| Minsk Trial | |
|---|---|
 Defendants at the trial | |
| Court | Soviet military tribunal Minsk |
| Decided | 29 January 1946 |
The Minsk Trial was a war crimes trial held in front of a Soviet military tribunal in 1946 in Minsk, the capital of Soviet Belarus. Defendants included German military, police, and SS officials who were responsible for implementing the occupational policies in Belarus during the German–Soviet War of 1941–45.
Proceedings
The tribunal heard the case against 18 German military, SS, and other officials accused of crimes committed during the occupation of Belarus, in the course of the Soviet-German war of 1941–1945. The defendants included 11 members of the Wehrmacht, including two generals; four members of the police (Ordnungspolizei), including a police general; and three members of the Waffen-SS and SD.
The trial started in December 1945 and concluded in January 1946, with the sentence pronounced on 29 January. All 18 defendants were convicted; 14 were sentenced to death. They were hanged in public the following day in the horse racing venue of Minsk (now Victory Square, Minsk) with over 100,000 civilian spectators.
Defendants
| Name | Rank | Role | Sentence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Johann-Georg Richert (born 1890) | Wehrmacht Lieutenant General | Commanded the 286th Security Division and the 35th Infantry Division | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Gottfried von Erdmannsdorff (born 1893) | Wehrmacht Major General | Commander of the Ordnungspolizei in the Minsk region | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Eberhard Herf (born 1887) | SS-Brigadeführer for the Police | Commander of the Police Regiment North
Commander of the Order Police in the Minsk region |
Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Georg Robert Weißig (born 1896) | Police Lieutenant Colonel | Commander of the 26th SS Police Regiment | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Ernst August Falk (born 1917) | Police Captain | Battalion Commander in the 26th SS Police Regiment | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Reinhard Georg Moll (1891) | Wehrmacht Major | Local commander of Babruysk and Parichi | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Karl Max Languth (born 1898) | Wehrmacht Captain | Commandant of the Babruysk POW camp | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Hans Hermann Koch (born 1914) | SS-Obersturmführer and Gestapo-Kommissar | Chief of the SiPo in Orsha, Barysaw, and Slonim and officer for Einsatzgruppe B | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Rolf Oskar Burchard (born 1907) | Lieutenant | Special commander in Babruysk | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| August Josef Bittner (born 1894) | Lieutenant | Sonderführer and chief of the Babruysk agricultural command | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Bruno Max Götze (born 1898) | Wehrmacht Captain | Commandant of the Babruysk | 20 years imprisonment with hard labor, died in Vorkutlag in 1951 |
| Paul Karl Eick (born 1897) | Wehrmacht Captain | Deputy commander in Orsha | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Bruno Franz Mittmann (born 1901) | Sergeant | Gendarmerie in Minsk | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Franz Hess (born 1909) | SS-Unterscharführer | 32nd Sonderkommando for Minsk SD | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Heinz Johann Fischer (born 1923) | Waffen-SS Corporal | 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer | Death, executed on 30 January 1946 |
| Hans Josef Höchtl (born 1924) | Wehrmacht Private | 718th Field Training Regiment | 20 years imprisonment with hard labour |
| Alois Kilian Hetterich (born 1924) | Wehrmacht Private | 595th Infantry Regiment | 15 years imprisonment with hard labour |
| Albert Johann Rodenbusch (born 1915) | Wehrmacht Private | 635th Training Regiment | 15 years imprisonment with hard labour |
Controversy
In 2004, a German article about the trial discussed issues with the confessions, as well as the unusual degree of leniency shown in the cases of the four soldiers who managed to get out of the trial alive. The higher-ranking defendants were judged as having command responsibility over atrocities, including mass murder, committed by their troops. Lower-ranking defendants were judged for their individual crimes.
Mittmann was ruled to have shot and hanged eight people suspected of being connected to partisans, including children, after various forms of abuse, and a peasant family of three who were killed and then had their bodies burned. Fischer was ruled to have shot a 17-year-old Jewish girl and another Soviet civilian suspected of being a partisan. Both of them were hanged.
Rodenbusch confessed that "I myself burned down 15 houses and shot eight people during this whole operation, including two women. In this village I shot four men, two women and three children." However, the court apparently only sentenced him for arson and the shootings of two teenagers suspected of looting. The murder charges for the shootings of the two teenagers were lowered to complicity to murder.
Höchtl had been indicted for 230 murders, but confessed to even more crimes during the investigation. During an anti-partisan operation in February 1943, Höchtl claimed he and his platoon burned 70 houses and killed at least 2000 civilians, and personally claimed to have burned 40 houses and shot 280 people. The court only sentenced Höchtl for complicity to murder, and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison with hard labour.
Although Hetterich said he might've committed up to 15 murders (he said, "If I had hit the target, I would have shot 15 people because I fired 15 shots"), he was never charged with personally killing anyone. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for complicity to murder.
References
Citations
- Matthäus 2008, p. 194.
- ^ Heer 1995.
- Heer 2004, p. 126.
- ^ Ziedler, Manfred. "Der Minsker Kriegsverbrecherprozeß vom Januar 1946" (PDF).
- On November 26 and 27, 1941, Germans under the command of Paul Karl Eick murdered most of the ghetto population, about 1,800 people, at the Jewish cemetery. Orscha, in: Guy Miron (Hrsg.): The Yad Vashem encyclopedia of the ghettos during the Holocaust. Jerusalem : Yad Vashem, 2009 ISBN 978-965-308-345-5, S. 554f.
Bibliography
- Blood, Philip W. (2006). Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe. Potomac Books. ISBN 978-1-59797-021-1.
- Heer, Hannes (1995). "Der Minsker Prozess". Hannesheer.de.
- Heer, Hannes (2004). "The Logic of the War of Extermination". In Hannes Heer; Klaus Naumann (eds.). War of Extermination: The German Military In World War II. Berghahn Books. ISBN 1-57181-232-6.
- Matthäus, Jürgen (2008). Patricia Heberer; Jürgen Matthäus (eds.). Atrocities on Trial: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Prosecuting War Crimes. Washington, D.C.: University of Nebraska Press. p. 232. ISBN 978-0-8032-1084-4.
| Defendants at the Minsk Trial | |
|---|---|
| Sentenced to death | |
| Imprisoned | |