From "Buchladen Georgii Dimitroff"
Frankfurt/Main, Germany
The revisionist step started by Khrushchev in cooperation with Adenauer
The government of West German imperialism, which was headed by Chancellor Adenauer, was mobilizing in 1954-1955 a "public understanding" campaign in West Germany on the question of amnesty for German war criminals, who numbered around 9,000 and who were held in the Soviet Union. Adenauer found ready and willing helpers in the CC CPSU, headed by Nikita Khrushchev, the then General Secretary of the CPSU and his clique of influential revisionists that he surrounded himself with after the death of Stalin.
Adenauer pressured by diplomatic and other means to have much better "mutual relations" with the Soviets, by dangling an economic carrot in front of Khrushchev, but it was tied in to liberating these 9,000 German Nazi war criminals.
But Khrushchev had opposition that was then headed by the Chairman of the Soviet of Ministers Bulganin, who in September of 1955 showed court documentary proof about these 9,000 war criminals who were tried by the Soviet Courts and sentenced as war criminals for their hideous crimes during the Great Patriotic War. Bulganin stated:
"In the Soviet Union there are no German prisoners of war! All the German prisoners of war captured during the War were freed right after the war in conformance with the Yalta and Potsdam Agreements by the Allies. In the Soviet Union there are only war criminals being held from the former German Army and SS, who were sentenced under Soviet and International laws for hideous war crimes against Soviet people, against the world and humanity. In actual figures as of September 1, 1955 there are being held 9,626 war criminals who are serving their sentences for war crimes, and should be held behind bars and not liberated and given amnesty. These are criminals, butchers, murderers, killers of women, children and elder people. They were sentenced under our Soviet Laws and they cannot under any international or Soviet laws can be classified as prisoners of war!"
But Khrushchev and his growing influential clique started to liberate and give amnesty to these Nazi German war criminals, to the delight of Chancellor Adenauer and his Western patrons.
Pieck, the then Premier Minister of the German Democratic Republic, in cooperation with Khrushchev, also took the revisionist stand and agreed that these Nazi war criminals should be liberated and given amnesty.
And sure enough, under pressure from Khrushchev and his revisionist clique, the decision was taken on September 28, 1955 to liberate 8,877 German war criminals to the GDR and also to West Germany. Only 749 German Nazi war criminals, top echelon officers whose sentences were beyond question that even the revisionists could not stomach the atrocities they committed. They were supposed to have been arrested after their return to the two Germanys in order to continue their sentences in jail. (From 'New Germany' September 30, 1955.)
The German Nazi war criminals, upon returning to West Germany, were immediately set free and amnestied and were looked upon as heroes.
Close this page to return.