to reprisals.

For example, on October 21, 1941, 2,300 residents of Kragujevits were executed by the Nazis for attacks by Yugoslav partisans.

On May 27, 1942, the chief of the SS, the "imperial protector" of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed "The Hangman", was killed. In retaliation, on Hitler's personal order, hundreds of members of the Czechoslovak resistance were shot and two settlements were destroyed - Lidice and Lezhaki, in which all the inhabitants were killed.

But the Nazis were especially atrocious in the occupied territories of the USSR. In the village of Pochinok, the Germans drove all the old people and children into the premises of the collective farm administration, closed the doors and burned everyone. On August 29, 1941, about 11 thousand people were executed by the Nazis in Kamenetz-Podolsky. On October 27, 1941, in the Lithuanian city of Kovno, fascists executed 9,000 people, including more than 4,000 children. They carried out a terrible massacre on the population of captured Kyiv, where they killed 52,000 people.

For the mass extermination of people in fascist camps and prisons, the Nazis used both wild medieval executions and torture, as well as the latest inventions for killing people.

Here are just a few examples of their recreation of medieval executions:

Welding alive. In 1943, in the Treblinka concentration camp, the Nazis threw two bound girls accused of participating in the Resistance into barrels filled with water and lit fires around them.

Burning alive. In the village of Donets, Oryol region, the Nazis, having tied 17-year-old Nadezhda Maltseva, ordered her mother, Maria Maltseva, to cover her daughter with straw and set her on fire. The mother fainted. Then the Nazis themselves overlaid the girl with straw and set it on fire. The mother, awakened from a faint, threw herself into the fire and pulled her daughter out of it. The Nazis killed the mother with a blow from the butt, and the daughter was shot dead and thrown into the fire.

Tearing apart. If in France the assassins of kings were torn to pieces with the help of horses, then the Nazis did this with captured Soviet soldiers with the help of tanks.

Dousing with cold water in the cold. This is how the Nazis executed the Soviet General Karbyshev.

Guillotine. Although in the rest of Europe the guillotine was already a thing of the past, in Nazi Germany it was experiencing its second youth. About 40,000 people were beheaded in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945.

Especially often the guillotine was used in the Plötzensee prison in Berlin. There, she beheaded the Czech writer Julius Fucik, the author of Reportage with a noose around her neck, the Russian princess, the heroine of the resistance movement in France, Vera Obolenskaya, and the Tatar Soviet poet, underground fighter Moussa Jalil.

The massacre, blatant in its medieval cruelty, took place in the small Hungarian village of Verebe. The Nazis occupied the village, captured the inhabitants, brought them to the forge and began to torture them - they pulled out their nails with tongs, broke their ribs, and burned them with a red-hot iron. And then they were alternately dragged to the anvil, put the head of their victim on it and smashed the skull with a sledgehammer.

The documents available at the Nuremberg Tribunal featured the fact that Nazi punishers were sawing 918 people in the occupied territories of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

However, individual executions required time and effort. The Nazis, considering themselves the highest race, constantly tried to create new types of mass executions.

For the disabled and the mentally ill, they created a whole euthanasia program "T-4" ("Action Tiergartenstrasse 4") to kill them. It was enough for a person to be ill for more than five years, and he already became an object for this death program. But the Nazis considered gas chambers to be the most effective murder weapon, and therefore they were widely used. For example, only on October 25, 1943, about two thousand Greek women were executed by the Nazis in the Auschwitz gas chamber.

The German Nazis also searched for new colors in old executions. The good old hanging seemed too "insipid" to them. Unlike traditional hanging, when the convict fell in a loop under the influence of his own weight, the Nazis pulled the condemned up, doing work against the direction of gravity. Instead of a quick fracture of the cervical vertebrae and larynx, they were slowly broken out of the spine. This is how 31 members of the intelligence network, acting in the interests of the Soviet Union and known as the Red Chapel, were executed.

Subsequently, the Nazis further improved the method of hanging. Instead of ropes, they started using thick metal piano strings. This added to the suffering of their victims. So were executed eight German officers who tried to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944.

In the end, retribution overtook the leaders of Nazi Germany. By the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal, they were also hanged. True, on ropes and in the traditional "humane" way.

On January 5, 1946, a public execution took place in our city. The only one on the Neva banks for the entire XX century. On the current Kalinin Square, not far from the place where the Gigant cinema stood, and now the Giant Hall concert hall is located, eight German war criminals were hanged, who committed their atrocities mainly on the territory of the Pskov region.

