Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist place of death Vladimir Central Prison
Trial and death
Kleist was arrested in late April 1945 in Bavaria by American forces, and handed over to the British Army. Kleist testified in the Nuremberg trials. In September 1946 he was extradited to Yugoslavia, where after a trial he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for war crimes. The historian Khavkin opines that Kleist's trial and the evidence brought against him were partly political, and that although the Germans, including troops under the command of Kleist committed terrible war crimes in Yugoslavia, personal guilt could not be proven.In 1949 he was extradited to the Soviet Union, where he was charged with war crimes. Kleist was one of the three German field marshals captured by Soviet forces, the other two being Ferdinand Schörner and Friedrich Paulus. The Soviet prosecutors presented evidence that Kleist carried out and issued criminal orders. The verdict stated that in the Krasnodar territory alone, German forces, including units under the command of Kleist, killed more than 61,000 Soviet citizens, destroyed more than 63,000 industrial and economic buildings, looted from collective farms, stole hundreds of thousands of livestock, burned dozens of villages and destroyed many schools, hospitals and children's institutions. Kleist was sentenced to 25 years in a correctional labour camp.In 1952, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court recognized Kleist as a particularly dangerous criminal and demanded strict isolation of him from society. Kleist's verdict was changed from a correctional labour camp term, to a prison term, he was then sent to Vladimir Central Prison.On 13 November 1954 Kleist died of heart failure in Vladimir Central Prison. He was the most senior-ranking soldier among the German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union to die in Russian captivity. Kleist was buried at the Prince Vladimir cemetery near the prison walls.
In October 1955, after German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's visit to Moscow, the Soviet Union repatriated the remaining 14,000 German prisoners of war convicted of war crimes. Kleist's body was exhumed, dressed in a field marshal's uniform and sent home to Germany.
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