Inside of the Soviet Union, there was a huge anger and immense hatred that the Soviet people had for the German soldiers and those who occupied their lands following the launching of Operation Barbarosa.
Thousands of women were subjected to terrifying ordeals at the hands of the German forces.
And when the tide of the war turned, the Soviets inflicted a significant amount of vengeance and carried out large-scale public executions even whilst the war was still going on.
In cities which had suffered greatly such as Leningrad or Minsk, German soldiers and SS officers were led up onto huge gallows platforms and then the executioners secured the nooes around their necks in front of crowds of thousands.
These men struggled and suffered a fate by slow strangulation and they were left kicking for many minutes until their bodies went limp and death came.
But why were German soldiers publicly hanged during World War II? The Soviet Union had suffered a significant amount during World War II and the Soviet people had been massacred and terrorized in huge killings.
Thousands were shot by Scrippa death squads, the Nazi death squads who followed the advances of the German army.
Many were shot in large pits and one sole executioner fired a bullet into their necks.
These massacres were very well known across the lands and Joseph Stalin to begin with had actually signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis and he was humiliated when his lands were invaded.
But the Soviet forces following the battle of Stalingrad had the upper hand and they then began to regain territory and control of towns and cities.
They would eventually push the Axis forces back towards Germany and their homelands.
And when they reclaimed their lands, they decided to inflict retribution and vengeance in the form of public executions.
Often these executions took place inside of towns and cities in places where hundreds of thousands of people could be gathered to witness the proceedings.
These public hangings followed court proceedings and trials, but these were often predetermined and were publicized heavily.
The public hangings were not random acts of brutality.
They were a deliberate instrument of Soviet state policy designed to punish war criminals, deter further atrocities, and also bring Stalin’s opinion poll ratings up.
Many had in the dark times questioned the dictator, but by carrying out huge public executions of his enemies, Stalin had the opportunity to show his people that he was ruthlessly ordering justice and vengeance for his people.
One reason why the executions took place even whilst World War II was still being fought was that the executions were direct acts of retribution for mass atrocities in occupied Soviet territory.
When Soviet forces liberated towns and villages previously occupied by the Vermacht, the SS and auxiliary units, they encountered overwhelming evidence of systematic violence.
They found mass graves of civilians and prisons of war, burned villages and destroyed infrastructure, even coming across torture chambers and execution pits.
And they also found evidence of starvation deaths caused from forced labor.
But amongst the female population, they also found evidence of the horror they suffered too.
Entire communities had been annihilated during antipartisan reprisals in places such as Smalinsk Minskov and later in Poland and in the Baltic region.
Investigators documented thousands of murdered civilians.
Public hangings were intended to serve as visible retribution for these crimes.
The Soviet state framed the executions as justice for the dead rather than simple revenge.
Charges brought against German soldiers often included participation in mass shootings, burning civilians alive in buildings or barns, deportations and murder of forced laborers, torture of prisoners and partisans, and collective punishments of innocent villages.
By hanging perpetrators in the same towns and cities where crimes had occurred, such as the siege of Leningrad, the authorities created a symbolic link between crime and punishment.
Also, public executions were in a sense psychological weapons.
They aimed to deter remaining German forces against committing crimes.
As the front lines moved westwards, German troops were still fighting across Eastern Europe.
The visibility of public hanging sent a message that war crimes would not go unpunished and that capture did not guarantee leniency.
Also, individual soldiers would be held personally accountable for their crimes.
This undermined the German morale and reinforced the fear that surrender might expose perpetrators of war crimes to public justice.
But as well as German soldiers, this served as a warning to collaborators too.
Local collaborators such as police auxiliaries, informants, and antipartisan units were also meant to see the consequences of cooperation with the occupiers.
Public hangings reinforced Soviet authority as liberated territory was recaptured by Soviet administrations.
The public hangings also served as an attempt to restore civilian morale and a sense of justice.
Soviet civilians had endured some of the worst civilian losses in human history.
Around 27 million Soviet citizens died during the war and many of these were under occupation.
Four communities had watched their relatives being executed or deported.
The sight of perpetrators punished publicly offered emotional closure, an assertion that justice had returned, and it served as proof that the state was avenging the suffering of people.
Crowds who flocked to see these public executions were also very large, and survivors identified perpetrators themselves during the trials, and the events were staged deliberately to reinforce the legitimacy of Stalin’s justice.
Alongside this, they also served as important propaganda tools.
Inside the Soviet Union, photographs and news reels showed captured German officers and soldiers being sentenced and civilians witnessing justice.
This reinforced a message that the Soviets had defeated fascism and that Nazi war criminals would be punished.
But internationally, the Soviet Union used the executions to show that the German crimes were real and were documented.
and the appearance of a trial, even if it was rather shambolic, showed the world that they were going down the right legal channels.