4. Plenipotentiary SS-Obergruppenführer BECKERLE Adolf, born 1902, German Ambassador to Bulgaria, former Polizeipresident of Frankfurt-on-Main and Lodz.
During interrogations, BECKERLE testified that Hitler had appointed him Ambassador to Bulgaria because he was an active functionary of the Fascist Party. He actively tried to involve Bulgaria in the war against the USSR and the Allies.
On BECKERLE’s demand, the Bulgarian Fascist government organized provocations against Soviet diplomatic representatives in Bulgaria.
In 1943, [Beckerle] organized an anti-Soviet exhibition in Sofia for anti-Soviet propaganda purposes.
On BECKERLE’s demand, the Bulgarian Fascist government intensified repressive measures against partisans.
5. Lt. General STAHEL Reiner, born 1892, head of the special staff at Hitler’s headquarters and military commandant of Warsaw and Rome.
During interrogations, STAHEL testified that, beginning in 1918 and until 1925, while in Finland, he was among the organizers of the Schutzkorps created to fight the Red Army troops.
As one of Hitler’s most reliable generals and confidants, [Stahel] was used by the German high command and personally by Hitler for special assignments.
In 1943, at the beginning of the democratic movement in Italy, [Stahel] was appointed Commandant of Rome. Using the troops under his command, [Stahel] ruthlessly suppressed democratic elements in Italy.
In 1944, on the eve of the Warsaw Uprising, Hitler personally appointed [Stahel] Commandant of Warsaw. He supervised the suppression of the Polish uprising and the destruction of the city.
In August 1944, because of Romania’s departure from the war, [Stahel] was sent there to move the German troops out of Otopeni, where they were encircled.
I ask for your instructions.
As already mentioned, SMERSH operatives captured these prisoners in Romania and Bulgaria in September 1944 and in Berlin in May 1945. By August 1945, interrogators of the 1st Section of the 2nd GUKR Department and of the 6th GUKR Department had extracted the necessary information for the biographical sketches. Later all of them, except Fritzsche, were held in MGB investigation prisons until the end of 1951, when they were finally tried and convicted.
There is Molotov’s note at the top of this letter: ‘A copy should be sent to C.[omrade] Beria for his opinion. August 20, 1945.’ Apparently, Beria responded quickly, because at the bottom of the first page, another handwritten note appears: ‘Letter No. 992/b was sent to C.[omrade] Molotov on August 27, 1945.’ This was a seven-page letter that included a list of seven German arrestees held in the GUPVI’s custody who may also have been considered for trial in Nuremberg. As in the SMERSH letter, a biographical sketch accompanied each name. The handwritten note on the last page indicates that the letter was prepared by Amayak Kobulov, first deputy head of the GUPVI:
Top Secret
Copy No. 2
August 27, 1945
992/b [in handwriting]
NKID USSR [Commissariat for Foreign Affairs]
to Comrade MOLOTOV V. M.
In addition to the list of defendants at the court sent to you by Comrade Vyshinsky, I present a list of individuals (chosen from those held in our facilities) who, in my opinion, could be placed on the list of war criminals to be tried by the International Tribunal.
1. Gross-Admiral RAEDER Erich, born 1876 in the town of Wandsbeck [near Hamburg], a German, son of a Gymnasium Director, has high education, not a Party member. From 1928 to 1943, [Raeder] was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy. After the end of the war against Poland in 1939, [Raeder] received The Knight’s Cross.
While Commander-in-Chief of the Navy of Fascist Germany, RAEDER developed, planned, and carried out a sea war against the USSR. In 1941 and 1942, [Raeder] personally inspected Soviet bases in the Baltic and Black seas, taken by Germany.
On January 30, 1943, RAEDER resigned because of a dispute with Hitler on the requisite armament and equipment of large ships and their use in sea battle. After his resignation, Hitler promoted him to the rank of Admiral-Inspector of the German Navy.
[…]
In the case of a decision to send the above-mentioned persons for trial by the Nuremberg Tribunal, it is necessary, in my opinion, to create a commission under the chairmanship of Com.[rade] Vyshinsky, which should include representatives of the Military Prosecutor’s Office, NKVD, ‘SMERSH’ NKO [Defense Commissariat], and so forth.
The commission should examine all documents that might be used for prosecution, if necessary, should organize an additional investigation to obtain documents that could be presented in court to support the indictment.
As a result, the commission should approve a verdict prepared by the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office for each person.
People’s Commissar of the Interior [NKVD] of the USSR
The other eight Germans placed on the list by Amayak Kobulov were not as important as those listed by the GUKR SMERSH. They were SA-Obergruppenführer Martin Mutschmann, former Gauleiter (Governor) of Saxony, and seven Lieutenant Generals—Friedrich Gustav Bernhardt, Hilmar Moser, Johann Georg Richert, Wilhelm Robert Oksmann, Hans Julius Traut, and Günther Walter Klammt—as well as SS-Obergruppenführer and Police General Friedrich Jeckeln. All were involved in war crimes, especially the notorious Jeckeln, who was personally responsible for ordering the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies in the Baltic States during the Nazi occupation.16 Later, Bernhardt and Richert, as well as Jeckeln, were tried by Soviet military tribunals in Moscow, Minsk, and Riga respectively, in parallel with the International Nuremberg Trial. Sentenced to death, they were executed on December 30, 1945, January 30, 1946, and February 3, 1946, respectively.17 Twenty days later, in Nuremberg, Soviet Prosecutor Mark Raginsky presented excerpts from the court-martial verdict against Bernhardt as Exhibit No. USSR-90, after Bernhard had already been executed.18
On September 5, 1945, the Politburo approved the governmental commission on Nuremberg proposed by Beria.19 It had a long name: ‘The Commission on the Guidance of Preparation of Indictment Materials and Activity of Soviet Representatives at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg.’ Two weeks later the commission was renamed the Commission on the Guidance of the Work of Soviet Representatives in the International Tribunal in Nuremberg, and in official documents it was called the Governmental Commission on the Nuremberg Trial for short.20 I will refer to it as the Vyshinsky Commission.
Stalin suggested that Molotov supervise the commission, while Vyshinsky was appointed its chair. Its members were Vsevolod Merkulov and his deputy Bogdan Kobulov (NKGB); Abakumov (SMERSH); Konstantin Gorshenin, USSR General Prosecutor; Ivan Golyakov, Chairman of the Soviet Supreme Court; and Nikolai Rychkov, Commissar/Minister for Justice. Deputy Chief Prosecutor Grigorii Safonov and members of the Soviet Prosecution team in Nuremberg Lev Smirnov and Lev Sheinin, as well as the commission’s scientific consultant, Aron Trainin, frequently took part in the meetings that followed. Decisions of the commission were sent for approval to the Politburo.21
The commission was in constant contact with the Soviet team in Nuremberg. In addition, Vyshinsky himself visited Nuremberg several times. The Allied delegations had no idea about Vyshinsky’s supervisory role and they could only guess why he came to the trial. Lord Shawcross, the Attorney-General of England and Wales and then the United Kingdom’s permanent delegate to the United Nations, told Arkadii Vaksberg, an investigative journalist, in 1988: