their acts of shooting upon the lifeboats was carried out on orders of their submarine captain. Dunayev specifically referred to the case in his closing argument.38
Dunayev concluded on an emotional note. After an obligatory nod to “[t]he heroic Red Army, led by the great Stalin,” he ended:
Concluding my speech for the prosecution, I appeal to you, citizen judges, to inflict severe punishment on the three base representatives of fascist Berlin, and on their abominable accomplice, who are sitting in the dock, to punish them for their bloody crimes, for the sufferings and the blood, for the tears, for the lives of our children, of our wives and mothers, of our sisters and brothers!
Today they are answering to the Soviet Court, to our people, to the whole world, for the felonies they committed on a scale and of a baseness far surpassing the blackest pages of human history, the horrors of the Middle Ages and of barbarism! Tomorrow their superiors will have to answer—the chieftains of these bandits who invaded our peaceful, happy land on which our people toiled, reared their children, and built our free State. I accuse Retzlaff, Ritz, Langheld, and Bulanov of the crimes specified in Part I of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., dated 19th April 1943.
In the name of the law and of justice, in the name of tens of thousands of peoples maimed and tortured to death, in the name of the entire people—I, as State Prosecutor, beg you, citizen judges, to sentence all four base criminals to death by hanging.39
Defense counsel did not argue with the prosecution’s request for a guilty verdict, only that extenuating circumstances called for the defendants’ lives to be spared. Defense counsel Kommodov explained: “[T]hese men were made into assassins by, first of all, killing their souls, and it is this doubt which gives me, comrades, judges, the moral right to pose the question of the possibility of a lesser penalty than that demanded by the Prosecutor.”40 His colleague, defense counsel Kaznacheyev, described the crimes as being committed by an army in which “human feelings were considered a weakness, and ruthlessness and fanaticism a virtue.”41 Focusing on defendant Retzlaff, Kaznacheyev argued that because “Retzlaff … is now conscious of what he has done and has undergone a psychological transformation, I consider it possible to ask that his life be spared.”42 With regard to Bulanov, the defense argued that he also had repented, and this should be taken into account in the determination of a final sentence.43
The four defendants were allowed to make final statements. Langheld stated: “I do not want to minimize my guilt in any way, but I should like to point out that the underlying reasons for all the atrocities and crimes of the Germans in Russia are to be sought in the German Government…. The Hitlerite regime has succeeded in stifling the finest feelings of the German people, by implanting base instincts in them.”44 According to Langheld, who argued that he had to follow the evil “orders or directives” of his superiors, like the deceased, “I was also a victim of these orders and directives.”45 Retzlaff repeated the defense of compulsion: “If I had not obeyed these orders, I would have been put in the same position as my victims.”46 Bulanov begged: “I ask one thing of you, citizen judges, that in passing sentence you spare my life so that I may in the future atone for my guilt before the country.”47
Ritz, the young lawyer, gave the most eloquent speech in an attempt to save his life. Like Langheld, he argued the defense of duress: “I would like to ask the Court to take into consideration an old principle of Roman Law: Crime under duress. You must believe me that if I had not obeyed orders I should have been arraigned before a German military tribunal and sentenced to death.”48 But he then detailed particular circumstances that led him to commit his crimes:
I beg you, gentlemen of the Court, also to take into consideration the facts of my life. When the Hitlerite system came to power I was a child of only thirteen. From that time on I was subjected to the systematic and methodical influence of the Hitlerite system and education in the spirit of the legend of the superiority of the German race; an education which taught me that only the German people were destined to rule, and that other nations and races were inferior and should be exterminated. I was subjected to systematic training by such teachers as Hitler, [Alfred] Rosenberg, and Himmler, who educated the whole German people in the same spirit.
At the beginning of the war new propaganda came from these same sources, although these were encountered before the war. I have in mind the idea that the Russian people were uncultured and inferior. That is what they taught us. Then, with total mobilization I was sent to the front. When I reached the Eastern Front I was convinced that there was not a word of truth in these fables of Hitler, Rosenberg, and others; that on the Eastern Front the Germans did not have the slightest understanding of any tenets of international law; that there was no justice here in all the actions of the German authorities. But nothing remained to me but to continue along the same path. On the Eastern Front, I was also convinced of another thing, namely that a system on the banner which is inscribed the words “murder and atrocities” cannot be a right system.
I realize that the destruction of this system would be an act of justice. I am young. Life is still only beginning with me. I request you to spare my life so that I may devote myself to the struggle against that system.49
The tribunal judges returned with a verdict later that evening. All four defendants were found guilty. The tribunal described the individual guilt of each defendant as follows:
• Wilhelm Langheld … personally fabricated a number of cases in which about 100 perfectly innocent Soviet war prisoners and civilians were shot.
• Hans Ritz … directed the shootings carried out by the S.D. Sonderkommando in Taganrog, and during the examination of prisoners beat them up with ramrods and rubber truncheons, thus trying to extort from them false statements.
• Reinhard Retzlaff … tried to extort from them [Soviet civilians] false statements by means of torture—plucking out their hair and torturing them with needles, drew up fictitious reports in the case of 28 arrested Soviet citizens…. He personally drove into the “murder van” Soviet citizens doomed to death, accompanied the “murder van” to the place of unloading and took part in the burning of bodies of asphyxiated people.
• Mikhail Petrovich Bulanov, having betrayed the Socialist motherland, voluntarily sided with the enemy, joined the German service as a chauffeur with the Kharkov Gestapo branch, personally took part in the extermination of Soviet citizens by means of the “murder van,” drove peaceful Soviet citizens to the place of shooting and took part in the shooting of sixty children.50
All four defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, with no right to appeal. As Stevens observes: “The sentence of hanging was read by the chief judge around midnight, in a final blaze of klieg projectors.”51
The next morning, on December 19, 1943, at 11 a.m., the defendants were publicly hanged in Kharkov City Square. Stevens describes the hanging:
It was all over in a few moments. The defendants were hoisted into the back of four open trucks and stood on stools. Then the nooses were looped around their necks. There was no blindfolding. During the preliminaries three of the four prisoners had to be propped up. Bulanov had fainted; Ritz and Retsalu [Retzlaff] had turned pasty white; they drooled at the mouths and their knees gave way. Only Langheld, the old soldier, remained stiff as a ramrod throughout, never once flinching. Once the nooses had been adjusted, at a signal the trucks pulled away and the four were left dangling and kicking in mid air.52
In 1944, the Soviet Union released a full-length documentary of the trial, which was screened throughout the Soviet Union and also in London and New York. Seven months after the trial, Life magazine published a full two-page spread with photos (taken from the documentary film stills) and brief descriptions of the trial and its participants.
The Kharkov Trial’s Three Audiences and the Absence of Jews as Victims
The Soviets organized the Kharkov trial for three audiences: (1) their domestic audience, the Soviet populace fighting for their liberation from Germany; (2) their international audience, the U.S.S.R.’s British and American allies with whom they were in