US 'hushed up' Soviet guilt over Katyn [Archive]

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Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant'

11th September 2012, 11:18

Hope this doesn't degenerate into a endless fight / debate about the virtues of Uncle Joe, was hoping to spark some debate about the significance of these kinds of discoveries in general and whether they really matter or have an impact.
I'm sure there are some that would argue 'Eh, it was WWII, a lot of shit went down'. What are your thoughts?

New evidence appears to back the idea that the Roosevelt administration helped cover up Soviet guilt for the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish soldiers.
In an exclusive story, the Associated Press says that newly released documents support the suspicion that the US did not want to anger its wartime ally, Joseph Stalin.
The documents were made public by the US National Archives on Monday.
More than 22,000 Poles were killed by the Soviets on Stalin's orders.
Soviet Russia only admitted to the atrocity in 1990 after blaming the Nazis for five decades.
The documents show that American prisoners of war sent coded messages to Washington in 1943 saying they had been taken to see corpses in an advanced state of decay in the Katyn forest near Smolensk, in western Russia.
The group of American and British POWs had been taken by the Nazis against their will to witness the scene.
What they saw convinced two Americans, Capt Donald B Stewart and Lt Col John Van Vliet, that the killings must have been carried out by the Soviets, rather than the Nazis, who did not occupy the area until 1941.
A statement from one, Captain Donald B Stewart, made in 1950, confirmed he sent a coded message, the gist of which was: "German claims regarding Katyn substantially correct in opinion of Van Vliet and myself."

(More at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19552745)

Камо́ Зэд

11th September 2012, 11:32

If I've got this straight, Nazis took prisoners to see dead bodies and claimed them to be victims of the Soviet Union. Seems legit.

Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant'

11th September 2012, 11:38

If I've got this straight, Nazis took prisoners to see dead bodies and claimed them to be victims of the Soviet Union. Seems legit.

"Soviet Russia only admitted to the atrocity in 1990 after blaming the Nazis for five decades."

The article is about the US knowing about it at the time too and covering up their knowledge of it.

Камо́ Зэд

11th September 2012, 11:45

"Soviet Russia only admitted to the atrocity in 1990 after blaming the Nazis for five decades."

And Khrushchev said Stalin was actually evil the whole time. Soviet politicians say all kinds of crazy shit.

fug

11th September 2012, 11:50

People still believe Goebbels propaganda?

Invader Zim

11th September 2012, 14:43

People still believe Goebbels propaganda?

And apparently Russian propaganda, given that the Russian government admitted responsibility for the attrocity. Apparently the archival evidence is also 'Goebbels' propaganda too. And if the Nazis did do it, why would the US cover it up?

http://www.archives.gov/legislative/guide/house/chapter-22-select-katyn-forest-massacre.html

Furthermore, why, when Nazi war criminals were being brought to justice after the war, were the Soviet allegations regarding Katyn unsupported with any evidence and no Nazi war criminal prosecuted for them? Why did the western powers, Britain in particular, suppress the evidence they had collected? All to cover for the Nazis with whom they were fighting a bitter war? FDR, for instance, suppressed his own nation's intelligence report into the massacre?

And why would Goebbels lie about the event in his own private diary? He was perfectly willing to discuss maltreatment and murder of Jews in his diary, so why would he lie about this?

14 April 1943: 'We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, murdered by the GPU, for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style. We sent neutral journalists and Polish intellectuals to the spot where they were found. Their reports now reaching us from ahead are gruesome. The Führer has also given permission for us to hand out a drastic news item to the German press. I gave instructions to make the widest possible use of the propaganda material. We shall be able to live on it for a couple weeks.'

Read:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ayq3CpH69HMC&pg=PA131&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

The fact is that NKVD did massacre the POWs, and not the Nazis, and that the Western powers knew full well that the Soviet line was a fraud, but covered for them anyway because it was in their own interests to protect the Soviet Union's image for at least the duration of the war.

cynicles

11th September 2012, 23:51

And Khrushchev said Stalin was actually evil the whole time. Soviet politicians say all kinds of crazy shit.
No kidding, but you should hear teh crazy shit they say in America, they think Stalin was a marxist.

#FF0000

11th September 2012, 23:54

Didn't they like

find German bullets in the corpses?

Камо́ Зэд

12th September 2012, 00:07

And apparently Russian propaganda, given that the Russian government admitted responsibility for the attrocity. Apparently the archival evidence is also 'Goebbels' propaganda too. And if the Nazis did do it, why would the US cover it up?

http://www.archives.gov/legislative/guide/house/chapter-22-select-katyn-forest-massacre.html

That the later rulers of that country "admitted" responsibility on behalf of Stalin isn't really all that impressive. You wrote something about archival evidence, but then the archival evidence you provide is something written and released by the United States government.

Furthermore, why, when Nazi war criminals were being brought to justice after the war, were the Soviet allegations regarding Katyn unsupported with any evidence and no Nazi war criminal prosecuted for them? Why did the western powers, Britain in particular, suppress the evidence they had collected? All to cover for the Nazis with whom they were fighting a bitter war? FDR, for instance, suppressed his own nation's intelligence report into the massacre?

And why would Goebbels lie about the event in his own private diary? He was perfectly willing to discuss maltreatment and murder of Jews in his diary, so why would he lie about this?

14 April 1943: 'We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, murdered by the GPU, for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style. We sent neutral journalists and Polish intellectuals to the spot where they were found. Their reports now reaching us from ahead are gruesome. The Führer has also given permission for us to hand out a drastic news item to the German press. I gave instructions to make the widest possible use of the propaganda material. We shall be able to live on it for a couple weeks.'

Ella Rule writes:

The Nazi propaganda relating to the Katyn massacres was designed to make it impossible for the Soviets to have any dealings with the Poles at all. General Sikorski took up the Nazi propaganda with a vengeance, claiming to Churchill that he had a "wealth of evidence". How he had obtained this "evidence" simultaneously with the German announcement of this supposed Soviet atrocity is not clear, although it speaks loudly of secret collaboration between Sikorski and the Nazis. The Germans had made public their allegations on 13 April. On 16 April the Soviet government issued an official communiqué denying "the slanderous fabrications about the alleged mass shootings by Soviet organs in the Smolensk area in the spring of 1940". It added:

The German statement leaves no doubt about the tragic fate of the former Polish prisoners of war who, in 1941, were engaged in building jobs in areas west of Smolensk and who, together with many Soviet people, fell into the hands of the German hangmen after the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

The Germans had in fabricating their story decided to embellish it with an anti-Semitic twist by claiming to be able to name Soviet officials in charge of the massacre, all of whom had Jewish names. On 19 April Pravda responded:

Feeling the indignation of the whole of progressive humanity over their massacre of peaceful citizens and particularly of Jews, the Germans are now trying to arouse the anger of gullible people against the Jews. For this reason they have invented a whole collection of 'Jewish commissars' who, they say, took part in the murder of the 10,000 Polish officers. For such experienced fakers it was not difficult to invent a few names of people who never existed - Lev Rybak, Avraam Brodninsky, Chaim Fineberg. No such persons ever existed either in the 'Smolensk section of the OGPU' or in any other department of the NLVD . . .