The Germans were brave

On the morning of that day, almost the entire square was filled with people. Here is how one of the eyewitnesses describes what he saw: “The cars, in the backs of which the Germans were standing, drove in reverse under the gallows. Our escort soldiers deftly, but without haste, put nooses around their necks. The cars moved slowly forward. The Nazis swayed in the air. The people began to disperse, and a sentry was placed at the gallows.

Newspapers didn’t write about where and when the execution would take place, and they didn’t talk about it on the radio, ”he recalled in a conversation with Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondents National artist Russian Ivan Krasko. - But thanks to rumors, Leningraders knew everything. I was then fifteen years old, and this sight attracted me. They brought the criminals, the people who had gathered on the square shouted curses at them - the Nazis killed their loved ones for many of them. I was amazed that the Germans held out courageously. Only one before the execution began to scream heart-rendingly. Another tried to calm him down, and the third looked at them with undisguised contempt.

But when the support was knocked out from under the feet of the executed, the mood of the crowd changed, - continues Ivan Ivanovich. - Someone seemed to be numb, someone lowered his head, some fainted. I also felt unwell, I quickly left the square and went home. What I saw then, I remember for the rest of my life. And even now, when some movie shows an execution, I turn off the TV.

And here is what the blockade survivor Nina Yarovtseva, who in 1946 lived near Kalinin Square, recalls:

On the day this happened, my mother had a shift at the factory. But Aunt Tanya, our neighbor, went to watch the execution and took me with her. I was then eleven years old. We arrived early, but there were a lot of people. I remember the crowd making a strange noise, as if everyone was agitated for some reason. When the truck with the gallows drove off, the Germans hung and fluttered, for some reason I suddenly got scared and hid behind Aunt Tanya. Although she hated the Nazis terribly and wanted them all to be killed throughout the war. Having found out where we were, my mother attacked Aunt Tanya: “Why did you drag the child there ?! You like it - see for yourself! Then for several nights in a row I hardly slept: I had nightmares, I woke up. A few years later, my mother admitted that in the evenings she dripped valerian into my tea.

An interesting detail. According to one of the eyewitnesses, when the sentry was removed from the square, unknown persons removed the boots from the hanged men.

An eye for an eye?

April 19, 1943, when during the Great Patriotic War a turning point was outlined, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR appeared with the long title "On punishment measures for the Nazi villains guilty of killing and torturing the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices." According to the decree, "fascist villains convicted of murdering and torturing the civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, as well as spies and traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens are punishable by death by hanging." And further: “The execution of sentences should be carried out publicly, in front of the people, and the bodies of the hanged should be left on the gallows for several days, so that everyone knows how they are punished and what retribution will befall anyone who commits violence and reprisals against the civilian population and who betrays his homeland. ".

The essence of the decree is to treat the fascists the way they treat our people, - says a professor at the Institute of History of the St. Petersburg state university Viktor Ivanov. - It was reminiscent of revenge, but in the harsh conditions of wartime, such a position of the Soviet authorities was completely justified.

Although there are some nuances here. According to the professor, the German invaders publicly executed the partisans and those who helped them. However, from the point of view international law partisans, speaking modern language, are illegal armed formations. As for the captured Red Army soldiers, they were usually not killed, although many died of starvation, disease, and unbearable working conditions. The German command believed that they did not seem to exist, because, unlike Germany, Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Convention of 1929, which regulates how prisoners of war should be treated. Joseph Stalin is credited with the following phrase: "We have no prisoners, but there are traitors and traitors to the motherland." Therefore, the Nazis treated the captured British, Americans and French more humanely than with Soviet citizens.

Understanding all this, the Soviet authorities sought to ensure that people who did not commit serious crimes did not fall under the decree: enemy soldiers and officers who only performed military duty, says Viktor Ivanov. - Investigators, prosecutors, judges were instructed to prepare these trials very carefully.

After the decree was issued, Smersh investigators began to work in the liberated territories. They tried to identify the perpetrators of terrible crimes. Then this information came to the camps where the German prisoners of war were. The suspects were arrested.

During the preparation of the Leningrad trial, more than a hundred witnesses from among Soviet citizens were interrogated, but only eighteen were called to court, the professor emphasizes. - Only those whose testimony did not raise any doubts.

