Stalin - Order on penalties for Nazis and traitors - 1943

№ 106

No. 0283 April 19, 1943

 F. 4, op. 11, d. 75, l. 568-570. Script.

1. Below is the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the penalties for the Nazi villains guilty of killing and torturing the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices. 

2. The military councils of the fronts and armies oblige division commanders not later than May 10, 1943, to organize military courts for this purpose in accordance with the requirements of the announced Decree. Report on performance. 

People's Commissar of Defense Marshal of the Soviet Union I. Stalin 

Without publication in print 

Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on penalties for Nazi villains guilty of killing and torturing the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices 

In the towns and villages liberated by the Red Army from the Nazi invaders, many facts of unheard-of atrocities and monstrous violence perpetrated by German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, Finnish fascist fiends, Nazi agents, as well as spies and traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens over peaceful Soviet citizens were discovered. population and captured Red Army soldiers. Many tens of thousands of innocent women, children, and the elderly, as well as captured Red Army soldiers, were brutally tortured, hanged, shot, burned alive on the orders of the commanders of military units and units of the gendarmerie corps of the Nazi army, chiefs of the Gestapo, burgomasters and military commandants of cities and villages, chief camps for prisoners of war and other representatives of the fascist authorities. 

Meanwhile, all these criminals, guilty of massacres against the peaceful Soviet population and captured Red Army soldiers, and their accomplices from the local population, are currently being subjected to a measure of retaliation that clearly does not correspond to the atrocities they have committed. 

Bearing in mind that reprisals and violence against defenseless Soviet citizens and captured Red Army soldiers and treason against the Motherland are the most shameful and grave crimes, the most heinous crimes, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decides: 

1. Establish that German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, Finnish fascist villains convicted of murdering and torturing civilians and captured Red Army soldiers, as well as spies and traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens, are punishable by death by hanging. 

2. Accomplices from the local population who are convicted of assisting the villains in committing reprisals and violence against the civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers are punishable by exile in hard labor for a term of 15 to 20 years. 

3. The consideration of cases of fascist villains guilty of massacres and violence against the civilian Soviet population and captured Red Army soldiers, as well as spies, traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens and their accomplices from the local population, should be assigned to military field courts formed under the divisions of the acting army consisting of: the chairman of the military tribunal of the division (chairman of the court), the head of the special department of the division and the deputy commander of the division for political affairs (members of the court), with the participation of the prosecutor of the division. 

4. Verdicts of courts-martial at divisions shall be approved by the division commander and carried out immediately. 

5. The execution of the sentences of courts-martial at divisions - the hanging of those sentenced to death - should be carried out publicly, in front of the people, and the bodies of the hanged should be left on the gallows for several days, so that everyone knows how they are punished and what retribution will befall anyone who commits violence and reprisals against the civilian population and who betray their homeland. 

Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR M. Kalinin

Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR A. Gorkin 

Moscow Kremlin. April 19, 1943

 F. 4, op. 11, d. 75, l. 568-570. Script.