The insistence of Sikorski in endorsing the German propaganda led to the complete breakdown in relations between the London Polish government in exile and the Soviet government - as to which Goebbels commented in his diary:

This break represents a one-hundred-per-cent victory for German propaganda and especially for me personally . . . we have been able to convert the Katyn incident into a highly political question.
But what I really have a problem with is that the first part of your question included the words "Why would Goebbels lie . . . ?"

Камо́ Зэд

12th September 2012, 00:09

No kidding, but you should hear teh crazy shit they say in America, they think Stalin was a marxist.

Good thing I'm in a PokéMart, because I'm gonna need some BURN HEAL.

Rafiq

12th September 2012, 00:33

Sir Comradical

12th September 2012, 02:06

Didn't the Nazis (I forget who specifically) admit to Katyn at Nuremberg? In any case who cares about Polish officers? While summary executions are wrong, these folks headed a vile anti-communist government that sought an alliance with the Nazis to work against the USSR.

rednordman

12th September 2012, 02:09

I'm no history scholar but i will say that as far as the evidence goes, than it still isn't very obvious, who committed it. Is there any chance that the current time, Both the Soviets and the Nazis had a hand in it? just the USA decided that it was a better idea to do buisness with the Russians than the Nazis at the time? And yes Rafiq, it would not surprise me if on the whole the Nazis generally where responsible for more of the executions than the Soviets ever where.

rednordman

12th September 2012, 02:14

Zostrianos

12th September 2012, 02:33

It was easy to blame the Nazis (since it was indeed them who were usually doing these massacres back then, much more than the Soviets). What made it even easier was the Khatyn massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyn_massacre) in Belarus, which actually was committed by the Nazis. The soviets later emphasized the Khatyn crimes, to further divert attention from Katyn.

This shows well the difference between Nazi and Stalinist terror: the Nazis openly resorted to extreme violence, liquidating entire cities and villages, and usually didn't care what anyone thought. The Soviets on the other hand were terrified that their crimes might be known around the world , so they typically did them in secret, deporting people into the woods and killing them there, etc.

And if I recall correctly, it wasn't only Polish officers, but intellectuals, factory workers, priests, "saboteurs", and others judged dangerous by Stalin. The Katyn massacre also occurred during the joint Nazi-Soviet occupation of Poland, and though there's no evidence of collaboration in that regard, the Nazis and Soviets in their agreement jointly planned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo-NKVD_Conferences)out their tactics to terrorize the Polish population into submission. The Nazis began 3 days before the Soviets.

Камо́ Зэд

12th September 2012, 02:45

It was easy to blame the Nazis (since it was indeed them who were usually doing these massacres back then, much more than the Soviets). What made it even easier was the Khatyn massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyn_massacre) in Belarus, which actually was committed by the Nazis. The soviets later emphasized the Khatyn crimes, to further divert attention from Katyn.

You can't possibly be suggesting that the Soviets exploited what was essentially a difference of one letter to shift the blame for a massacre.

This shows well the difference between Nazi and Stalinist terror: the Nazis openly resorted to extreme violence, liquidating entire cities and villages, and usually didn't care what anyone thought. The Soviets on the other hand were terrified that their crimes might be known around the world , so they typically did them in secret, deporting people into the woods and killing them there, etc.

You can't possibly be suggesting that the Nazis never tried to keep what they were doing secret from the world.

And if I recall correctly, it wasn't only Polish officers, but intellectuals, factory workers, priests, "saboteurs", and others judged dangerous by Stalin. The Katyn massacre also occurred during the joint Nazi-Soviet occupation of Poland, and though there's no evidence of collaboration in that regard, the Nazis and Soviets in their agreement jointly planned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo-NKVD_Conferences)out their tactics to terrorize the Polish population into submission. The Nazis began 3 days before the Soviets.

You can't possibly be suggesting that the Soviets were running the idea of slaughtering tens of thousands of Poles by the Nazis and then acted shocked when the Nazis turned right around and spilled the beans.

Zostrianos

12th September 2012, 02:48

You can't possibly be suggesting that the Nazis never tried to keep what they were doing secret from the world.

The extermination camps yes, but the anti partisan and terror operations were often done openly, in order to instill terror into the local populations (including a few in western Europe, like France)

James Connolly

12th September 2012, 03:04

September 29, 1943

Unfortunately we have had to give up Katyn. The Bolsheviks undoubtedly will soon 'find' that we shot 12,000 Polish officers. That episode is one that is going to cause us quite a little trouble in the future. The Soviets are undoubtedly going to make it their business to discover as many mass graves as possible and then blame it on us.
We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, murdered by the GPU, for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style. We sent neutral journalists and Polish intellectuals to the spot where they were found. Their reports now reaching us from ahead are gruesome. The Führer has also given permission for us to hand out a drastic news item to the German press. I gave instructions to make the widest possible use of the propaganda material. We shall be able to live on it for a couple weeks.
-Goebbels' Diaries

Камо́ Зэд

12th September 2012, 03:15

The extermination camps yes, but the anti partisan and terror operations were often done openly, in order to instill terror into the local populations (including a few in western Europe, like France)

But that would mean that the Soviets were doing similar things in terms of terrorism, but then attempted to keep it secret. That doesn't follow.

#FF0000

12th September 2012, 03:35

I have always honestly been very confused as to why the Russians were "officially" blamed for this. Can anyone explain to me why this was pinned on the Russians rather than the Germans?

Zostrianos

12th September 2012, 03:40

Камо́ Зэд

12th September 2012, 04:09

I think because it happened in Russia, in 1940 (while the Nazis and Soviets were still allies), so it couldn't possibly have been the Nazis who committed it. Unless it happened after 1941, but I think it's been clearly established that it was indeed the Russians.

It couldn't have possibly been Nazis because it happened behind Russian borders?

On 1 September 1939, Nazi German invaded Poland. On 17 September, the Soviet Union moved to reoccupy those parts of Poland that lay east of the Curzon line. Having taken over those areas, the Soviet Union set about distributing land to the peasants and bringing about the kind of democratic reforms so popular with the people and so unpopular with the exploiters. During the battle to retake the areas east of the Curzon line, the Soviet Union captured some 10,000 Polish officers, who became prisoners of war. These prisoners were then held in camps in the disputed area and put to work road building, etc.

Two years later, on 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union by surprise. The Red Army was forced hurriedly to retreat and the Ukraine was taken over by the Germans. During this hurried retreat it was not possible to evacuate to the Soviet interior the Polish prisoners of war. The chief of camp no. 1, Major Vetoshnikov gave evidence that he had applied to the chief of traffic of the Smolensk section of the Western Railway to be provided with railway cars for the evacuation of the Polish prisoners but was told it was unlikely to be possible. Engineer Ivanov, who had been the Chief of Traffic in the region at the time, confirmed there had been no railway cars to spare. “Besides, ” he said, “we could not send cars to the Gussino line, where the majority of the Polish prisoners were, since that line was already under fire“. The result was that, following the Soviet retreat from the area, the Polish prisoners became prisoners of the Germans.

In April 1943, the Hitlerites announced that the Germans had found several mass graves in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, containing the bodies of thousands of Polish officers allegedly murdered by the Russians.

. . .

What lay at the basis of Sikorski’s insistence that the massacre had been carried out by the Soviets rather than the Germans was the dispute over the territory east of the Curzon line. Sikorski was trying to use the German propaganda to mobilise western imperialism behind Poland’s claim to that territory, to try to force them out of the position, as he saw it, of taking the Soviet Union’s side on the issue of this border dispute.

In 1971 there was correspondence in The Times suggesting the Katyn massacres could not have been done by the Germans since they went in for machine gunning and gas chambers rather than despatching prisoners in the way the Katyn victims had been killed, i.e., by a shot in the back of the head. A former German solider then living in Godalming, Surrey, intervened in this correspondence:

“As a German soldier, at that time convinced of the righteousness of our cause, I have taken part in many battles and actions during the Russian campaign. I have not been to Katyn nor to the forest nearby. But I well remember the hullabaloo when the news broke in 1943 about the discovery of the ghastly mass grave near Katyn, which area was then threatened by the Red Army.

“Josef Goebbels, as the historic records show, has fooled many people. After all, that was his job and few would dispute his almost complete mastery of it. What is surprising indeed, however, is that it still shows evidence in the pages of The Times thirty odd years later. Writing from experience I do not think that at that late time of the war Goebbels managed to fool many German soldiers in Russia on the Katyn issue … German soldiers knew about the shot in the back of the head all right … we German soldiers knew that the Polish officers were despatched by none other than our own. “

Moreover, very many witnesses came forward to attest to the presence of Polish prisoners in the region after the Germans had taken it over.

Maria Alexandrovna Sashneva, a local primary school teacher, gave evidence to a Special commission set up by the Soviet Union in September 1943, immediately after the area was liberated from the Germans, to the effect that in August 1941, two months after Soviet withdrawal, she had hidden a Polish war prisoner in her house. His name had been Juzeph Lock, and he had spoken to her of ill-treatment suffered by Polish prisoners under the Germans:

“When the Germans arrived they seized the Polish camp and instituted a strict regime in it. The Germans did not regard the Poles as human beings. They oppressed and outraged them in every way. On some occasions Poles were shot without any reason at all. He decided to escape…”

Several other witnesses gave evidence that they had seen the Poles during August and September 1941 working on the roads.

Moreover, witnesses also testified to round-ups by the Germans of escaped Polish prisoners in the autumn of 1941. Danilenko, a local peasant, was among several witnesses who testified to this.

“Special round ups were held in our place to catch Polish war prisoners who had escaped. Some searches took place in my house 2 or 3 times. After one such search I asked the headman .. whom they were looking for in our village. [He] said that an order had been received from the German Kommandatur according to which searches were to be made in all houses without exception, since Polish war prisoners who had escaped from the camp were hiding in our village. “

Obviously the Germans did not shoot the Poles in full sight of local witnesses, but there is nonetheless significant evidence from local people as to what was happening. One witness was Alexeyeva who had been detailed by the headman of her village to serve the German personnel at a country house in the section of the Katyn Forest known as Kozy Gory, which had been the rest home of the Smolensk administration of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. This house was situated some 700 metres from where the mass graves were found. Alexeyeva said:

“At the close of August and during most of September 1941 several trucks used to come practically every day to the Kozy Gory country house. At first I paid no attention to that, but later I noticed that each time these trucks arrived at the grounds of the country house they stopped for half an hour, and sometimes for a whole hour, somewhere on the country road connecting the country house with the highway. I drew this conclusion because some time after these trucks reached the grounds of the country house the noise they made would cease.

“Simultaneously with the noise stopping single shots would be heard. The shots followed each other at short but approximately even intervals. Then the shooting would die down and the trucks would drive right up to the country house. German soldiers and NCOs came out of the trucks. Talking noisily they went to wash in the bathhouse, after which they engaged in drunken orgies.

“On days when the trucks arrived more soldiers from some German military units used to arrive at the country house. Special beds were put up for them… Shortly before the trucks reached the country house armed soldiers went to the forest evidently to the spot where the trucks stopped because in half an hour they returned in these trucks, together with the soldiers who lived permanently in the country house.

“. . . On several occasions I noticed stains of fresh blood on the clothes of two Lance Corporals. From all this I inferred that the Germans brought people in the truck to the country house and shot them.”

Alexeyeva also discovered that the people being shot were Polish prisoners.

“Once I stayed at the country house somewhat later than usual… Before I finished the work which had kept me there, a soldier suddenly entered and told me I could go . . . He . . . accompanied me to the highway.

“Standing on the highway 150 or 200 metres from where the road branches off to the country house I saw a group of about 30 Polish war prisoners marching along the highway under heavy German escort… I halted near the roadside to see where they were being led, and I saw that they turned towards our country house at Kozy Gory.

“Since by that time I had begun to watch closely everything going on at the country house, I became interested. I went back some distance along the highway, hid in bushes near the roadside, and waited. In some 20 or 30 minutes I heard the familiar single shots."

. . .

Evidence was also given as to how the Germans "doctored" the graves of the victims to try to eliminate evidence that the massacre took place not in the autumn of 1941 but in the spring of 1940 shortly after the Poles first arrived in the area. Alexandra Mikhailovna had worked during the German occupation in the kitchen of a German military unit. In March 1943 she found a Russian war prisoner hiding in her shed:

“From conversation with him I learned that his name was Nikolai Yegorov, a native of Leningrad. Since the end of 1941 he had been in the German camp No. 126 for war prisoners in the town of Smolensk. At the beginning of March 1943, he was sent with a column of several hundred war prisoners from the camp to Katyn Forest. There they, including Yegorov, were compelled to dig up graves containing bodies in the uniforms of Polish officers, drag these bodies out of the graves and take out of their pockets documents, letters, photographs and all other articles.

“The Germans gave the strictest orders that nothing be left in the pockets on the bodies. Two war prisoners were shot because after they had searched some of the bodies, a German officer discovered some papers on these bodies. Articles, documents and letters extracted from the clothing on the bodies were examined by the German officers, who then compelled the prisoners to put part of the papers back into the pockets on the bodies, while the rest was flung on a heap of articles and documents they had extracted, and later burned.

“Besides this, the Germans made the prisoners put in the pockets of the Polish officers some papers which they took from the cases or suitcases (I don’t remember exactly) which they had brought along. All the war prisoners lived in Katyn Forest in dreadful conditions under the open sky, and were extremely strongly guarded… At the beginning of April 1943, all the work planned by the Germans was apparently completed, as for three days not one of the war prisoners had to do any work…

“Suddenly at night all of them without exception were awakened and led somewhere. The guard was strengthened. Yegorov sensed something was wrong and began to watch very closely everything that was happening. They marched for three or four hours in an unknown direction. They stopped in the forest at a pit in a clearing. He saw how a group of war prisoners were separated from the rest and driven towards the pit and then shot. The war prisoners grew agitated, restless and noisy. Not far from Yegorov several war prisoners attacked the guards. Other guards ran towards the place. Yegorov took advantage of the confusion and ran away into the dark forest, hearing shouts and firing.

“After hearing this terrible story, which is engraved on my memory for the rest of my life, I became very sorry for Yegorov, and told him to come to my room, get warm and hide at my place until he had regained his strength. But Yegorov refused… He said no matter what happened he was going away that very night, and intended to try to get through the front line to the Red Army. In the morning, when I went to make sure whether Yegorov had gone, he was still in the shed. It appeared that in the night he had attempted to set out, but had only taken about 50 steps when he felt so weak that he was forced to return. This exhaustion was caused by the long imprisonment at the camp and the starvation of the last days. We decided he should remain at my place several days longer to regain his strength. After feeding Yegorov I went to work. When I returned home in the evening my neighbours Branova, Mariya Ivanovna, Kabanovskaya, Yekaterina Viktorovna told me that in the afternoon, during a search by the German police, the Red Army war prisoner had been found, and taken away.”

Further corroboration was given by an engineer mechanic called Sukhachev who had worked under the Germans as a mechanic in the Smolensk city mill:

“I was working at the mill in the second half of March, 1943. There I spoke to a German chauffeur who spoke a little Russian, and since he was carrying flour to Savenki village for the troops, and was returning on the next day to Smolensk, I asked him to take me along so that I could buy some fats in the village. My idea was that making the trip in a German truck would get over the risk of being held up at the control stations. The German agreed to take me, at a price.

“On the same day at 10 p.m. we drove on to the Somolensk-Vitebsk highway, just myself and the German driver in the machine. The night was light, and only a low mist over the road reduced the visibility. Approximately 22 or 23 kilometres from Smolensk at a demolished bridge on the highway there is a rather deep descent at the by-pass. We began to go down from the highway, when suddenly a truck appeared out of the fog coming towards us. Either because our brakes were out of order, or because the driver was inexperienced, we were unable to bring our truck to a halt, and since the passage was quite narrow we collided with the truck coming towards us. The impact was not very violent, as the driver of the other truck swerved to the side, as a result of which the trucks bumped and slid alongside each other.

“The right wheel of the other truck, however, landed in the ditch, and the truck fell over on the slope. Our truck remained upright. The driver and I immediately jumped out of the cabin and ran up to the truck which had fallen down. We were met by a heavy stench of putrefying flesh coming evidently from the truck.

“On coming nearer, I saw that the truck was carrying a load covered with a tarpaulin and tied up with ropes. The ropes had snapped with the impact, and part of the load had fallen out on the slope. This was a horrible load – human bodies dressed in military uniforms. As far as I can remember there were some six or seven men near the truck: one German driver, two Germans armed with tommy-guns – the rest were Russian war prisoners, as they spoke Russian and were dressed accordingly.

“The Germans began to abuse my driver and then made some attempts to right the truck. In about two minutes time two more trucks drove up to the place of the accident and pulled up. A group of Germans and Russian war prisoners, about ten men in all, came up to us from these trucks. … By joint efforts we began to raise the truck. Taking advantage of an opportune moment I asked one of the Russian war prisoners in a low voice: ‘What is it?’ He answered very quietly: ‘For many nights already we have been carrying bodies to Katyn Forest’.

“Before the overturned truck had been raised a German NCO came up to me and my driver and ordered us to proceed immediately. As no serious damage had been done to our truck the driver steered it a little to one side and got on to the highway, and we went on. When we were passing the two covered trucks which had come up later I again smelled the horrible stench of dead bodies”.

Various other people also gave testimony of having seen the trucks loaded with dead bodies.

One Zhukhov, a pathologist who actually visited graves in April 1943 at the invitation of the Germans, also gave evidence:

“The clothing of the bodies, particularly the greatcoats, boots and belts, were in a good state of preservation. The metal parts of the clothing – belt buckles, button hooks and spikes on shoe soles, etc. – were not heavily rusted, and in some cases the metal still retained its polish. Sections of the skin of the bodies which could be seen – faces, necks, arms – were chiefly a dirty green colour, and in some cases dirty brown, but there was no complete disintegration of the tissues, no putrefaction. In some cases bared tendons of whitish colour and parts of muscles could be seen.

“While I was at the excavations people were at work sorting and extracting bodies at the bottom of a big pit. For this purpose they used spades and other tools, and also took hold of bodies with their hands and dragged them from place to place by the arms, the legs or the clothing. I did not see a single case of bodies falling apart or any member being torn off.

“Considering all the above, I arrived at the conclusion that the bodies had remained in the earth not three years, as the Germans affirmed, but much less. Knowing that in mass graves, and especially without coffins, putrefaction of bodies progresses more quickly than in single graves, I concluded that the mass shooting of the Poles had taken place about a year and a half ago, and could have occurred in autumn 1941 or in spring 1942. As a result of my visit to the excavation site I became firmly convinced that a monstrous crime had been committed by the Germans.”

Several other people who visited the graves at the time gave like testimony.

