Heitzer, Enrico and Julia Landau. Tensions Between Secrecy and Publicity.

Soviet legal action against German prisoners, a blank spot in knowledge about postwar accountability, did leave traces in the mass trial at Sachsenhausen and the records of British monitoring of trials of Germans turned over to Soviet counterparts. Soviet authorities had to give to the press information about the fate of the Germans transferred from British custody, which also illuminates dissemination of information. Archives used include US National Archives, the Russian state archives (GARF), the German federal archives (BA Koblenz), the British National Archives, as well as extensive press sources. The chapter moves beyond the conclusions of Andrew Beattie (2020) and supplements the conclusions of the authors’ edited volume (2021).The chapter adds significantly to the collection edited by Sergej Mironenko, Lutz Niethammer and Alexander von Plato (1998), the edited volume of Andreas Hilger, Mike Schmeitzner and Ute Schmidt (2003), and in the volume of essays edited by Andreas Weigelt, Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thoams Schaarschmidt, and Mike Schmeitzner (2015).

This chapter forms part of the following edited volume: Eric Le Bourhis, Irina Tcherneva, and Vanessa Voisin (eds.), Seeking Accountability for Nazi and War Crimes in East Europe: A People’s Justice? (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2022).

Enrico Heitzer and Julia Landau, “Tensions Between Secrecy and Publicity: Internment, Investigation, Extradition, and Convictions in the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany, 1945-1950,” in Eric Le Bourhis, Irina Tcherneva, and Vanessa Voisin (eds.), Seeking Accountability for Nazi and War Crimes in East Europe: A People’s Justice? (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2022), 145-189.