From Perpetrator to Cold-War Pawn: The Atrocities and Trial of Heinz Barth

Drawing on extensive documentation generated by East Germany’s secret police (Stasi), this article examines the case of Heinz Barth, a participant in World War II massacres at Lidice, Czechoslovakia and Oradour, France. The Stasi’s lengthy investigation and interrogation of Barth in the 1980s affords rare insight into the motivations of a perpetrator who was not involved in killing Jews or POWs, and reveals the arbitrariness of the secret police in bringing former Nazis to justice. Barth’s 1983 trial in East Berlin further illustrates how the East German regime’s political goals influenced its judicial handling of the Nazi past.