Using the April 19, 1943, secret decree of the Presidium, which provided a legal basis for the punishment of German war criminals and collaborators, Abakumov proposed trying three captured German officers, including Langheld, and one Soviet collaborator. Abakumov especially emphasized SMERSH’s possession of new proof that the occupiers had used gas vans for mass killings not only in the Krasnodar Region but also in Kharkov and Smolensk, where, in all, 160,000 inhabitants were executed.
Abakumov proposed using eighty-nine witnesses who had testified about German atrocities, materials of the ChGK, and medical reports of exhumations by leading Soviet medical experts, including academician Nikolai Burdenko (who a few months later chaired the commission investigating the exhumed bodies of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest) and Viktor Prozorovsky, USSR chief medical expert.
Abakumov also attached a draft decision to his report, mandating that the trial be held in Kharkov on December 10–12, 1943.15 The draft proposed that Shcherbakov, a secretary of the Central Committee and head of the GlavPURKKA; Konstantin Gorshenin, the new chief USSR prosecutor (appointed on November 13, 1943); and Abakumov should organize the trial. As events in early December 1943 demonstrate, Abakumov’s plan for the Kharkov trial was approved, but the trial proposed in Smolensk was postponed.
The German atrocities in Kharkov began after the city’s occupation by the 6th German Army under Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau on October 24, 1941. Before capturing the city, on October 10, von Reichenau, an anti-Semite and supporter of the SS-Einsatzgruppen activity, issued his infamous order to the troops in the Eastern territories:
The soldier in the Eastern territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology…
Therefore the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry. The Army has to aim at another purpose, i.e., the annihilation of revolts in [the] hinterland which, as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews.16
The German occupation continued until February 16, 1943, when the Soviet troops of the Voronezh Front liberated the city. But on March 15, 1943, the SS-Panzerkorps recaptured Kharkov.17 This corps included a group called Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (commanded by SS-Gruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, one of Hitler’s closest confidants) and 3.SS-Panzer-Division Totenkopf (commanders: SS-Obergruppenführer Theodor Eicke, killed February 26, 1943, and SS-Obergruppenführer Max Simon), also mentioned as guilty parties in Abakumov’s indictment because their military actions had resulted in the massacre of retreating Soviet troops. Historian Charles Sydnor described the behavior of the Totenkopf division: ‘The Russians had abandoned most of their vehicles and equipment and were trying to escape on foot… The SSTK [Totenkopf] First Panzergrenadier Regiment… methodically cut down the panicked herds of stampeding Russians fleeing.’18
The other SS-troops were no better. In his memoirs, Curzio Malaparte, an Italian officer, recalled his conversation with Sepp Dietrich, commander of Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, in Berlin in 1942: ‘I told [Dietrich] about the Russian prisoners in the Smolensk camp who fed on the corpses of their comrades… Dietrich burst out laughing: “Haben sie ihnen geschmeckt?—Did they enjoy eating them?” he laughed opening his small pink-rooted fish-mouth, showing his crowded sharp fishlike teeth.’19
The Nazi leadership considered the recapturing of Kharkov so important that Heinrich Himmler paid a visit to the city, where, on April 23, 1943, he gave a speech to the SS Panzer divisions praising their ‘dreadful and terrible reputation’.20 Finally, on August 23, 1943, the Soviet troops of the Voronezh, Southwestern, and Steppe fronts recaptured Kharkov, and SMERSH started preparing the trial.
On December 3, 1943, the 6th (Investigation) Department of GUKR wrote a draft indictment of four captured German officers and two Russian collaborators being kept in Moscow Lubyanka Prison.21 From December 5 to 15, Abakumov remained in constant contact with Stalin and other Party leaders, coordinating all details of the future show trial. During the trial he reported to the leadership every day, and, until the end of the trial, the trial documents were routinely altered according to instructions from Moscow.
The trial took place in Kharkov from December 15 to 18, 1943, and was the first trial of German servicemen for war crimes. The Military Tribunal of the 4th Ukrainian Front, presided over by Major General of Justice A. N. Myasnikov, tried four defendants—three Germans and one Russian (for some unknown reason, only three Germans and one Soviet defendant were present at the trial), and accused six high-ranking German military, intelligence, and military police officers of war crimes. As in Krasnodar, the court appointed three defense counselors from Moscow. Renowned Soviet writers and journalists, including Aleksei Tolstoi, Konstantin Simonov, and Ilya Ehrenburg, were present, along with foreign journalists, and the trial was filmed.22
The indictment prepared by GUKR pronounced:
Investigation has established that the atrocities, violence, and plunder in the town and Region of Kharkov were committed by officers and men of the German Army and in particular by: SS Division ‘Adolf Hitler’, commanded by Obergruppenfuehrer of SS troops Dietrich; SS Division ‘Totenkopf’, commanded by Gruppenfuehrer of SS troops Simon; the German Punitive Organs: the Kharkov SD Sonderkommando led by its commander, Sturmbannfuehrer Hanebitter; the group of German Secret police in the town of Kharkov, headed by Polizei Kommissar Karchan and his deputy—Police Secretary Wulf; the 560th group of Secret Field Police attached to the staff of the 6th German Army—Polizei Kommissar Mehritz; the defendants in the present case: Reinhard Retzlaff [Retzlaw in the Russian documents], official of the 560th Group of the German Secret Field Police; Wilhelm Langheld, Captain of German Military Counter Espionage Service; Hans Rietz [Ritz in the Russian documents], Assistant Commander of the SS Company SD Sonderkommando; Mikhail Bulanov, chauffeur of the Kharkov SD Sonderkommando.
The preliminary examination has established the system followed:
Asphyxiation with carbon monoxide in specially equipped automobile ‘murder vans’ of many thousands of Soviet people;
Brutal massacres of peaceful Soviet citizens and destruction of towns and villages of temporary occupied territory;
Mass extermination of old people, women, and small children;
Shooting, burning, and brutal treatment of Soviet wounded and prisoners of war.
All this constitutes a flagrant violation of the rules for the conduct of war established by international conventions, and of all generally accepted legal standards.23
The prosecutor’s interrogation of the defendants Langheld, Retzlaff, Rietz, and Bulanov in the court went smoothly. Basically, they repeated what had already been included in the detailed part of the indictment. Apparently, this was a typical well-rehearsed show trial, albeit, for once, presenting accurate accusations. Evidently, the defendants learned their roles well while they were held in the Lubyanka. One of the Russian courtroom translators, Anna Stesnova, was even an officer of the 1st Section of the 2nd GUKR Department. The prosecution’s questions focused mainly on the killing of Soviet citizens in gas vans and by shooting. On December 16, Langheld testified that in May 1942 he had witnessed how German soldiers forced prisoners to enter a gas van: