US 'helped Russia cover up Second World War Katyn Forest massacre'

[Lars77]

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/us-helped-russia-cover-up-second-world-war-katyn-forest-massacre-8122111.html



The US deliberately helped Russia cover up one of its most infamous Second World War atrocities to gain favour with Stalin, new documents suggest.

More than 22,000 captured Polish officers and other prisoners were systematically murdered in the Katyn forest on the western edge of Russia in 1940.

Three years later American prisoners of war sent secret coded messages to Washington with news of the massacre after seeing rows of corpses in an advanced state of decay in the forest, proof that the killers could not have been the Nazis who had only recently occupied the area.

Their testimony 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 did not want to anger Russian leader Josef Stalin, an ally whom the Americans were counting on to defeat Germany and Japan during the war.


________________________________
This is still a very very sensitive issue, brought to the forefront after the Polish presidents aircraft crashed in 2010 going to Katyn for a ceremony.

[Brickbat]

1. Makes sense.

[ananda]

2. Wartime makes strange bedfellows and enemies.

It's true that the USA did need Soviet Russia as an ally against Germany.
In fact, Stalin's disaffection with Hitler might well be the deciding factor
in the outcome of the war.

However, treating our Japanese-American citizens like enemies was a
huge national disgrace and a stain on Roosevelt's legacy, imo.

[slor]

3. The Germans reported it...

Even though they too, were leaving bodies in forests

[Octafish]

4. A plane load of Polish VIPs crashed on the way to Russia to commemorate this war crime in 2012

Polish President Dies in Jet Crash in Russia

By NICHOLAS KULISH, ELLEN BARRY and MICHAL PIOTROWSKI
The New York Times Published: April 10, 2010

WARSAW — A plane carrying the Polish president and dozens of the country’s top political and military leaders to the site of a Soviet massacre of Polish officers in World War II crashed in western Russia on Saturday, killing everyone on board.

President Lech Kaczynski’s plane tried to land in a thick fog, missing the runway and snagging treetops about half a mile from the airport in Smolensk, scattering chunks of fuselage across a bare forest.

The crash came as a stunning blow to Poland, wiping out a large portion of the country’s leadership in one fiery explosion. And in a chilling twist, it happened at the moment that Russia and Poland were beginning to come to terms with the killing of more than 20,000 members of Poland’s elite officer corps in the same place 70 years ago.

“It is a damned place,” former President Aleksander Kwasniewski told TVN24. “It sends shivers down my spine.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/world/europe/11poland.html?pagewanted=all

[4th law of robotics]

5. The best thing we could have done in that war (IMO)

would have been to offer Stalin exactly as much aid as was necessary to keep the soviets in the fight but not enough to let them launch a major offensive. Let the Germans fight a one front war against the Russians until neither could continue.

And both those fascists could have ground their nations to dust.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. Not sure why this is news, it's been known for years

and "mysteriously vanished into the heart of American power" is a bit of retroactive historical rejiggering considering that Britain covered it up as well.

In private, Churchill agreed that the atrocity was likely carried out by the Soviets. According to Edward Raczyński, Churchill admitted on 15 April 1943 during a conversation with General Sikorski: "Alas, the German revelations are probably true. The Bolsheviks can be very cruel."[56] However, at the same time, on 24 April 1943 Churchill assured the Soviets: "We shall certainly oppose vigorously any 'investigation' by the International Red Cross or any other body in any territory under German authority. Such investigation would be a fraud and its conclusions reached by terrorism."[57] Unofficial or classified UK documents concluded that Soviet guilt was a "near certainty", but the alliance with the Soviets was deemed to be more important than moral issues...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre