Russia Finally Admits To One of the Greatest Coverups of World War II

MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia's parliament on Friday declared Stalin responsible for ordering the Katyn massacre of Polish officers in World War II, a crime Moscow spent decades blaming on the Nazis to the fury of Poland.

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This has to be one of the greatest all around coverups of World War II. The Katyn Massacre was the execution of over twenty thousand Polish military officers, government leaders, clergymen. The rest being intellectuals including over three hundred scientists, university professors, teachers, and the social elite. The term "Katyn Massacre" refers to the massacre at Katyn Forest, between the cities of Katyn and Gnezdovo in western Russia. It is believed that this mass killing was one of several simultaneous executions of Polish POWs. This, along with two other mass executions that took place at POW camps at Starobelsk and Ostashkov. Also included in these executions were political prisoners from Western Belarus and Western Ukraine who were shot at the Katyn Forest. The Polish investigation into these massacres in the 1980s and 1990s not only the massacre at Katyn Forest, but the other massacre's mentioned above.

This massacre was raised after the Axis invaded the USSR in June of 1941 when the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet government when the Soviets and the Poles signed the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement. It was during these meetings that then Polish general Wlayslaw Anders began inquiring on the whereabouts of the Polish army officers. The Soviet governement under Joseph Stalin assured that all Polish POWs had been released and their whereabouts were not accounted for due to "because the Soviets lost track of them in Manchuria. It would be just close to a year until the first discovery came about. Sometime in 1942, Polish railroad workers discovered the first of the mass graves near Katyn. Upon this discovery, the discovery of this mass grave was reported to the Polish Secret State. However, this first discovery fell on deaf ears with the Polish government-in-exile in London. This could have been due to the Polish people refusing to believe that so many dead were in fact in these graves.

However, the world did not have to wait long for the shear brutality of these killings to come about. In April of 1943, soldiers of the German Wehrmacht under the command of Rudolf von Gersdorff, discovered a second mass grave containing over four thousand bodies of the missing Polish officers. The finding of this grave in the forest near Katyn, was one of the driving forces behind Josef Goebbels' intent to drive a wedge between the Polish government, the Western Allies, and the Soviets. The Nazis themselves brought in a team of forensic scientists to determine how long the soldiers had been in these graves. These forensic scientists determined, by examining bone fragments and tissue, that the bodies had been there long before the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Soviets quickly dismissed the charges and claimed that these Polish POWs were working on a construction project west of Smolensk in August of 1941 and that these POWs were captured and executed by the Germans. On that note, the Allies had been made aware of the discovery by British intercepts of German radio transmissions. German experts and an international committee were invited later on in 1943 to come in and investigate the corpses that were found at Katyn. It was soon concluded, by way of physical evidence, that the massacre took place in 1940. At the very same time when this area was still under the control of the Soviet Union. Also in 1943, Prime Minister Churchill admitted to General Sikorski in a private conversation that the Nazi revelations on this discovery were true.

In 1944, Franlin D. Roosevelt assinged his specail emmissary to the Balkans, Navy Lt. Commander George Earle to come up with a special report on the massacre. This report concluded that the Soviets, and not the Germans, were in fact the ones responsible for the Katyn Massacre. However, this report on the killings was rejected by those in Roosevelt's White House. The reason given was Roosevelt being convinced by the Soviets that the Nazis had perpetrated this act. However, a written order to desist was written and sent to Lt. Com. Earle in late 1944 after the commander had requested that his findings be published. After the cease and desist letter was sent, Lt. Com. Earle was reassigned to American Samoa, where he spen the rest of the war. It wasn't until 1945 that the true nature of the massacre would come into light. Two former U.S. POWs, U.S Air Force Lt. Col. Donald Stewart and Col. John Van Vliet, revealed that they had been taken to Katyn by the Germans for an international news conference pertaining to the mass graves being found. A report by Col. Van Vliet also concluded that the Soviets were responsible for massacre. However, this report was stifled by Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell, Gen George Marshall's assistant chief of staff on itelligence, so as to not antagonize the Ally the United States had still needed assistance in fighting with Japan.

It is believed that these reports were stifled by both the British and United States governments at the time. When it was clear to the Nazis that the Soviets were in fact responsible for the atrocities. One piece of evidence that came out against the Soviet Union was the type of clothing that the bodies were found to be wearing. The German investigators found that the bodies were dressed for the harsh Soviet winter. This was to the contrary of the Soviet "conclusion" that said the POWs were captured and executed by the Nazis during the invasion of the western Soviet Union in August of 1941. As for why the reports on the massacre where stifled and, most likely, destroyed was due to three things. At the time the first of these reports came out, the Soviets had just become on of our Allies in fighting the Germans and the Japanese. The first report was stifled because we, the U.S. and the British, did not want to drive a stake between the Allies and the Soviets who were also fighting Japan at the same time as well as the Nazis. The second possible reason was due to the fact that the Soviets had convinced the Allies that the Nazis had perpetrated this henous act. Which, again, goes against what the Nazis had in fact proven that they were in no way responsible for the killings by the evidence they had collected. However, there is one definative reason as to why almost all information on Katyn Massacre was hidden. We, the Allies, needed another reason so that War Crimes and charges of Crimes Against Humanity could be brought up against the Nazis during the trial at Nurembourg.

I for one do believe that this has to be one of the greatest coverups coming out of not only World War II but the Soviet Union itself. The Soviets tried for years, and succeeded, to keep the secrets behind the massacre under wraps. If the Soviets were, supposedly, not behind the killings near Katyn and Smolensk.Then why was it silenced by the Allies? One member of the German Wehrmacht who had been indicted on the massacre by the Soviets in Leningrad in 1946 later recanted in the mid 1950s. Even though the charges were brought up by Soviet General Roman Rudenko stating that these officers were executed by the invading Nazis. This Wehrmacht soldier in fact escaped the death penalty since he had confessed to being involved with buring the bodies, even though it was not due to the executions themselves. In this recantment, the Wehrmacht soldier stated that he had, in fact, been forced to confess by the Soviet investigators. As for why the Allies covered this up for so long, it was due to the Allies needing another eason to bring up charges against the Nazis. It wasn't really until the early 1990s that the shear aspect of the brrutality came to light when Mikahil Gorbachev admitted that the N.K.V.D., or The People's Commissariat on Internal Affairs, had been responsible for the killings of the POWs. Gobachev also revealed that two more sites like Katyn, Menoye and Piatykhaty, had been discovered as well. This was after the 1989 revelation that Soviet scholars had revealed that Stalin himself had ordered the killings of these officers.

WOW! Great Post. This just confirms what a piece of evil crap Stalin was. Right up there with Hitler himself.
How much more killing did this man do that has not been brought to light yet.

What a tragic event. What a shame it was hidden when they knew the truth. More examples of some human nature. The pre and post events are both in shock and awe. I just wish they released the confirm on a good intention and not with an agenda. Perhaps its an opening for all world governments to come clean on past events that have been iffy. Espicaly with wiki leaks. The cats outta the bag. Secrets details cant be hidden like it used too. Slowly but surley the viels are being removed. I just wish it would hurry up because the future generations deserve so much more then our failures lies minipulations deceptions greed. We were all lucky to be born in the generation of the internet where vast amounts of knowledge flood Yes sometimes bad info misinfo disinfo but dammit knowledge is truly power

Stalin was a straight up nut bar. He thought nothing of killing his own people if they were POW's and liberated back to the soviet union because they didn't fight to the death. Even generals weren't immune to this... I would have hated to have been in that military. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Good article gimmee. I was not aware of this, thanks.

Stalin shot a train conductor for being late. That's great leadership. Morally wrong, but theoretical great. Leadership is about showmanship, and Stalin had it.

I blame the officers who pressed the trigger for this massacre, and not Stalin.
Stalin was just a man. The officers were more than a man, they were men. Plural form. If the men can't see beyond the man, that's their own issue. That the men could not see past the man Stalin, that is Stalin's great success, and I commend him. You can't blame the stupidity of a people on the genius of a man.

I'm curious why they had to confess this now, and at all?

