Major War Criminals at Soviet Nuremberg: mid-1940s

[Don Draper]

I was wondering who, if for whatever reason(no Nazis and WWII fought against Soviets or WWII for whatever reason turns into a fight against the Soviets), and the Soviets were defeated and a Nuremberg-type trial was held for their leaders, who would be the Major War Criminals. My preliminary list(with the allowance that some of the following may not be taken alive):

Josef Stalin
Vyacheslav Molotov
Lavrenty Beria
Klim Voroshilov
Georgi Malenkov
Lazar Kaganovich
Nikita Kruschev
Andrei Zhdanov
Victor Abakumov
Vsevolod Merkulov
Lev Mekhlis

Thoughts?

 

[Magniac]

Hmmm, you need a serious Alliance between the West and a non-Nazi, non-fascist Germany for this to be a plausible true-to-life Nuremberg analogy .

The WAllies alligning with an ideologically militant Germany-that-wants-its-land-back is ASBish (it doesn't matter that OTL's Soviet Union was as bad or worse a tyranny as the Third Reich).

But a 'Nuremberg' or 'war crimes trials' without the WAllies is possible. Just have Stalin bug out of Moscow in the late fall of '41; the whole house of cards might actually collapse in accordance with OKH theory that way.

Of course neither Stalin or Beria are getting captured--one will have the other liquidated in the rush to consolidate a line in front of (or behind of) the Urals. And the figures who do end up in German custody are not likely to be the surviving Politburo or senior officers from Lubyanka.

So these alternate 'Nuremberg' tribunals mainly consist of the 'prosecution' of Red Army brass and the Leningrad party leardership. And they look a lot like the Volksgerichtshof trials of the July '44 plotters. Not exactly world's best practice for dealing with crimes against humanity.