For the first fewer twelve hours, the Soviets were silent. The blow led out on the morning of April 15, utilizing Sowiformbiur – their main information agency (i.e. propaganda).
OneArchive material
‘The German fascist thugs do not retreat from the most sleazy and vile lie by which they effort to hide the unheard crimes committed, as it is now clearly seen, by themselves... Patented German fascist assassins (...) – they can't fool anyone. They will not escape the right and inevitable payment for their bloody crimes," it was announced.
The device went all the way. A fewer days later, the Polish emigration government requested the global Red Cross to analyse graves in Katyn. Unfortunately, he did so just after a akin request from the 3rd Reich (which was a deliberate Nazi trap) – and Stalin announced that "there is contact and collusion between allied enemies, Hitler and Mr Sikorski's government".
Stalin responded to this supposedly "faithful blow" by breaking relations with the Polish government. This one, not his own fault, was in a crisis situation. And then it was only expected to get worse.
Without good intentions
Stalin's position in the Anti-Hitlerian large 3 was already powerful at the time – it was strengthened by the fresh Red Army triumph in epic struggles for Stalingrad. But the russian leader made the game on the Polish issue not erstwhile he dictated conditions from the position of force – he did it much earlier erstwhile he seemed the weakest.
The express symbol here is the Kremlin's reaction to the conciliation appeal of General Władysław Sikorski, issued by him in the first days of the Nazi invasion of the USSR. The Polish Prime Minister announced that Poles would put aside the events and together with the Soviets they would fight against Hitler.
He besides called on Moscow to reject Ribbentrop-Molotov pactand thus: honoring pre-war Polish borders. Finally, he demanded the release of Polish prisoners and exiles taken to the USSR.
Soviet Ambassador to London Ivan Majski during discussions with Poles and British fundamentally refused to talk about borders “Moscow signaled explicitly that it did not intend to quit the land it seized as a consequence of the pact with Hitler. She besides refused to discuss the citizenship of the Polish population, which in different ways (deportations, falsified plebiscites) was in russian territory.
In addition, the Soviets have repeatedly underestimated the number of Polish officers and soldiers they have taken prisoner. It wasn't a message of good intentions.
“Have all Poles been released?”
The government of Sikorski then signed an agreement with the USSR under force from the British – besides to get tens of thousands of its own citizens out of the "inhuman land". This opened the way to the formation of Anders' Army, but did not remove distrust.
This only increased erstwhile it turned out that among thousands of Poles coming to Buzułuk (there the Polish Army was formed) there was no component of the most valuable: officers, including reserveists.
When Polish officers were shot by NKVD executioners in the spring of 1940, Stalin was most likely convinced that the destiny of these people would no longer be claimed, and surely not in the foreseeable future. The Nazi invasion of the USSR and the unexpected turn of the alliances made the "problem" anew.
Poles were struggling to complete lists of missing persons – by autumn 1941 they counted about 4,000 names. All these people were known to be exported by large transports from Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov in April-May of the erstwhile year.
Sikorski and Ambassador Kot, having met Stalin, began to reprove them. Even then, they were given evasive answers. "Have all Poles been released? due to the fact that I have a Polish ambassador who tells me that not everyone is?” – the dictator scolded on the telephone of any military or engender. (Ambassador Kot remembered this scene after the Germans discovered the graves.)
Why inoculate people you want to murder?
‘They escaped. No, to Manchuria," Stalin told General Anders. "They were surely fired, but they had not arrived yet," he added. There were another problems, specified as the deficiency of equipment and rations for the Polish army and the blocking of aid for thousands of civilians, which the Anders Army "grew" with.
Although at first it was possible to presume that war chaos and transport gaps contributed to these problems, it gradually became clear that russian Poles deceive. At the turn of 1941 and 1942, it did not should be amazing that thousands of Polish officers did not scope the Army of Anders. The weird thing was the Soviets couldn't tell where they were.
PAPGeneral Władysław Sikorski in Moscow in December 1941.
“What do we request them for? possibly they are located in the areas occupied by Germany, they ran away," Stalin said erstwhile Anders pressed him.
Stanisław Swianiewicz (one of the fewer survivors of the Katyn crime) heard rumors in the summertime of 1942 that the officers were dead. But rather, the script in which they died during badly organized transport was taken into account, due to the fact that specified things happened in the russian Union.
Swianiewicz was inactive not in head at the time that officers would be deliberately killed after being treated comparatively well in captivity for 8 months. Especially since they were vaccinated against typhus and cholera shortly before the shipment!
The announcement by the Germans of the discovery of graves in April 1943 was by no means a shock, but besides a turning point. Moscow could no longer pretend that Polish officers "flee like a couple", so after a fewer days of silence she went into propaganda and diplomatic counteroffensive.
“ Hitler’s Helpers” and “the Traitory Hit”
"Polish Hitler's helpers" was thundered by the diary "Truth" after Poles began demanding an MCK investigation. Poles were warned "ready to cooperate with the Nazi executioners of the Polish nation" that they would go into past as "helpers of Hitler's people eaters" and "the people will turn distant from them".
Molotov, having called on the Polish ambassador to Moscow to break off relations, accused Poland that this “is going to the hand of Hitler’s tyranny, is inflicting a treacherous blow on the russian Union.”
London and Washington were shocked. The war was barely at the end of the beginning, but the russian movement announced a divided in the anti-Hitler coalition. This imagination was so hard to imagine that on the issue of putting out the Katyn crisis, it began to push... Poles!
Churchill threw a chill to Prime Minister Sikorski: "If they're dead, there's nothing you can do to bring them back.‘. British abroad Minister Anthony Eden tortured the Polish Prime Minister and pressured him to announce that the crime in Katyn was actually a German “inventory”.
In exchange with the Soviets, Churchill insisted on their return to relations with the Polish government, stating that While this “shocked” is due to the discovery of graves in Katyn, “relationships should be restored”.
Sikorski answered the Allied: “There is strength on the side of Russia — on our justice. I do not advise the British to deal so much with violent force and put aside justice in front of all nations."
For an alliance with Stalin, much can be sacrificed
One thing was clear: both propaganda and political, Stalin made an excellent usage of the moment. There were respective favorable circumstances.
Until then, in the West, there was actually no news of the destiny of Poles who were sent to exile or to prisons in the USSR – let alone the disappearance of a peculiar group, i.e. thousands of Polish officers. At the same time, the memory of the Polish military effort e.g. during the conflict of England faded slightly, which made Poles escape the position of “First Ally”.
In turn, the Soviets had just defeated German troops in the epic struggles for Stalingrad. Given that the beginning of the second front by the Western Allies in Europe was a melody of the distant future, Stalin began to dictate conditions and expectations within the anti-Hitlerian large Three.
Churchill was somewhat more realistic in the assessment of the nature and customs of the russian leader and his regime. He described the USSR as a "enemy of civilized humanity", but an alliance with that country against Hitler considered the British state right.
The Americans, on the another hand, maintained sensational trade relations with Moscow throughout the duration of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, beating export records. Following Hitler's attack on the russian Union, president Roosevelt rightly felt that if Germany had won, the weight of the full clash with Hitler would gotta take on the US. These calculations indicated that much could be sacrificed for the alliance with Stalin.
PAPThe large 3 in Yalta in February 1945.
Uncle Joe can't have blood on his hands.
However, Western leaders for months “sold” this choice to their own public opinions not as a cynical necessity – alternatively as a reason for pride. In the U.S. the good image of Moscow in the name of common trade relations was observed in the 1930s – it was watched by known figures of public life as, among others. Walter Duranty (famous fresh York Times reporter) Or Moscow ambassador Joseph E. Davies.
It is worth noting any co-incidence: precisely at the time erstwhile Stalin threw shameful accusations of cooperation with the Reich, Joseph E. Davies brought a peculiar gift to the Kremlin: copy of the movie “Mission in Moscow”And a secret letter from Roosevelt. Stalin saw the movie at a peculiar show. "Mission in Moscow" was a screening of an ambassador's book describing his stay in the USSR in the 1930s. The book was as much a bestseller as a mirror for a russian tyrant who already had millions of victims on his account.
The movie had even more momentum in this respect. The celebrated composer Dmitri Shostakovich said that if the painting of specified outrageously lying company of russian propaganda, no 1 in the West would believe it. Meanwhile, it was made in Hollywood, for money 3 times as much as “Casablanca”.
Stalin was then referred to in the United States as "uncle Joe". He was on the cover of Time as Man of the Year. "Life" published (two weeks before the outbreak of the crisis around Katyń!) a peculiar edition dedicated to the russian Union. Here, too, Stalin was on the cover. The author "Life" in 1 of the texts described the NKWD as "the FBI-like police".
“The traitor of Poles” as a lion
Each of these criminally stupid presentations was ad hoc for Anglo-Saxon leaders. But she besides led them into an apparent trap. In the spring of 1943 it would be hard for them to admit abruptly that the idealized large ally, “Uncle Joe”, has hands immersed in Polish blood to the elbows. due to the fact that then, consequently, it would be essential to respond differently to the disclosure of the Katyn crime.
Stalin thus accumulated tremendous image capital in the West – and willingly utilized it. He tactically encouraged London and Washington to take steps together with Moscow to "improve the composition of the current Polish government in order to strengthen the unified front of the Allies". So he suggested to the Americans and the British further pressures on Poles, offering nothing in return.
Churchill went on to do so – he assured, for example, Stalin, that he would make efforts to "bring to silence the Polish writings in England that attacked the russian Union".
Stalin utilized the charge of “co-operation between London Poles and Germany” as a useful lion. For example, he reminded him at a conference in Tehran, erstwhile Roosevelt only mentioned the anticipation of restoring Polish-Soviet relations.
They waited for words, so they were deceived
Just erstwhile the large 3 was sitting in Iran, in the Katyn Forest of the NKVD, together with the forming Burdenko commission, they prepared a powerful hoax, calculated to yet remove work for the massacre of Polish officers from the USSR.
At the same time, Stalin could talk to Western allies in a language that they understood. They waited for specified words – so they let them be deceived. Stalin, for example, stated that the USSR wanted "strong and independent Poland". He rejected the suggestions that he was preparing himself to form the subordinate Moscow Polish government – only that the Union of Polish Patriots, the origin of specified a centre, already existed at the time.
Stalin was doing his occupation – and since this was accompanied by ambiguous declarations, the Western Allies took them as a good coin and gyrated, specified as Churchill in the home of Commons. At the same time, they ignored allegations as absurd as Moscow accusing the Home Army of cooperating with Germany.
The Yalta Conference was the culmination of this scheme: Churchill and Roosevelt again entrusted Stalin, this time on the issue of "free elections" in Poland – and again they did not intend to enforce this commitment in any way.
We can't say a word.
The drama of Polish authorities and citizens was as though triple. His first layer was that no compromise or agreement with Moscow, to which the Western Allies so forced the London Government, was most likely not possible.
Ideas specified as: to let Stalin go of “West Ukraine” and “West Belarus” to save Polish independency and democracy – they most likely did not have a chance of success.
Second thing: about the destiny of post-war Poland, against the efforts and illusions of politicians and fighting soldiers, The large 3 about ruled in Tehran – that is, in the fall of 1943. The Poles just kept it hidden.
All subsequent accounts and the London government, and the national underground, even in the context of Lwów's belonging to Poland or the chances of the Warsaw Uprising, were burdened with this ignorance.
A case that's absolutely hard to swallow
Finally, the 3rd fact, straight related to Katyń: Western allies knew perfectly well who and erstwhile murdered thousands of Polish officers.
The British were aware of this at least from June 1943. In secret papers at the time, the British Undersecretary of State wrote about the case as being "absolutely harder to swallow", of course due to the good of the alliance with the USSR. W The study of Owen O’Malley, a British ambassador to the Polish government in exile, was besides circulated in London.
In the summertime of 1943, these reports were no longer a surprise in Washington. The War Department had alleged Szymanski reports – it was submitted by an American liaison officer to the Army of Anders, who had already watched the destiny of Poles in the USSR in 1941-42.
Simply neither in Katyń's case nor in any another Western Allies intended to defend the Polish business. “We do not know if any attempts at force on Poland would be effective — due to the fact that the West has not made any — he told me about the “Jalt order” of prof. Łukasz Kamiński..
Churchill instructed his ministers on Katyn: “None of us can say a word about it”. Roosevelt saw reports and photos of the exhumation of Polish officers, but he pretended: “It’s all German propaganda and conspiracy. I am absolutely convinced that the Russians did not do so."
