'US covered up Soviet atrocities in WWII'

phoenix999

Hardly surprising?:

http://m.eircom.net/news/article/?type=breaking&storyid=20731818

Elmer Blooker

phoenix999 wrote: »

Hardly surprising?:

http://m.eircom.net/news/article/?type=breaking&storyid=20731818

American POWs in (german occupied) Russia during WW2?
Why would the US want to cover up the Katyn massacre? To my knowledge the US took every opportunity to highlight the evils of communism during the Cold War.

golden lane

Elmer Blooker wrote: »

American POWs in (german occupied) Russia during WW2?
Why would the US want to cover up the Katyn massacre? To my knowledge the US took every opportunity to highlight the evils of communism during the Cold War.

it seemed like a good idea at the time......most things are done for that reason.......critics have the benifit of hindsight......

A Primal Nut

It's not nice of course, but maybe as a means to an end (defeating Hitler) it was necessary?

Aenaes

Elmer Blooker wrote: »

American POWs in (german occupied) Russia during WW2?
Why would the US want to cover up the Katyn massacre? To my knowledge the US took every opportunity to highlight the evils of communism during the Cold War.

When the Germans broadcast the find to the world in 1943, they invited officials from other countries to view the site. These seem to include POWs.

Anyway, what could the U.S. do? They needed Stalin's help, as Churchill said "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make a pact with the Devil."
It's not like they could wage war on the USSR during WW2.

Cedrus

This is only news in the FoxNewsUSA (free speech how are ya), there is a film about it, a weird kind of modern act II , it's even been WIKI'ed. At this stage anyone who hasn't heard of Katyn must be living in a Diogenesian barrel.

phoenix999

Aenaes wrote: »

When the Germans broadcast the find to the world in 1943, they invited officials from other countries to view the site. These seem to include POWs.

Anyway, what could the U.S. do? They needed Stalin's help, as Churchill said "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make a pact with the Devil."
It's not like they could wage war on the USSR during WW2.

Well put. The americans knew a lot more than they let on but couldn't go public until victory was assured in the west. But rather ironic that a war that started over the invasion of Poland, saw it fall into Stalin's clutches anyway, and thousands sent to the Gulag.

phoenix999

Cedrus wrote: »

This is only news in the FoxNewsUSA (free speech how are ya), there is a film about it, a weird kind of modern act II , it's even been WIKI'ed. At this stage anyone who hasn't heard of Katyn must be living in a Diogenesian barrel.

Yes you would want to be living under a rock all your life if you havn't heard of Katyn. However, the point of the article was that it revealed that the US knew a lot more than it let on and at an earlier stage. Even during the Cold War investigation into the massacre, thousands of secrets documents were not revealed (for various reasons).

Dannyboy83

Why was FDR so trusting of Stalin, if they were fully aware of the extent of the atrocities?
How would the US have procured this information if the Poles could not?

Wouldnt consider it impossible, just unlikely.

Defiler Of The Coffin

There is no doubt the Americans knew what happened at Katyn. From BBC News:

According to the report by the Associated Press, information about the massacre was suppressed at the highest levels in Washington.

Katyn expert Allen Paul told AP some of the material did not appear in the record of Congressional hearings in 1951-52 held to investigate the massacre, suggesting it had been deliberately kept hidden.

Interestingly the report also mentions the British ambassador to the Polish Government in Exile, Owen O'Malley whose role in exposing the massacre was written about by Eoghan Harris here

phoenix999

Dannyboy83 wrote: »

Why was FDR so trusting of Stalin, if they were fully aware of the extent of the atrocities?
How would the US have procured this information if the Poles could not?

Wouldnt consider it impossible, just unlikely.

And the Poles were deliberately kept in the dark about a lot of things throughout the war. It was the Germans who brought the allied witnesses to the site and controlled the flow of information. The Americans were on the receiving end of a lot of intelligence from the Brits, but were not as keen to reciprocate.

Border-Rat

Just goes to show the plutocratic (Sorry, Democratic) leftist West was in league with their leftist cohorts in the East. As if the massive hypocrisy over Russia invading Poland didn't already expose it. Start a war over Germany invading 50% of Poland, do nothing when your Allies occupy 100% of it.

HavingCrack

phoenix999 wrote: »

Well put. The americans knew a lot more than they let on but couldn't go public until victory was assured in the west. But rather ironic that a war that started over the invasion of Poland, saw it fall into Stalin's clutches anyway, and thousands sent to the Gulag.

It's not that ironic really. The British and French (and latterly the Americans) didn't give a **** about Poland from the beginning. Look how Britain and France didn't bother sending any aid to Poland in 1939 or launching any sort of offensive on Germany from the west. It was an imperialist war pure and simple-the British and French didn't want Germany gaining power at their expense.

What I find really ironic is that WW2 was an absolute disaster for Britain and France in the long run, both declined from world powers in the 1930s to second ranking states behind the US and Soviet Union by the 1950s. In fact in economic terms Japan and Germany-the "losers" soon overhauled both of them.

Canvasser

Cedrus wrote: »

This is only news in the FoxNewsUSA (free speech how are ya), there is a film about it, a weird kind of modern act II , it's even been WIKI'ed. At this stage anyone who hasn't heard of Katyn must be living in a Diogenesian barrel.

Katyn is fantastic anti-communist propaganda. That's why it is talked about so much while hundreds of other massacres in WW2 are unknown.

CptMackey

Canvasser wrote: »

Cedrus wrote: »

This is only news in the FoxNewsUSA (free speech how are ya), there is a film about it, a weird kind of modern act II , it's even been WIKI'ed. At this stage anyone who hasn't heard of Katyn must be living in a Diogenesian barrel.

Katyn is fantastic anti-communist propaganda. That's why it is talked about so much while hundreds of other massacres in WW2 are unknown.

The communists were just as bad as the Germans. The only difference is that instead of just picking on the Jews ,Stalin killed millions on a whim, didn't matter to him.

ejmaztec

HavingCrack wrote: »

It's not that ironic really. The British and French (and latterly the Americans) didn't give a **** about Poland from the beginning. Look how Britain and France didn't bother sending any aid to Poland in 1939 or launching any sort of offensive on Germany from the west. It was an imperialist war pure and simple-the British and French didn't want Germany gaining power at their expense.

What I find really ironic is that WW2 was an absolute disaster for Britain and France in the long run, both declined from world powers in the 1930s to second ranking states behind the US and Soviet Union by the 1950s. In fact in economic terms Japan and Germany-the "losers" soon overhauled both of them.

Neither country was in a position to take a fight into Poland, they just didn't have the logistics to carry out the job, and had they actually managed to get there, I think they would have been minced up between the Russians and Germans.

The only irony is that in the end, Poland ended up in the hands of a different enemy, and the UK was hocked up to the eyeballs. It seems that whatever empires existed after WW1 were destroyed after WW2.

ejmaztec

Canvasser wrote: »

Katyn is fantastic anti-communist propaganda. That's why it is talked about so much while hundreds of other massacres in WW2 are unknown.

Can you name some and we'll let you know whether we've heard of them or not?

darlett

ejmaztec wrote: »

Can you name some and we'll let you know whether we've heard of them or not?

Some of that pro-communist propaganda would be great too :rolleyes:

ejmaztec

darlett wrote: »

Some of that pro-communist propaganda would be great too :rolleyes:

It was all the rage in the gulags.

HavingCrack

ejmaztec wrote: »

Can you name some and we'll let you know whether we've heard of them or not?

Yeah I'd love to know what massacres he/she thinks are still unknown. Maybe they're referring to the relatively small number of atrocities carried out by the Western Allies, primarily during the Italian campaign.

Canvasser

CptMackey wrote: »

The communists were just as bad as the Germans. The only difference is that instead of just picking on the Jews ,Stalin killed millions on a whim, didn't matter to him.

The Red Army saved europe from barbarity. We should be building statues to thems.

phoenix999

Canvasser wrote: »

The Red Army saved europe from barbarity. We should be building statues to thems.

Tell that to the people of eastern Europe and the millions of people sent to the Gulag. Read your history!

ejmaztec

Canvasser wrote: »

Katyn is fantastic anti-communist propaganda. That's why it is talked about so much while hundreds of other massacres in WW2 are unknown.

Canvasser wrote: »

The Red Army saved europe from barbarity. We should be building statues to thems.

You forgot to let us have a list of the "unknown" massacres as requested in post no. 17.

phoenix999

And anyone interested in American/British 'massacres' should read work by the international lawyer Alfred de Zayas. The Germans compiled hundreds of volumes of documenting investigations. The following are three bestsellers: Nemesis at Potsdam; A Terrible Revenge: The Expulsion of the Germans from the East and the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau. Well worth a read.

HavingCrack

phoenix999 wrote: »

And anyone interested in American/British 'massacres' should read work by the international lawyer Alfred de Zayas. The Germans compiled hundreds of volumes of documenting investigations. The following are three bestsellers: Nemesis at Potsdam; A Terrible Revenge: The Expulsion of the Germans from the East and the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau. Well worth a read.

I actually quite like de Zayas work but a lot of the Anglo-American "war crimes" the Wehrmacht accused them of were not actually their direct responsibility, things like the NKVD murders in Lviv or the expulsion of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe were all Soviet acts rather than those of the western Allies.

There were Allied war crimes, in particular in the Italian campaign where raping of Italian women by French troops was widespread and in the Rhineland were American troops engaged in rape in 1945. There was also wholesale looting of 'liberated' towns by British and Canadian troops in France and Belgium. Then of course there was the cases of POW's being executed, apparently Canadian troops were pretty notorious for this.

Of course there was also the aerial bombardment of German cities during the bombing campaign which deliberately targeted civilians in the case of the RAF or 'claimed' to be precision bombing in the case of the USAAF but I believe that deserves its own thread.

Mers El Kebir is also an interesting topic of discussion.

However on the whole, if the aerial bombing campaign is left aside (as I said its not as clear cut as it seems) Allied war crimes generally didn't come close to the excesses of the Germans and the Soviets.

ejmaztec

HavingCrack wrote: »

I actually quite like de Zayas work but a lot of the Anglo-American "war crimes" the Wehrmacht accused them of were not actually their direct responsibility, things like the NKVD murders in Lviv or the expulsion of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe were all Soviet acts rather than those of the western Allies.

There were Allied war crimes, in particular in the Italian campaign where raping of Italian women by French troops was widespread and in the Rhineland were American troops engaged in rape in 1945. There was also wholesale looting of 'liberated' towns by British and Canadian troops in France and Belgium. Then of course there was the cases of POW's being executed, apparently Canadian troops were pretty notorious for this.

Of course there was also the aerial bombardment of German cities during the bombing campaign which deliberately targeted civilians in the case of the RAF or 'claimed' to be precision bombing in the case of the USAAF but I believe that deserves its own thread.

Mers El Kebir is also an interesting topic of discussion.

However on the whole, if the aerial bombing campaign is left aside (as I said its not as clear cut as it seems) Allied war crimes generally didn't come close to the excesses of the Germans and the Soviets.

I think that out of all the perpetrators, the Soviets got away with it and the vast majority went unpunished.

Canvasser

phoenix999 wrote: »

Tell that to the people of eastern Europe and the millions of people sent to the Gulag. Read your history!

No you read your history. The nazis killed 6 million Poles in the war and would have killed them all if the Red Army didn't liberate eastern europe. Eastern europe saw big increases in living standards in the 60s and 70s. To compare the states in eastern europe from 1945 to 1989 to the genocidal regime of the nazis is nothing but ignorance. The nazis brought death and destruction to eastern europe while the soviets brought free healthcare and education.

Canvasser

HavingCrack wrote: »

I actually quite like de Zayas work but a lot of the Anglo-American "war crimes" the Wehrmacht accused them of were not actually their direct responsibility, things like the NKVD murders in Lviv or the expulsion of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe were all Soviet acts rather than those of the western Allies.

There were Allied war crimes, in particular in the Italian campaign where raping of Italian women by French troops was widespread and in the Rhineland were American troops engaged in rape in 1945. There was also wholesale looting of 'liberated' towns by British and Canadian troops in France and Belgium. Then of course there was the cases of POW's being executed, apparently Canadian troops were pretty notorious for this.

Of course there was also the aerial bombardment of German cities during the bombing campaign which deliberately targeted civilians in the case of the RAF or 'claimed' to be precision bombing in the case of the USAAF but I believe that deserves its own thread.

Mers El Kebir is also an interesting topic of discussion.

However on the whole, if the aerial bombing campaign is left aside (as I said its not as clear cut as it seems) Allied war crimes generally didn't come close to the excesses of the Germans and the Soviets.

Oh the poor wee lambs! It's not like any of them participated in genocide and mass theft against the slavic peoples:rolleyes:

So in your book telling the Germans to move westwards is a war crime but killing their children by dropping bombs on them is a war crime? If the Red Airforce carpet bombed German cities in WW2 and killed hundreds of thousands of women and kids then posters on here wouldn't shut up about it. But because it was their beloved British Empire doing it then it's ok.

Gurgle

ejmaztec wrote: »

I think that out of all the perpetrators, the Soviets got away with it and the vast majority went unpunished.

Of course they went unpunished, they were on the winning side.
Was anybody on the winning side held accountable for anything done along the way?

Canvasser

Gurgle wrote: »

Of course they went unpunished, they were on the winning side.
Was anybody on the winning side held accountable for anything done along the way?

Curtis LeMay got a promotion

ejmaztec

Gurgle wrote: »

Of course they went unpunished, they were on the winning side.
Was anybody on the winning side held accountable for anything done along the way?

I haven't got the facts to hand, but I understand that punishments were carried out where non-Soviet allied troops were involved in rapes etc...

I don't think that any Soviet troops raping their way through Berlin for example, were punished, and only told to stop when some commanders thought it was getting out of hand.