And why did the process take place in Leningrad, although from a legal point of view it should have been held in Pskov? Indeed, on the territory of this region, the defendants mainly repaired their atrocities.

Apparently, the goal was to show the people of Leningrad who was the cause of their incredible suffering during the years of the blockade, - Viktor Ivanov believes.

Among the defendants was Major General

Petersburgers are well acquainted with the Vyborg Palace of Culture, located not far from the Finland Station, where, in particular, performances are shown by theater troupes touring our city. This building was built in 1927, on the tenth anniversary of October revolution. It was here at the end of December 1945 that the trial of eleven German war criminals began.

The process was widely covered in the newspapers. For example, in Leningradskaya Pravda every day, including January 1, large articles appeared. There was an interpreter in the hall, a German by nationality. He gave a receipt that he would translate very accurately from Russian into German and vice versa.

The most notable figure among them was Major General Heinrich Remlinger, who was 63 at the time of his execution. His military career began in 1902. He was the military commandant of Pskov and at the same time led the district commandant's offices subordinate to him, as well as "special purpose units." In February 1945 he was taken prisoner.

The materials of the process proved that Remlinger organized fourteen punitive expeditions, during which several villages and villages were burned, about eight thousand people were killed, mostly women and children, says the doctor historical sciences Nikita Lomagin.

During the court hearings, the major general tried to justify himself by saying that he was only following the orders of his superiors.

Among the defendants was 26-year-old Corporal Erwin Skotky. A native of the city of Koenigsberg, now Kaliningrad, the son of a policeman, since 1935 a member of the Hitler Youth Union.

At the initial stage of the Great Patriotic War, Skotki was engaged in issuing uniforms to the servicemen of one of the Wehrmacht units, says Viktor Ivanov. - However, he was not satisfied with the small salary: not everyone knows this, but during the war, German soldiers received salaries in their hands. And then he was offered a promotion and a higher salary, but in a punitive detachment. Scotty agreed without hesitation. At the trial, he pretended to be a fool: they say, he did not know that he would have to burn villages and shoot people. Allegedly, he thought that he would only protect cargo and prisoners of war. Skotki identified several witnesses at once.

Note that the three defendants managed to escape the gallows. Their guilt was not so great, but because they received various terms of hard labor.

The death penalty has been abolished

In 1945-1946, the trials of war criminals with subsequent public executions took place in various regions of the country - in the Crimea, Krasnodar Territory, Ukraine, Belarus. 88 people were hanged, eighteen of them were generals. Work to identify such criminals continued in the future, but the execution of the convicts soon ceased.

The fact is that in May 1947, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the abolition of the death penalty” was published. Paragraph 2 read: "for crimes punishable by death under existing laws, apply in peacetime imprisonment in labor camps for a period of 25 years."

An interesting fact: after the end of the Great Patriotic War, there were 66,000 German prisoners of war on the territory of our city and region. Almost 59 thousand of them subsequently returned to their homeland.

BY THE WAY

In addition to the fascist invaders, the terrible atrocities in Leningrad region repaired by traitors who had gone over to their side. In the forties, fifties and even sixties, trials of these people took place in various cities of the region. As a rule, they were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. There were no cases of public executions.

In June 1970, in Leningrad, if not the very first, then one of the first attempts to hijack an aircraft abroad was made. She was not successful. One of those convicted in this case, Eduard Kuznetsov, subsequently wrote the book Step Left, Step Right. The author recalls that in the camps he met people who were serving sentences for collaborating with the invaders. According to Kuznetsov, they all unanimously denied that they had participated in terrible actions against the civilian population.

PSYCHOLOGIST'S OPINION

Dangerous sight

Such an instinct of the crowd is a kind of atavism, a relic deeply rooted in our nature, says psychologist Yevgeny Krainev. - But if, after such a spectacle, a survey is conducted among the "spectators", then very few will say that they experienced positive emotions. Most simply tickle their nerves, people try in such a strange way to suppress the fear of death in their souls. In any case, it does not bring anything positive either for a single person or for the crowd. Such spectacles are especially dangerous for children and teenagers. Even in the case when a just punishment overtakes the obviously guilty.

HOW ARE THEM?

The world still executes in public

Everything in the twentieth century more countries started abolishing the death penalty. Today, this measure of punishment is not applied in 130 states. However, there are 68 countries in the world that retain the death penalty. In some of them, people are still publicly deprived of their lives. These are, in particular, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, North Korea, Somalia.

Execution of German war criminals in Leningrad in 1946.