“The knowledge of Katyn should have given us significant bargaining leverage at Yalta and Potsdam with the Russkies.”
>sigh>
Look, here’s the deal. As far as being allies with Stalin, that die was cast by Churchill before we even got into the war. Churchill forged the alliance with Stalin in July 1941. When Hitler declared war on the United States, we joined the conflict on the side of the USSR. From December 7, 1941 to May 8, 1945, the United States was bound to a common cause with the Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany. And, as one poster noted already, that victory was purchased at the cost of the blood of 11,000,000 Soviet soldiers. A lot more than we paid.
Second, the Germans paraded captured American POW’s through Katyn in 1943 or 1944. The American POW’s, without any prompting by FDR or the rest of the “national leadership,” independently reached the decision that although they believed that the Nazis made their case that the Soviets murdered the Polish officers, they were bound by the war against the common enemy to make no statement that would damage the alliance and allow the Nazis to use them as propaganda tools.
Third, “leverage at Yalta?” To do what, exactly? Get the Red Army, who just conquered Poland at a staggering cost, to just turn around and leave? You really think slapping Stalin in the face with Katyn would make him do that? “Oh gosh, we killed Poles. We’re sorry; we’ll leave.” You don’t know a whole lot about Joseph Stalin if you think there is any chance of that happening. Plus, there is no way even Churchill, who hated Stalin but hated Hitler a little more, was going to do that while we were still at war with Germany.
Which leads to the final point. The USSR conquered Poland, and projected their power beyond it into central Germany. There was no way for us to keep that from happening. Once there, the only way they were going to leave was by the application of greater force. I will tell you that other than George S. Patton, there was not one single American in a position of authority in the military or government who had the desire to go to war with the USSR at that time. Not when we still had Japan to deal with. And how would you have sold this new war to an American public who had been told for years that the USSR was our ally? How do you get a war-weary American public to sign on to another war while one is still being fought?
The Soviet Union won their spoils of war in Eastern Europe the hard way. We had NO leverage at all regarding Eastern Europe. Threaten them with the bomb? They stole the plans for it from us and made their own. Cut off Lend-Lease? Truman did that. Cut them off from the Marshall Plan? They turned that down, too. The USSR had the most productive parts of their country laid waste by an invasion from Eastern Europe, survived the onslaught by the slimmest of margins, and prevailed at a staggering cost. They were not going to allow that to happen again, and they perceived it as essential to national security to make Eastern Europe into a reliable buffer zone. Their definition of “reliable buffer zone” was of course the extermination of the middle class and forcible imposition of their brutal, godless Soviet system. It was awful. However, the plain simple fact is nobody and nothing was going to get a different result. Period. End of statement.
The vast majority who died because of Stalin's incompetence and cruelty.
What a fine apology!
“There was no way for us to keep that from happening”
If from the jump in Dec. 41 we had made it our goal to get to Berlin and beyond as quickly as possible, I think there was. Instead we dithered around in North Africa and Italy, botched if in Holland, and kept as wide a front as possible marching east so, I don’t know really, Eisenhower would look like a swell guy? Point is, we fought as if it were our expressed goal to give Stalin as much territory as possible. Then suddenly Churchill’s all “Oops, I forgot they’re evil.”
Too late. Revealing Katyn wouldn’t have amounted to jack. But there was a way, earlier. If we had timed it after the breakout at Sralingrad and took whatever route was quickest, we could’be done much better, anyway.