AP Exclusive: Memos show FDR likely hushed up Soviet atrocity
Progressivism is as progressivism does. Who did Obama compare himself to at the convention? h/t Gateway Pundit for the Oba-FDR photoshop. More on this story via the AP.
The American POWs sent secret coded messages to Washington with news of a Soviet atrocity: In 1943 they saw rows of corpses in an advanced state of decay in the Katyn forest, on the western edge of Russia, proof that the killers could not have been the Nazis who had only recently occupied the area.
The testimony about the infamous massacre of Polish officers might have lessened the tragic fate that befell Poland under the Soviets, some scholars believe. Instead, it mysteriously vanished into the heart of American power. The long-held suspicion is that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t want to anger Josef Stalin, an ally whom the Americans were counting on to defeat Germany and Japan during World War II.
Not saying the Polish officer massacre didn’t happen, I’m certain it did. But whether Stalin was angry or not would not have changed how Stalin pursued the war.
Any close reading of the history of the Eastern Front during WWII would show that Roosevelt and Churchill were terrified of offending Stalin, who constantly threatened to make a separate peace with Hitler if his allies refused to mollify him.
Agreed on the lengths Americans and British would go to avoid offending Stalin.
George Orwell’s book, Animal Farm, a parable of the 1917 Soviet Revolution, in which the central character is a pig representing Stalin, was written in England in 1943, but not published until August 1945, after Soviet cooperation against the Germans was no longer needed.
The politics of a seperate peace with Hitler are easy. After what the Germans had done to the Ukraine, Byelorussia and western Russia, plus the enormous losses of life to the Wermacht, the idea that any Soviet leader could have made a separate peace with Hitler is ludicrous. He would have been instantly deposed for someone who wanted to crush and annihilate the Germans.
The Idea that anyone in 1940′s USSR could have deposed Stalin is ignorance. Stalin had killed anyone and everyone who could have posed a threat to him before 1938′s deal with Hitler that split Poland and the Balkans.
What the Germans did to the Ukraine, Byelorussia and western Russia was a continuation of what Stalin had already been doing in those areas. One might surmise there were fewer people killed by the Germans than Stalin would have killed in the same time frame. Stalin’s hatred of Hitler was based on the violation of their 1938 “deal” and not on anything the Germans did to Russia. Can’t hate a person for killing those you were going to kill anyhow.
A separate peace?
Just like Brest-Litovsk?
And that worked out so well for those ruling Russia at the time, and I’ll bet that Stalin remembered.
It was always just a threat, never a promise.
Yes, it was an atrocity. But a lot of things were confusing back then and there was the bigger picture to consider.
Poland, far from being an innocent victim, had enthusiastically participated in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Finland found itself an ally of the Nazis solely by virtue of having been attacked by the soviets. Also, Poland was fertile ground for ant-semitism. Nothing was black and white back then.
Yes, gazzer, Poland swiped a small chunk of Slovakia in September 1938, when Hitler (via Neville Chamberlain) took over Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. It was a shameful act. Hungary also got a chunk of its neighbor.
Still, you cannot seriously compare the bloodless land-grab of the Zaolzie region with the horrors inflicted on Poland by the dual Nazi and Soviet invasions of Sept. 1 and Sept. 17, respectively. The partition was included as a secret accord of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact concluded in August 1939.
To be fair, Neville Chamberlain et al. only agreed to Germany annexation of the Sudetenland. Germany of course went beyond that, and took over most of Czechoslovakia, with a few crumbs to Poland and Hungary. After noting how good Hitler was at not keeping agreements, Britain never made another deal with him. Stalin didn’t seem to learn from that.
Exactly right Gazzer. We should not judge the people of the past as the stage can never be set the same as it was for them. The fears, emotions, beliefs and prejudices of a time are impossible to duplicate. It’s hard enough understanding what’s happening in the world during our own time. .
Er, wholesale slaughter of 22,000 prisoners was black and white even then, Comrade. Pity you’re too sophisticated to recognize it.
