AP Exclusive: Memos show US hushed up Soviet crime

Associated Press ^ | Monday, Sept. 10, 2012 | RANDY HERSCHAFT and VANESSA GERA |

[robowombat]

, WARSAW, Poland (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.

The Americans — Capt. Donald B. Stewart and Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr. — Van Vliet wrote reports on Katyn in 1945 and 1950, the first of which mysteriously disappeared. But the newly declassified documents show that both sent secret encoded messages while still in captivity to army intelligence with their opinion of Soviet culpability. ....... The newly uncovered documents also show Stewart was ordered in 1950 — soon before the Congressional committee began its work — never to speak about a secret message on Katyn.

the U.S. cover-up delayed a full understanding in the United States of the true nature of Stalinism The historical record carries other evidence Roosevelt knew in 1943 of Soviet guilt. One of the most important messages that landed on FDR's desk was an extensive and detailed report British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent him. ___

[robowombat]

Please read the full article. The wretched 300 word excerpt requirement makes it impossible to convey the impact of this article. The US government deliberately for decades downplayed and soft peddled irrefutable evidence it had of the absolute responsibility of the Soviet union for the Katyn Forest Massacre. It is utterly damning and a classic random act of journalism. For years it has been considered foil hat to suggest that many well educated upper middle class Americans due to absorbing the 'correct' attitudes while at elite colleges,at some level sympathized with some part of the Soviet project and would bend over to give the Soviets the benefit of the doubt. Disguised as 'realism' or 'liberal internationalism' the effect was to keep the US pulling its punches with the USSR and trying constantly to 'find a middle ground' with the Soviets. What is important about this beyond proving the culpability of these political fabulits is that many of the same attitudes are displayed in the dealings of the US with the Muslim world.

[doc1019]

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[Born to Conserve]

The only reason socialism is no longer an external threat is that they won — we are now socialist.

[kabumpo]

My father, who was in the military during WWII told me about this when I was still a child. What you say is true - this attitude - which has covered so many crimes, and as you point out, still prevails - is the reason I left the liberal world in which I had grown up and became a Conservative.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Who didn’t know that?

[Berlin_Freeper]

April 1943 » Nazi Germany’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels announces the German discovery of mass graves at Katyn. Goebbels hopes public knowledge of the Soviet crime would sow distrust between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies and weaken their alliance.

May 1943 » As part of the Nazi propaganda effort, the Germans bring a group of American and British POWs to Katyn, as well as other groups, to see the remains of the Poles in the mass graves, in an advanced state of decomposition.

[Loud Mime]

ping

[Loud Mime]

But if your grandparents came from Poland and three of the executed officers carried your family name, you would have heard of this, as I did.

[UCANSEE2]

I wasn’t aware that this was even in any doubt.

Silly me.

[UCANSEE2]

The only reason socialism is no longer an external threat is that they won — we are now socialist.

Yeah, but it's not official until the announcement on Dec. 21.

[UCANSEE2]

Poland basically got gang-raped before, during, and after the wars.

Then the Russians cut off the head just a few years ago.

Polish people are wonderful, and great allies, and the source of many advances in science and engineering.

I guess the worst are always trying to kill off the best.

[DemforBush]

Sadly, this wasn’t the only case of things being hushed up during or immediately after WW2. Werner Von Braun, Shiro Ishii and others in charge of Japan’s Unit 731 biological warfare unit, etc. A lot of deals with the devil were done during those years.

As for the Soviets being responsible for the Katyn forest massacre...it’s not the least bit surprising. Stalin knew that the fewer Polish military leaders there were, the more easily he could keep Poland in an iron grip. There’s no doubt in my mind he personally gave the order for the Red Army to come to a halt well outside the city during the Warsaw Uprisings. The Polish resistance would have fought Soviet tyranny with the same fervor as they did the Nazis.

[Flintlock]

Doesn’t this just confirm what we already know? At least as far as the facts of the case are concerned.
The really powerful stuff is knowing just how far “we” would go to cover up Uncle Joe’s crimes.

OPERATION KEELHAUL ring any bells for ya?

[Alberta's Child]

Stories like this about the goings-on in Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, especially with regard to the atrocities of the Soviet Union that were deliberately hidden by Western journalists over the years, go a long way toward explaining why Nazi Germany had so much popular support in those countries.

[BilLies]

This report was all over the BBC World Radio News last night as breaking news.

Did you know that Roosevelt covered it up? How? First I heard of that.

[Ax]

It does. This was Harry S. Truman’s darkest hour. Those poor Soviet POWs were traded into certain slavery or death for political expediency.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I read the novels of WEB Griffin. He referenced it early on in his Brotherhood of War series:

The Lieutenants: Brotherhood of War

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lieutenants-Brotherhood-W-E-B-Griffin/dp/0515090212/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1347382318&sr=8-7&keywords=web+griffin

[robowombat]

Alot of people both here and n Europe. Ask a 30 something college ‘educated’ white collar type what happened at Katyn Woods and see what sort of response you get. I vividly remember a female 0-4 who had done a tour on the peninsula asking me with complete honesty how the US Army had gotten to Korea and why we were there since the NK regime was menacing and scary. I remember the congressional hearings and i also have Zawodny’s book on the subject. Few know about the first and fewer have read the second. This is how the libs remake history. They don't ban discussing inconvenient facts as much as just practice a blackout and push a counternarrative. The success of the counter narrative is that virtually every college graduate since 1950 knows or more correctly knows the liberal narrative about Joe McCarthy but have no clue who General Ivan Serov or General Abukamov are and what Magadan, Vorkuta, and Kolyma represent or what the ‘Terror famine’ was. This sort of complete ignorance is deliberately propagated by the intellectual ‘elite’.

[robowombat]

The real new news in this report relates to spelling out how the State department and the Executive branch minimized, buried and deflected absolute evidence of this mass murder form 1943 to the first bush Administration all in the name of not annoying the Soviets. Moreover FDR knew this well before Yalta (read the whole article it spells it out) and still felt he was so smart that he could get Stalin to cooperate in his grand mutual swindling match of a global New Deal after the war. A mass murder of this scale required direction from the very highest levels of the Soviet Union. Knowing ones wartime ‘ally’ was no different than the common enemy and continuing to try and coax such individuals into a cooperative relationship transcends narcissistic folly and means the head of the US was willing to risk US national security to satisfy his bloated ego. That is impeachable ‘high crimes’. No one should ever be able to regard Franklin Roosevelt after this as much more than a manipulator and fool who risked the security of his country to satisfy his legacy hunting ego. No wonder Bil Clinton and LBJ idolize this disgusting human being.

[robowombat]

The only rationale I have ever heard for the forced repatriation of Soviet and Polish nationals after WW2 is that the Soviets had overrun most of the German POW camps and had effective control of several hundred thousand US and UK former prisoners of war. The Soviets without putting anything on paper had made it clear that it was a quid pro quo if we and the British wanted our people back in much under a few years give or take a couple and minus a lot of former prisoners who would just become ‘unaccountable’ to speedily return all Soviet nationals (as the Soviets counted them meaning anyone who had ever lived in or around Russia at any time.) to the control of the Soviet Union. No allied worthy would ever breath a word about this (Churchill and Marshall included) but it seems the Soviets made their shakedown clear. Rather like Chicago gangsters shaking down businesses.