The Soviet Union tried on its own a total of 55,000 lesser-known Germans and Austrians accused of war crimes and found 25,921 of them guilty. Caution is advised about these numbers; we do not know how many suspect persons were shot out of hand or died in custody.18 Only eighteen cases involving 224 defendants were tried in public. Most of the accused were prisoners of war. In addition, inside the POW camps thousands of enemy “wreckers” were tried and convicted, with the last of them leaving the USSR only in 1956.
RETRIBUTION AGAINST SOVIET COLLABORATORS
There were savage acts of retribution all across Europe as it was liberated from the Nazis and Fascists. What happened in the Soviet Union was both bloodier and far more sweeping than anywhere else. Right from the start of the war in 1941, the regime had introduced martial law to impose order in areas in or near the fighting. Military tribunals and courts-martial could try members of the armed forces and ordinary citizens individually or collectively and could banish anyone deemed “socially dangerous” or suspect on any grounds. Most accused Soviet citizens were charged under the Criminal Code, Article 58–1a on “counter-revolutionary activity,” with the latter term given a wide definition. The accused were allowed no more than a single day to prepare a defense and had no right of appeal. During the next year the situation on the battlefront worsened, so that on June 24, 1942, a new decree sharpened punishments by threatening family members of anyone found guilty of working for the Germans. They could be sentenced to a minimum of five years’ hard labor. As the Red Army pushed occupation forces out of the USSR that year, an estimated 16,000 Soviet citizens went before tribunals on charges of “betraying the motherland.”19
Between 1941 and 1954, a total of 333,065 “civilian collaborators” were charged under Article 58–1a of the Criminal Code and another 36,065 under an April 1943 decree. These accused included mainly those involved in the administration or police, but not the million or so men who Russian scholars estimate donned the uniform of the invaders, either because they volunteered in order to strike at the Soviet system, or because, as POWs, they were all but forced to sign on with the Wehrmacht.
Elsewhere in Europe, the nature and extent of the postwar retribution varied greatly. In some countries the purge was initially bloody, as it was in France with around 9,000 summary executions, but then it subsided. In Norway fewer were killed, but a higher proportion of the population was adversely affected in some way.20 Strangely enough, and even if prosecutions outside Europe are included, far more non-German collaborators were tried than Germans and Austrians who went to court on war-related charges—a total of 329,159, with 96,798 of them found guilty.21
Soviet tribunals during the war found a relatively “modest” 5 percent guilty and executed. That number fell to one percent or so when peace came. These figures from the Central Procurator’s Office do not reflect the whole story; some years are missing, and additional trials were held before other judicial bodies. Evidence shows that not just select individuals but whole villages were executed for supporting the invaders.22
Inside the Soviet Union, as the Germans were driven out, the incoming NKVD arrested tens of thousands, variously described as spies, saboteurs, German supporters, or “gangs.” Although not all of them went to court, the experience of NKVD custody and questioning was punishment in itself.23 Beria reported to Stalin at the end of 1943 that as the Red Army went through, special units had “cleaned up” behind the lines and, for that year alone, had detained 582,515 uniformed persons, and in addition 349,034 civilians. They ranged from deserters to “gangsters and marauders,” or those without proper papers. Thousands more died in armed struggles.24
Moscow had been infuriated when in 1941 major cities had been overrun and occupied by the Germans. Even worse, from the Kremlin’s perspective, some local officials of the Communist Party disobeyed orders to get out, and some not only collaborated with the occupation but ostentatiously burned their membership cards. Although it is impossible to say exactly how many collaborated, the numbers were vast. The regime publicized its determination to pursue as many as possible.
How communities responded to the collaborators in the postwar period varied from place to place. In Rostov, a key city on the Don River, the Party had ordered all its members to leave when the Germans approached, but many stayed. The city reported to Moscow that in the period ending in September 1945, 11,429 party members had failed to evacuate, and 7,124 were expelled on various grounds. When it came to professionals who stayed, the authorities were circumspect. For example, close to 90 percent of the higher education administration and nearly 50 percent of the teachers remained behind German lines, and it was as bad or worse among other branches of the civil service. Although party officials recommended that they be thrown out, there were few qualified candidates to replace them. Moreover, and in spite of the anticollaborator rhetoric, one of Rostov’s Communist first secretaries said in May 1946 that many leaders were inclined to hold on to collaborators who “are afraid and are thus very agreeable, quiet, and always trying to please their boss.”25
How much the treatment of collaborators varied can be seen in the Donbas (Ukraine), where one woman felt the immediate sting of Soviet retribution when she was liberated. She said that the Red Army “did not return with a feeling of guilt toward the population,” whom they had let down in the war, “but as judges.” Girls and women suspected of sleeping with the enemy were immediate targets. In Kramatorsk and other cities in Ukraine, for example, the NKVD not only shot women for fraternizing with the Germans but killed children born of the relationships as well. There were all kinds of summary executions, and no records have been found detailing how many there were.26 Even some of the virtuous were chastised, like a woman who convinced the Germans not to take all the provisions from her village. If they had done so, the children and the weak would have starved. The NKVD interrogator came down hard on her for not letting the invaders take everything because “then the people would have hardened their attitudes.”27
In another village the story was similar. One letter that made it through the censor from a wife to her husband at the front told of how the locals had fed the hungry Red Army troops when they arrived. She was shocked that they hanged the village elder, “because he served the Germans, they said. But it was his own village people he served; he helped the orphans. But they paid no heed. They came with a half-tonner, grabbed him, and took him away. No matter how the people tried to stand up for him, it did no good.” All around back home, so the letter continued, it was a horror story. People were being tracked down in the woods. “So you see we are living in great fear now. You never know which will kill you first, our troops or the hunger.”28