... the Poles are planning to put up a statue of Reagan in Warsaw to acknowledge his role in ending Soviet Communism. How ironic that in Virginia, America is putting up a bust of Stalin.

source

I wonder if the D-Day Memorial organizers are going to change their mind now?

Great find - star and flag.

In retrospect, I wonder if the events unfolding with the secret document releases by WikiLeaks has anything to do with this. After all it was said that this latest release was going to change history...

The truth has been know of this for a long time.It is just the same old crap. the countries of that area have alwys massacred each other when they have fought.
The whole mass murder thing was not invented by stalin.
The polish president died ironically in a plane crash on the way to this memorial....in russia....
The nazis murdered millions,stalin murdered twenty million of his own people plus more nazis etc...
Gawd how dark thesepeople are...the whole bunch of them!
Is it the long bleak winters with little to eat, and plenty of potato vodka that makes them so casual about such slaughter?

Just to give you folks an idea as to how ruthless Stalin was as a political figure.

On December 1, 1934, Sergei Kirov was shot by an unknown gunman outside at his office in Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg. It is believed that Stalin was personally responsible for this assasination as well. This was because Stalin saw him as a threat to his near-absolute power over the Soviet government. After Kirov's murder in St. Petersburg, Stalin invented a plan to implicate opposition leaders on Kirov's murder. This also brought about a new "law" from Stalin stating that "Terrorist organizations and terrorist acts were to beinvestigated for a period of no longer than ten days." Once the ten days were up, a trial and sentence were to be quickly executed. During these "investigations" no organization that had been accused of "terrorist act" with no prosecution, no right to a defense attorney or an appeal.

One of Stalin's greatest examples of his ability to integrate the Soviet Secret Police, the KGB, came in 1940 at the hands of two Communist sympathyziers in Mexico. On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky, a leader of the October Revolution of 1917 behind Vladimir Lenin was assasinated at his home in Mexico by an undercover NKVD agent by the name of Ramon Mercader. After Trotsky's own bodyguards nearly killed Mercader, Trotsky struggled to say that his assasin should be put to trial. Even though the blow to Trotsky was poorly delivered and failed to kill him right off. Trotsky lived one more day after the attack by the agent due to a severe brain injury.

Just goes to show that Stalin was a nutcase with power.

the russians should pull stalin from his grave and dress him up as a clown, then sell his body to a circus side show as the greatest nuttjob in history

Wow! Interesting story. The plane that crashed near Smolensk last April carrying the Polish President and other top Polish military leaders....weren't they on their way to visit the site of this massacre? Perhaps this is some sort of an olive branch from Russia to Poland. I read somewhere that the area was considered "damned".

One can't help but to see the conspiracy parallel between the Katyn massacre & the recent 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash.

Stalin also had Lenin poisoned. Then he purged his military of nearly all leadership with mass executions of officers to insure his power.

People today ridicule communism, but really what they are ridiculing is Stalinism, because he completely derailed the original communists for his own made power grab. Stalin is estimated to have caused the deaths of more people than HItler.

Originally posted by pirhanna
Stalin also had Lenin poisoned. Then he purged his military of nearly all leadership with mass executions of officers to insure his power.

People today ridicule communism, but really what they are ridiculing is Stalinism, because he completely derailed the original communists for his own made power grab. Stalin is estimated to have caused the deaths of more people than HItler.

A Common oft quoted excuse my brother: "That wasn't "communism" it was somebodies sick demented brand.

Hmmm what seems to be the connecting thread here? Pol Pot ( Cambodian kmer rouge); Mao( "peoples"republic of china"): Stalin: each responsible for purges killing millions of their own citizens.

Communism looks great on paper and fine details can be debated endlessly by those thoughtful and steeped in it. Funny how it always turns out though; Totalitarianism and mass killings.Getting into a debate over it is a trap.they have all the answers worked out. There is no need to debate any of it it. when you take those wonderful sounding ideas and mix in the human animal, you get rifle butts thrust into the faces of old ladies.

be well citizen

Originally posted by asperetty
Stalin shot a train conductor for being late. That's great leadership. Morally wrong, but theoretical great. Leadership is about showmanship, and Stalin had it.