Moreover, pathologists who examined the bodies in 1943 concluded that they could not have been dead longer than two years. Furthermore, documents were found on some of the bodies which had obviously been missed by the Germans when they doctored the evidence. These included a letter dated September 1940, a postcard dated 12 November 1940, a pawn ticket receipted 14 March 1941 and another receipted 25 March 1941. Receipts dated 6 April 1941, 5 May 1941, 15 May 1941 and an unmailed postcard in Polish dated 20 June 1941. Although all these dates pre-date Soviet withdrawal, they all postdate the time of the alleged murder of the prisoners by the Soviet authorities in the spring of 1940, the time given as the date of the supposed massacre by all those whom the Germans were able to bully into giving false testimony. If, as is claimed by bourgeois propagandists, these documents are forgeries, it would have been the easiest thing to forge documents which postdated the Soviet departure, but his was not done – and it was not done because the documents found were undoubtedly genuine.

Workers-Control-Over-Prod

12th September 2012, 04:14

When i found out about the Katyn massacre, i wrote it into my list of "Massacres never to forget"...

Prometeo liberado

12th September 2012, 04:40

Let me get this straight, there was a war in which "massacres" occurred? And one side is lying about it? Uniformed soldiers were killed, err "massacred", in this war? O.K.
So the insanity of war inspires insane actions and even more insane excuses? Think I got it now.

Камо́ Зэд

12th September 2012, 04:43

Let me get this straight, there was a war in which "massacres" occurred? And one side is lying about it? Uniformed soldiers were killed, err "massacred", in this war? O.K.

What?

So the insanity of war inspires insane actions and even more insane excuses? Think I got it now.

What?

fug

12th September 2012, 04:45

Who gives a shit about some reactionary Polish aristocrats and capitalists and warmongers who attacked Soviet Russia in 1920?

Invader Zim

12th September 2012, 11:53

Didn't they like

find German bullets in the corpses? [...]

I have always honestly been very confused as to why the Russians were "officially" blamed for this. Can anyone explain to me why this was pinned on the Russians rather than the Germans?

Did you read the chapter of the book I linked for you, it is explained in detail precisely what was found and why we know that the NKVD did it.

September 29, 1943
Quote:
Unfortunately we have had to give up Katyn. The Bolsheviks undoubtedly will soon 'find' that we shot 12,000 Polish officers. That episode is one that is going to cause us quite a little trouble in the future. The Soviets are undoubtedly going to make it their business to discover as many mass graves as possible and then blame it on us.
We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, murdered by the GPU, for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style. We sent neutral journalists and Polish intellectuals to the spot where they were found. Their reports now reaching us from ahead are gruesome. The Führer has also given permission for us to hand out a drastic news item to the German press. I gave instructions to make the widest possible use of the propaganda material. We shall be able to live on it for a couple weeks.
-Goebbels' Diaries

Indeed.

You wrote something about archival evidence

And provided some directly relevent to the subject of this post - American knowledge of Soviet guilt and subsequent effors to sweep that knowledge under the carpet. As for evidence that the NKVD shot these POWs, it is truly vast, ranging from the contemporary 'crime scene' data, to the contents of the Soviet Union's own declassified files. Obviously you are unaware of one of the single most famous Soviet era documents ever declassified:

http://www.warbirdforum.com/beria.jpg

A translation of which I found here (http://www.warbirdforum.com/beria.htm):

Top Secret Central Committee of the All Union Communist Party
To Comrade Stalin
In the USSR NKVD prisoner-of-war camps of the western regions of Ukraine and Belorussia, there are at present a large number of former officers of the Polish Army, former workers in the Polish Police and intelligence organs, members of Polish nationalist c-r [counter-revolutionary] parties, participants in exposed c-r insurgent organizations, refugees, and others. They are all sworn enemies of Soviet power, filled with hatred for the Soviet system of government.
Prisoner-of-war officers and police in the camps are attempting to continue their c-r work and are conducting anti-Soviet agitation. Each one of them is just waiting to be released in order to be able to enter actively into the battle against Soviet power.
The NKVD organs in the western oblasts [provinces] of Ukraine and Belorussia have exposed several c-r insurgent organisations. In all these c-r organizations, an active guiding role is played by former officers of the former Polish Army and former police and gendarmes.
Among the detained refugees and those who have violated the state border, a significant number of individuals who are participants in c-r espionage and insurgent organisations have also been uncovered.
The prisoner-of-war camps are holding a total (not counting the soldiers and the NCOs) of 14,736 former officers, officials, landowners, police, gendarmes, prison guards, settlers , and intelligence agents, who are more than 97 percent Polish by nationality.
Among them are:
generals, colonels and lieutenant colonels 295 majors and captains 2,080 lieutenants, 2nd lieutenants, and ensigns 6,049 police officers, junior officers, border guards, and gendarmerie 1,030 rank-and-file police, gendarmes, prison guards, and intelligence agents 5,138 officials, landowners, priests, and settlers 144 In the prisons of the western oblasts of Ukraine and Belarussia a total of 18,632 arrested people (including 10,685 Poles) are held, including:
former officers 1,207 former police, intelligence agents, and gendarme 5141 spies and saboteurs 347 former land owners, factory owners, and officials 465 members of various c-5 and insurgent organisations and of various c-r elements 5,345 refugees 6127 Based on the fact that they are all hardened, irremediable enemies of Soviet power, the NKVD USSR believes it is essential:
I. To direct the USSR NKVD to:
1) examine the cases of the 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, police, intelligence agents, gendarmes, settlers, and prison guards who are now in the prisoner-of-war camps
2) and also examine the cases of those who have been arrested and are in the prisons of western oblasts of Ukraine and Belorussia, numbering 11,000, members of various c-r espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, manufaturers, former Polish officers, officials, and refugees, [and] using the special procedure, apply to them the supreme punishment, [execution by] shooting.
II. Examine [these] cases without calling in the arrested men and without presenting the charges, the decisions about the end of the investigation, or the documents of indictment, according to the following procedure:
a) against individuals in the prisoner-of-war camps on the basis of information presented by the USSR NKVD UPV
b) against individuals who have been arrested on the basis of information from files presented by the UkSSR NKVD and the BSSR NKVD
III. Assign the examination of cases and the carrying out of decisions to a [I]troika consisting of Comrades Beria, Merkulov, Kobulov, and Bashtakov.
USSR People's Commissar of Internal Affairs
L. BeriaOr:

Resolution of March 5, 1940
144. - the matter from the NKVD USSR.
I. Instruct the NKVD USSR:
1) the cases of 14 700 people remaining in the prisoner-of-war camps - former Polish Army officers, government officials, landowners, policemen, intelligence agents, military policemen, settlers and jailers,
2) and also the cases of arrested and remaining in prisons in the western districts of Ukraine and Belorussia people in the number of 11 000 - members of various counter-revolutionary spy and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish Army officers, government officials and fugitives - to be considered in a special manner with the obligatory sentence of capital punishment - shooting.
II. The consideration of the cases to be carried out without the convicts being summoned and without revealing the charges; with no statements concerning the conclusion of the investigation and the bills of indictment given to them. To be carried out in the following manner:
a) people remaining in the prisoner-of-war camps - on the basis of information provided by the Directorate of Prisoner-of-War Affairs NKVD USSR,
b) people arrested - on the basis of case information provided by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and NKVD of the Belorussian SSR.
III. The responsibility for consideration of the cases and the passing of the resolution to be laid on a troika that consists of C. C. Merkulov, Kobulov and Bashtakov (Head, 1st Special Division of the NKVD USSR).
The Secretary of the CC.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080505093030/http://www.electronicmuseum.ca/Poland-WW2/katyn_memorial_wall/kmw_resolution.html

My emphasis on both translations.

Who gives a shit about some reactionary Polish aristocrats and capitalists and warmongers who attacked Soviet Russia in 1920?

Are you trying to suggest that the POWs murdered at Katyn were the same individuals responsible for the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921?

Ella Rule writes:Funny that you don't mention that this is from the Stalin Society, and that it merely regurgitates the claims made by the Soviets during the post-war war crimes trials, which were dismissed out of hand because they were obvious fabrications.

Anyway, there is only one way to dispell the lies of deniers, propagandists and other whitewashers and distorters of the historical record, and that it to prevent evidence. And as noted above, there is plenty to present:

3 March 1959, Moscow
Special File
Top Secret
No. 632-sh[elepin]
To Comrade Khrushchev, N. S.
Since I940, records and other materials regarding prisoners and interned officers, policemen, gendarmes, [military] settlers, landlords and so on, and persons from former bourgeois Poland who were shot in that same year have been kept in the Committee of State Security of the Council of Ministers, USSR. On the basis of the decision by the special Troika of the NKVD USSR, a total of 2I,857 persons were shot; of these, 4,421 [were shot] in the Katyn Forest (Smolensk Oblast), 3,820 in the camp of Starobelsk, close °to Kharkov, 6,311 in the camp of Ostashkov (Kalinin Oblast), and 7,305 persons were shot in other camps and prisons of western Ukraine and western Belorussia.
The whole operation of liquidating the above-mentioned persons was carried out on the basis of the decision of the CC CPSU of 5 March 1940. All of them were sentenced to the highest order of punishment according to the files started for them as POWs and internees in 1939. From the time when the above-mentioned operation was carried out, that is, from 1940, no information has been released to anybody relating to the case, and all of the 21,857 files have been stored in a sealed location.
All these files are of no operational or historical value to Soviet organs. It is also highly doubtful whether they could be of any real value to our Polish friends. On the contrary, any unforeseen incident may lead to revealing the operation, with all the undesirable consequences for our country, especially since, regarding the persons shot in the Katyn Forest, the official version was confirmed by an investigation carried out on the initiative of the organs of Soviet authorities in 1944, under the name of the "Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Shooting of Polish Prisoner-of-War Officers in Katyn Forest by the German-Fascist Aggressors."
According to the conclusion of that commission, all the Poles liquidated there are considered to have been killed by the German occupiers. The materials of the inquiry were extensively covered in the Soviet and foreign press. The commission's conclusions became firmly established in international public opinion.
On the basis of the above statements, it seems expedient to destroy all the records on the persons shot in 1940 in the above-mentioned operation.
In order to answer possible questions along the lines of the CC CPSU or the Soviet government guidelines, the protocols of the meetings of the NKVD USSR Troika that sentenced these persons to be shot, also the documents on carrying out this decision, could be preserved. The volume of these documents is not large and they could be kept in a special file.
23
Attached is the draft of the [relevant] decision by the CC CPSU.
Chairman of the Committee for State Security of the Council of
Ministers of USSR
A. Shelepin
3 March 1959

From this collection of documents (http://law.case.edu/lectures/files/2010-2011/20110204_KatynSiberia_docs.pdf).

So yeah, the Soviet's did it. We have the documents in which it was ordered, with Stalin's signature of agreement on it. We have the minutes in which this 'solution' was confirmed. We have masses of documents regarding how to deal with the families of Polish POWs. And we also have secret documents from after the war in which Soviet officials informed Khrushchev that the Soviet Union was responsible and that they had orchestrated a cover up. Moreover, we have evidence that the British and American governments had also discovered the truth, but also covered it up to protect their wartime partner. Oh, and we also have Goebbel's delighted response to the Soviet massacre recorded in his diaries, in which he explcity notes that it was committed not the Nazis and denies a frame up, because of the massive propaganda value it afforded.

This is cut and dry.

The fact that people on here will undoubtedly continue to deny it, in the face of overhwlming documentary evidence from a wide variety of sources in type and origin, is nothing more than the same phenomenon that drives crackpots worldwide to deny well established historical events ranging from the moon landings to the holocaust.

Камо́ Зэд

12th September 2012, 20:49

Obviously you are unaware of one of the single most famous Soviet era documents ever declassified:

http://www.warbirdforum.com/beria.jpg

Eduard Petrovich Molokov analyzed that very letter on March 31, 2009 at the behest of Sergey Strygin. The analysis confirmed that Beria's letter was written on more than one typewriter and that the typeface on the first three pages is inconsistent with any typewriter known to have been in Beria's office.

http://www.katyn.ru/index.php?go=Pages&in=view&id=946

Beria would also not have set up a "special N.K.V.D. troika" because it was not assigned any judicial rights. The letter suggests that Beria was proposing that the Politburo take three senior N.K.V.D. agents from their usual work and make them sign upwards of twenty thousand pieces of paper that only they would ever read.

Beria could not have suggested that a "troika" be created since all court troikas were abolished by the Sovnarkom and the Central Committee. After this decision, no one could even be arrested on the orders of an illegal troika. A similar illegal performance of their chief's criminal orders saw Yagoda executed around '38. In '40, Yezhov was executed along with his deputy assistants for the same reason.

The letter identifies 14,736 officers and 18,632 inmates, but 14,700 and 11,000 of the latter are sentences to execution without any kind of explanation as to what do with the rest of them.

Beria's letter is a forgery in the purest formal sense because the date and the number do not correspond with one another. According to official registration, the letter 794/b was dated February 29, but there is an entirely different letter with the same number, but without a date indication, filed under March of 1940.

The resolution and the signatures of the Politburo members are written in such a way that the lines of the "letter" must have been vertical at the time. No one writes this way naturally.

The letter in question has no date, the generals are written on the same line as lieutenant colonels (which is impossible for a genuine N.K.V.D. document), and according to a certificate from the Archive Board of the F.S.S., 794/b was registered at the N.K.V.D. secretariat on February 29, but a genuine Beria letter from that same date could not contain records from Soprunenko's information from March 3rd.

Funny that you don't mention that this is from the Stalin Society, and that it merely regurgitates the claims made by the Soviets during the post-war war crimes trials, which were dismissed out of hand because they were obvious fabrications.

"She's associated with the Stalin Society and they're dumb" isn't a counterargument.

As for the rest of your evidence, see Katyn: 49 signs of falsification of “Closed package no. 1”.

Invader Zim

12th September 2012, 22:13

Камо́ Зэд

12th September 2012, 23:56

LOL, this reminds me of the time I went to a public lecture about British knowledge of the holocaust. The speaker presented images of the original documents which showed that the British were well aware of the existence of Nazi death camps. But, during the questions at the end, this burly guy stood up and declared that there was a significant possibility that they had been forged based on the same kind utterly dubious claims you are making. That guy was David Irving.

It would be better for the point you're making if you were to actually discuss any of the claims I made in any depth whatsoever rather than just saying "You're like a Holocaust denier!"

However, let us ignore reality for a minute and pretend that your claims can be taken at face value - despite the fact that they do not appear in any scholarly historical source or from anybody of any repute . . .

I'd forgotten the all-important rule of state endorsement. Good catch.

that the type face is not consistent and that the file numbers do not match. It is still complete speculation that the is therefore a fake. The fact that another document has the same classifier is hardly conclusive - as anybody who has ever actually step foot in an archive can tell you. Documents are misclassified all the time. And the typeface isn't consistent? Ever printed something off on more than one printer? I have. But, of course, this is to pander to denialist nonsense.

Have I ever printed a single document off of more than one printer at the same time? I can't say I have, but that's neither here nor there. You've interestingly left out that the typeface on the last page was the only typeface throughout the entire document that was consistent with any typewriter to which Beria had access at the time. It was also grossly illegal to alter a document in any way once it had been signed off on. But, you also left out everything else that was wrong with the document besides the situation about the typeface.

Moreover, the only scholarly historical analysis I could find which discusses this individual's work suggests that they are, in fact a journalist, who writes not on Katyn, but massacres of Russians by Poles, in order to, "underscore the horrors of Polish prison in order to dwarf the tragedy of the Katyn massacre. This flawed comparison shows that the authors have political issues on their own research agenda.

Once again, you've caught me on the fact that I didn't consider the ultimate role state endorsement plays in determining fact. To add to it, you've also caught me in citing someone with a political agenda, something atypical of those who claim Soviet responsibility for the massacre.

And short of the same small-fry Stalinist denial pages, there is no link to anything about 'Eduard Petrovich Molokov', and his 'expert' diploma. Perhaps it is like my 'diploma' in cooking, which I acquired as a 12 year old boy? Who knows.

There's no page about him in English, and I don't read Russian very well (there seems to be more information about him in Russian than in English). But how about that? Turns out you get more results when you search cào nǐ māde diǎo in Chinese characters.

But again, to give your laughable argument the wholly undeserved benefit of the doubt . . .

I don't think the people in the cheap seats are really getting that you disagree with me. Maybe if you could somehow force even more disdain . . .

and assume that they are correct - how do we then account for all the other evidence?

That's largely why I recommended looking into 49 signs. There are forty-nine of them.

Why, if the Nazis did this, did Goebbels not know and genuinely believe that they were Soviet crimes?

I'm not convinced he didn't know. On the one hand, I don't tend to put quotes around words I use sarcastically in my own journal (because I'm the only one by whom the journal is intended to be read; I know when I'd have quotes around which words), but what really gets me is that Goebbels, for whatever reason, mentions 12,000 deaths. You'll notice he's off by about ten thousand. I never thought I'd say this, but it looks like we can't even trust Joseph Goebbels.

Why did the Americans and British proceed to cover the issue up?

They weren't interested so much in clearing Communism's good name as much as they were with making sure they weren't associated with any massacre even by wartime alliance.

Why were the Soviets singularly unable to provide any evidence when their assertions were put before a war crimes tribunal?

Have we not heard of the Burdenko Commission? Much of the evidence discovered by it contradicted the official German story:

It was the Russian custom to remove the boots of the dead, but the boots of the shot Poles remained on their feet.
German bullets determined to have been shot from German guns were found in the Poles' bodies.
The diary of the Mayor who fled with the Germans from Smolensk indicates that the massacre was carried out by Germans.
The bodies discovered were declared to have been killed in the Spring by the Soviets, but they were all dressed head to toe in winter clothing.

Why do other secret documents from the same period discuss the same prisoners, their families and/or their execution?

Do you think I'm saying nobody got killed?

Why do top secret Soviet documents produced after the war candidly reveal the Soviets did, in fact do it, and then also admit to having covered it up?

And these secret documents are . . . ?

Thank you for proving what I said earlier to be true:

"The fact that people on here will undoubtedly continue to deny it, in the face of overhwlming documentary evidence from a wide variety of sources in type and origin, is nothing more than the same phenomenon that drives crackpots worldwide to deny well established historical events ranging from the moon landings to the holocaust."

That's strange, because I have yet to see "overwhelming" evidence, just a few snippets here and there. I've also presented evidence to the contrary, but that apparently makes me a crackpot and a Holocaust denier. And consider that, in the question of the Holocaust, well before any camps were built, Hitler was pretty open that he had it in mind to try to wipe Jews off of the face of the planet. No such ideological precedence exists for shooting Poles.

Strawman. Who called her dumb? Rather I am suggesting that she is a crass propagandist.

I don't think that word means what you think it means. See, just because you didn't use the word "dumb" doesn't mean that you weren't trying to dismiss her out of hand by her association with the Stalin Society.

Yes, but have you read this (http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p319_Faurisson.html)... or this (http://www.scientistsfor911truth.org/)!

This amounts to "You're like a Holocaust denier," and, again, that really isn't an argument of any kind. You may as well have linked me to a picture of Hitler and said, "This is you!" You would've accomplished the exact same thing.

You people, all of you, would be hilarious if it weren't so very pathetic.

Goddamn, you're cool.

Ocean Seal

13th September 2012, 00:13

GoddessCleoLover

13th September 2012, 01:20

Actually whether the shooting occurred before or after June, 1941 is critical to determining who shot the prisoners.