I was referring to FDR’s and Churchill’s pandering to Stalin’s threats, not the slaughter of the Polish officers. That was just one slaughter among many our leaders were burdened with.
Moron. Zaolzie was annexed by Czechs rightt after Ponad had regained her inependenceand immediately before Poland had to resist the invasion of the stalinist army in 1920.
Poles consisted more than 60% of Zaolzie population and more Poles in Zaolzie joined Czech army than Czechs themselves when the German Nazis were threatening Czechoslovakia with annexation.
Study history before you make another ignorant comment.
An interesting comparison to today’s reluctance to criticize Islamic nations, or to reveal atrocities done in the name of Islam, could be made about every American president since Eisenhower. This neglect was in effect most keenly during the Carter administration, but when Aramco, a joint venture of Arab and United States companies, was seized by Arab States, we sat idly by and let them, all the while knowing the pathology of the states.
I have spoken with many oil industry executives who were there at the time, and a number of “spooks” who were well aware of the goings on. They were debriefed by government types and were shocked that nothing came out.
We’re looking at a very similar situation in the middle East, but due to political correctness, money issues, fear, nothing is said.
Forgot to mention that the press won’t touch this either. Duranty, Reed, Mailer all knew about Russian atrocity and reported nothing unless they were drunk off their butts in a private situation.
Today, we have similar idealogues in the press who would never utter one word, reference Saddam Hussein’s sons’ behavior prior to the war.
I have an Iraqi woman friend who told me that her parents refused to let her go outside after 3pm at the age of ten because of these guys and people like them. She was embarrassed to have groused about it then when she was older and understood.
[...] Maybe FDR skipped his national security meetings all the time the way Obama does.Via Instapundit, Riehl World View and Gateway Punditgoogle_ad_client = "ca-pub-1395656889568144"; /* 300×250, created 8/11/08 */ [...]
They didn’t call it the evil empire for nothing. The title to this article is too vague. Soviet Atrocity? Which one? There are so many to choose from.
The vital national interest in 1943 was to continue to aid the Soviets in their to-the-death battle with the Nazis. In fact, it was a matter of national survival. In FDR’s position, I absolutely would have buried this info too, and left the fallout for after the Nazi defeat. We have the great luxury of knowing how history unfolded – FDR didn’t. As the Nazis proved over the next two years, they were very far from beaten, and the Allies could easily have lost the war that year. In any case, in the horrific carnage of the war, very few in 1943 would have been surprised or even outrages by news of the massacre.
Absolutely, Paul C. There’s a big difference between how one acts during a world war toward your ally and how you act in peacetime (as the commenters ranting about Islamic extremeists don’t seem to understand).
Sometimes, a leader has to remain silent, whether it’s to preserve an alliance (oh, and what was FDR supposed to do, go to the United Nations? Call for a war crimes inquiry?), or to preserve state secrets, such as the Allies having cracked German and Japanese codes.
Riehl displays a breathtaking misunderstanding and ignorance of history and leadership with this post.
Absolute rubbish. It was not a matter of “national survival” to aid the USSR in 1943. And furthermore aiding them did not require complicity in their atrocities.
Interesting perspective. Cover-ups of
mass atrocities is not just OK in your
book but you would have done the same
thing.
My how times and sensibilities have
changed. Today we are told waterboarding is an atrocity although no one gets any
more than wet.
But shoot 22,000 bound Poles in the head
and it’s “hush” or Stalin will get mad.
This seems like the application of 2012 morality to 1943. There are a lot of reasons why FDR would have buried this news, so any that it would have been hard to find a reason to publicize it. The Soviet Union was our ally in that war, even if only out of necessity. FDR needed to sustain popular support for the war, which in1943 nobody knew would end in 1945. It might well have gone onuntil 1947 or beyond. So the US and other combatant powers ran massive and not very nuanced propaganda campaigns to maintain public support through considerable privation. There was simply no way he was going to undermine the war effort’s support by making hazy accusations of the Soviets during a time when civilians were dying by the thousands every day. And it would have done no good at all.