In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland. Within two years, Hitler broke their nonaggression pact and invaded Russia. By 1943, the Red Army was pushing German forces back into Eastern Europe. On April 13, 1943, the Germans uncovered mass graves in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in the Soviet Union. There were 4,443 corpses of Polish officers, policemen, and intelligentsia (priests, teachers, lawyers, engineers, landowners, and factory owners). Josef Goebbels saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between the Anglo-Americans and Soviets. He considered it to be golden propaganda that had fallen into his lap. Goebbels even allowed the Red Cross to come examine the site and the bodies. It reported back to the Polish government-in-exile that the Germans were telling the truth. When confronted with the evidence, Stalin lied (the “Katyn lie”) and said the executions were by the Nazis. FDR and Churchill decided to accept Stalin’s lie in order to keep the alliance solid. The truth was that before the Soviets were kicked out of Poland in 1941, the Soviet NKVD (Stalin’s secret police) had rounded up thousands of men who might be troublesome after the war. As many as 20,000 were killed, but it was the 5,000 in Katyn that gave the massacre its name. In Katyn, the prisoners were brought individually into a cell where they were ordered to kneel. They were carried out the back door and added to the corpses in mass graves. It was not until 1990 that Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the Soviets had done the murdering. It was part of his glasnost policy and also an attempt to improve relations with Poland.
P.S. in 2010, Polish President Lech Kaczyński was flying to a meeting with Vladmir Putin at the site of the massacre. They were to commemorate the dead. On April 10, 2010, the Polish airliner crashed on landing. Kaczynski, his wife, and many of Poland’s political elite were killed. Officially, the accident was pilot error. However, some believe Russian operatives placed bombs on board the plane to decapitate Poland’s leadership. Not that Putin would do something like that, right?
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviets-admit-to-katyn-massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
https://observer.com/2018/05/evidence-shows-russia-had-role-in-smolensk-crash-killed-kaczynski/
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