on whose orders did all this take place? Why was this system of complete lawlessness and monstrous slaughter of perfectly innocent people instituted?
RITZ: This lawlessness had its deep seated reasons. It was instituted on the instructions of Hitler and his collaborators, instructions which are capable of detailed analysis.29
The third defendant to take the stand was Corporal Reinhard Retzlaff. His testimony included a description of how he participated in the murder of Soviet civilians.30
PROSECUTOR: Tell the Court how you exterminated Soviet citizens.
RETZLAFF: Every person detained by the military authorities and sent to the Secret Field Police for examination, was first of all beaten up. If a prisoner gave the evidence we needed, the beatings were discontinued, while those who refused to give evidence were further beaten, and this frequently resulted in their death.
PROSECUTOR: This means that if a person did not confess, he was murdered. And if he did—he was shot. Is that correct?
RETZLAFF: Yes, that was so on most occasions.
PROSECUTOR: Was there any occasion when cases were trumped up and evidence was faked?
RETZLAFF: Yes, all this happened and rather frequently. One may say that this was quite normal procedure.
The final defendant to take the stand was Bulanov, who described the transport of medical patients from a hospital to shooting sites. Bulanov acknowledged that on four occasions he drove a three-ton truck with a total of about 150 patients from the Kharkov hospital to a shooting site:
BULANOV: When I arrived at the hospital I was told to drive up to one of the hospital blocks. At this moment Gestapo men began to lead out patients dressed only in their underwear, and load them into the trucks. After loading, I drove the truck to the shooting site under German escort. This place was approximately four kilometers from the city. When we arrived at the shooting site, screams and sobs of patients who were already being shot filled the air. The Germans shot them in front of the other patients. Some begged for mercy and fell down naked in the cold mud, but the Germans pushed them into the pits and then shot them.31
Bulanov also discussed a similar trip from a children’s hospital to transport children aged six through twelve for extermination.32
Once examination of the defendants was concluded, the court and counsel proceeded to interrogate percipient witnesses. These included both Kharkov residents (including hospital personnel) who witnessed the atrocities as well as captured German soldiers. None testified directly about the defendants on the dock. Rather, their testimony served as background, adding to the overall picture of the horror that had taken place in the Kharkov region: mass shootings, gas van descriptions, discussions of the plunder of agricultural products, instructions from superiors in command (to implicate those higher-ranked officials), the disgraceful prison camp conditions, and murder of hospital patients.33
As part of the prosecution case, forensic experts from the Commission of Medico-Legal Experts also testified and presented a report based upon their examination of the various mass graves found at the Drobitsky Yar gully and other places in the Kharkov region. The expert report confirmed by forensic evidence that the methods of murder by the German forces of local civilians and POWs consisted of shooting the victims and gassing them through the use of carbon monoxide.
The medico-legal experts examined in Kharkov and neighbouring localities the scenes of the crimes of the German fascist invaders—the places where they carried out the extermination of the Soviet citizens. These included the burned-out block of the army hospital, where they shot and burned war prisoners—severely wounded personnel of the Red Army; the place of the mass shooting of the healthy and sick, of small children, juveniles, young people, old men and women in the forest park of Sokolniki, near the village of Podvorki, in the Drobitsky gully, and in the therapeutic colony of Strelechye. At these sites the medico-legal experts examined the grave-pits and exhumed bodies of Soviet citizens shot, poisoned, burned or otherwise brutally exterminated.
The medico-legal experts examined the places where the German fascist invaders burnt bodies to destroy evidence of their crimes—the poisoning with carbon monoxide. This is the site of the conflagration on the territory of the barracks of the Kharkov tractor plant. Examination of territories on which bodies were burnt or buried, examination of the grave-pits and positions of bodies in them and comparison of material thus obtained with data of the Court proceedings, provide grounds for considering that the number of bodies of murdered Soviet citizens in Kharkov and its environs reaches several tens of thousands, whereas the figure of 33,000 exterminated Soviet citizens given by accused and some witnesses is only approximate and undoubtedly too low.
In the 13 grave-pits opened in Kharkov and its immediate vicinity were found a huge number of corpses. In most graves they lay in extreme disorder, fantastically intertwined, forming tangles of human bodies defying description. The corpses lay in such a manner that they can be said to have been dumped or heaped but not buried in common graves. In two pits in the Sokolniki forest park bodies were found lying in straight rows, face downward, arms bent at the elbow and hands pressed to faces or necks. All the bodies had bullet wounds through the heads. Such a position of the bodies was not accidental. It proves that the victims were forced to lie down face downward and were shot in that position…. The fact revealed by the investigation—namely, that before being murdered Soviet citizens were stripped of their footwear—is fully confirmed by the medico-legal examinations: during exhumation the experts in most cases discovered naked or half-naked bodies.
In order to ascertain which Soviet citizens were exterminated and in what manner, the experts exhumed and examined 1,047 bodies in Kharkov and its environs. These included the bodies of 19 children and adolescents, 429 women and 599 men. The dead ranged in age from two to seventy years. The fact that the bodies of children, adolescents, women and old men as well as invalids were discovered in grave-pits with civilian clothes and articles of domestic use and personal effects on the bodies or near them proves that the German fascist authorities exterminated Soviet citizens regardless of sex or age. On the other hand, the fact that [among] the bodies of young and middle-age men were found clothes of military cut worn in the Red Army, also articles of military equipment (pots, mugs, belts, etc.) is evidence of Soviet war prisoners. […] On the basis of all the combined data of their proceedings—the medico-legal experts have established the presence of: (a) A vast number of burial sites in the city of Kharkov and its immediate environs. (b) A huge number of bodies in the grave-pits. (c) Varying times of burial in various graves. (d) Varying degrees of preservation of the bodies in the same graves. (e) Distinction of bodies in regard to sex and age. (f) Uniformity of methods of extermination of human beings.
We regard the above as proofs of systematic, methodically organized, mass extermination of Soviet civilians and war prisoners.34
The defense strategy was to argue that ultimate guilt for the defendants’ crimes lay with the Nazi regime and immediate higher-ups. Langheld explained: “I fulfilled the orders of my superiors. Had I not done so I would have been court-martialed.”35 Retzlaff stated: “I plead guilty to all the crimes I have committed upon the orders of my immediate command.”36 The reliance on following superior orders and the defense of duress were, of course, the most-repeated defenses in subsequent trials of Germans and local accomplices by the Allies, both at Nuremberg and thereafter.
On the morning of December 18, 1943, after three days of testimony, prosecutor Dunayev gave his closing argument. While seeking to confirm that the defendants all acted on the superior orders of others, he argued that this should not exculpate defendants from their personal guilt. In so doing, Dunayev utilized an argument that was later to be used in the Nuremberg trials: German law itself rejected the defense of superior orders. The precedent specifically relied on by Dunayev was a result of the trials held in Weimar Germany after the First World War before the German Supreme National Tribunal at Leipzig, where German judges found German military defendants guilty of war crimes.37
One of the classic decisions from the Leipzig tribunal is the Llandovery Castle case in 1921, in which two German naval submarine officers were convicted of war crimes for shooting survivors in