I blame the officers who pressed the trigger for this massacre, and not Stalin.
Stalin was just a man. The officers were more than a man, they were men. Plural form. If the men can't see beyond the man, that's their own issue. That the men could not see past the man Stalin, that is Stalin's great success, and I commend him. You can't blame the stupidity of a people on the genius of a man.

I'm curious why they had to confess this now, and at all?

Wow, seriously? It seems to me that you're confusing tyranny for leadership here.

Genius? If attempting to conjure images of leadership via the threat of not only your own death, but that of everyone you know/love than yeah, Stalin is a genius... But holy cow, this guy was as loony as they come, not brilliant as you're suggesting.

Leadership is getting people to want to follow you because they believe in your 'vision'. Not following you because they fear for their life.

Originally posted by VeniVidi
WOW! Great Post. This just confirms what a piece of evil crap Stalin was. Right up there with Hitler himself.
How much more killing did this man do that has not been brought to light yet.

let us put bush senior and junior up on that list as well.

right?

Originally posted by aliengenes
the russians should pull stalin from his grave and dress him up as a clown, then sell his body to a circus side show as the greatest nuttjob in history

yeah lets meet up and do it ourself, send the douche bag around the world for amusement.

How is this news? We've known for years that the Russians were responsible for the massacre. It's disturbing that many actually still believed the Germans were the ones who did it considering the footage of German officers with Polish officers examining the bodies of the murdered that's been around since...well, the day it happened.

To me this confirms how all governments and governing leaders can and do keep horrible secrets for long periods of time. i totally believe there is no government on the planet that has not committed huge crimes against people to gain or retain their power or hide their secrets from the public.

Originally posted by pirhanna
People today ridicule communism, but really what they are ridiculing is Stalinism, because he completely derailed the original communists for his own made power grab. Stalin is estimated to have caused the deaths of more people than HItler.

Those purges you are refering to, his purge of the Red Armies was huge.
Three of five generals were removed by Stalin.
Eight of nine naval admirals had been removed.
Thirteen of fifteen army commanders were removed from office.
Fity of fifty seven army corps commanders removed.
154 out of 186 army commanders were removed.
All sixteen army commissars were kicked out.
Twenty five of twenty eight army corps commissars had to be removed.

In the 1920s and the 1930s, Stalin was responsible for the imprisonment of 2,000 intellectuals, which 1,500 of them died in prison at the hands of the NKVD. These included Osip Mandelstam, who was arrested in 1934 for reciting the anti-Stalin poem "Stalin Epigram" to a circle of his friends. Afterwards, Mandelstam was sent to Cherdyn for three years. In May of 1938 Mandelstam was arrested again and this time sent to a "corrections camp" where he died on December 27, 1938 while at a transit camp close to Vladivostok. Issac Babel, the writer, was arrested in May of 1939 because he was supposedly intertwined with Leon Trotsky's anti-Stalin organization and that he was being recruited by the French to become a spy for the Francs. Babel was tried and convicted of spying for the Francs and the Austrians by the secret police in Moscow. On Janurary 27, 1940, Babel was executed at Butyrka Prison.

Not only were writers, intellectuals, and artists being imprisioned. So were meteorologist after developmental sunspot research due to it being deemed "un-Marxist." Between 1936 and 38, nearly thirty meteorologists disappeared. However this wasn't the first time the Meteorolgy Office had been purged. It was purged as far back as 1933 when meteorologists failed to predict harmful weather for the crops. These purges took a heavy toll on the writers and artists in Soviet Russia at the time. You would also think that Stalin's personal tudor would have been exempt from these purges. That was not the case when it came down to it. Jan Sten, the deputy commander of the Marx-Engels Institute who was Stalin's private tudor when Stalin was studying Hegel's dialect. In 1937, Sten was arrested under Stalin's direct orders due to Stalin declaring him on of the chiefs of the Menshevizing idealists. Sten was executed on June 19, 1937 at Lefortovo Prison.

As for how many people or who Stalin had personally saw as to being declared "Enemies of the State" and killed. Estimates put the total somewhere around fifteen to sixteen million that were killed by Stalin. However, the actual number of those killed may be somewhere closer to twenty million.