Zostrianos

13th September 2012, 02:21

The claim that it was the Nazis who committed the Katyn massacre begs the question: why would the Soviet union eventually (albeit late) admit that it was them who did it?

Камо́ Зэд

13th September 2012, 02:25

The claim that it was the Nazis who committed the Katyn massacre begs the question: why would the Soviet union eventually (albeit late) admit that it was them who did it?

It's like nobody in this thread has asked or answered this question already.

Zostrianos

13th September 2012, 02:39

THey found the diary of one of the Polish officers, and according to it the massacre took place in 1940
http://books.google.ca/books?id=PZXvUuvfv-oC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=%22Adam+Solski%22+katyn&source=bl&ots=_3qsydPZ0e&sig=Nzq-7ht3LN1CZKg-fJyCHv5VQqE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IzlRUMznNIX00gGw5oCoBQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Adam%20Solski%22%20katyn&f=false

Камо́ Зэд

13th September 2012, 18:05

THey found the diary of one of the Polish officers, and according to it the massacre took place in 1940

Dr. Jerome Davis says that the bodies were found with documents dated after July 15th 1941, the date of the Nazi occupation of Smolensk. The diary of the Mayor who fled with the Germans corroborates this.

Invader Zim

13th September 2012, 18:38

It would be better for the point you're making if you were to actually discuss any of the claims I made in any depth whatsoever rather than just saying "You're like a Holocaust denier!"I did precisely that. I pointed out that, even if true and there is absolutely zero reason to believe it based on anything you have posted, using more than one typewriter and misfiling something are hardly prima facie evidence that the document is forged. I also pointed out that it in no way disproves the rest of the evidence, from multiple sources, multiple nations and of multiple types, all of which point to precisely the same thing.

I'd forgotten the all-important rule of state endorsement. Good catch.You are the one making an appeal to authority, not I. And a false authority at that. The people you cite have no easily apparent scholarly reputation, minimal academic qualifications, or any other basis to accept their authority. Until you provide some basis to accept them at their word they can be judged nothing more than politically motivated crackpots postulating long debunked conspiracy theories which are circulated on obscure websites populated by other crackpots.

Furthermore, how is expecting that the authorities evidence minimal expertese a demand for "state endorsement". Additionally, it is again you who has based his/her entire argument on state endorcement - you will only accept the fallicious version of events with the official stamp of approval from the Soviet Government of the 1940s. On the basis of your fallicious line of reasoning any evidence that does not toe this line or have this seal of approval can go hang and is rejected out of hand.

Have I ever printed a single document off of more than one printer at the same time?
What, so you have never had a printer malfunction, stopped a job and started on a different machine? I guess office, like archival work, isn't something you are familiar with. Because, again, this happens all the time. And doubtless, in the days of typewriters, where errors and problems meant that entire pages had to be jettisoned it was even more common that individual pages would be written on individual machines. Again, familiarity with archival material would soon cure you of the expectation that everything has to come from the same machine. It is not at all uncommon to see various pages for documents to be different, be it an obvious change in print or typeface.

You've interestingly left out that the typeface on the last page was the only typeface throughout the entire document that was consistent with any typewriter to which Beria had access at the time.Well, so your quacks tell you, again, I see absolutely no reason to take that claim seriously. And how, precisely, do these individuals know what typewriters were used in individual offices? Are you trying to suggest that someone has sat down and done a systematic survey of typewriters employed by the Soviet bureacracy of the 1940s, or even systematically gone through all of Beria's office output with a microscope to examine different types of font used? The whole argument is painfully ludicrous.

And again, why, if this is accurate, has it not made any impression what-so-ever on the scores of academics working on this? Do you not suppose that the historians of Poland, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia would not all be fighting over themselves to write about the discovery of a major forgery?

But, you also left out everything else that was wrong with the document besides the situation about the typeface.So? What is there to say, beyond the fact that you have absolutely no idea about anything you said, and obviously do not. You are just regurgitating what you have read from your fellow crack pots. Or when was the last time you made a systematic survey of declassified NKVD files? Given the fact that you stated that you don't actually read much Russian, the answer is clearly never. The historians, from many different countries, who have examined these documents almost certainly have - yet none of them noticed these apparently glaring errors in the 'forgery'; yet, convinently for you and your ilk, some random bloke on an obscure crackpot website did notice. Funny that.

In fact you remind of a very similar reaction by conspiracy theorists when met with archival evidence:

http://cache.ohinternet.com/images/thumb/6/64/Obama-birth-certificate2.jpg/618px-Obama-birth-certificate2.jpg

Once again, you've caught me on the fact that I didn't consider the ultimate role state endorsement plays in determining fact.What are you babbling about? How is looking for evidence that this individual is indeed, as you implicity suggest by citing him as a reputable authority, a credible expert a demand for 'state endorcement'?

And I see you have no answer to the fact that the only academic reference i could find for this guy notes that he is not a historian or expert in the period or events, but just another propagandist peddling a politically motivated conspiracy theory. How is this individual, and his 'investigation', any different from the Leuchter report?

To add to it, you've also caught me in citing someone with a political agenda, something atypical of those who claim Soviet responsibility for the massacre.And no expert credibility. So your counter argument to the five primary sources I have provided is fallicious appeal to a false authority laughably questioning (on clearly faulty lines) the legitimacy of well known and often studied document that has been examined and rexamined by historians for the last two decades. Yet none of them have found a problem with it, but a conspiracy theorist with a political axe to grind has. Which side are we to believe? The world's experts or a random bloke posting noise on an obscure website?

Incidentally, I have commissioned a survey by an acredited expert, he has a diploma and everything, to study the prose in your posts. And he has concluded that they have been written by several people. The only explaination is that you must be a legion of fascist imposters trying to bring down the Communist movement from the inside.

What, don't believe me? But it's written on the internet, it must be true! Right?

Turns out you get more results when you search cào nǐ māde diǎo in Chinese characters.Yeah, to more bloggers.

That's largely why I recommended looking into 49 signs. There are forty-nine of them.Why bother? If I want to read ridiculous conspiracy theories contradicted by the rest of the evidence (i.e. the British and America secret reports into the issue, Goebbels diary, etc.) I would read Butz's nonsense. At least that has the fallicious mask of credibility - this doesn't even have that.

On the one hand, I don't tend to put quotes around words I use sarcastically in my own journal (because I'm the only one by whom the journal is intended to be read; I know when I'd have quotes around which words), but what really gets me is that Goebbels, for whatever reason, mentions 12,000 deaths. You'll notice he's off by about ten thousand. I never thought I'd say this, but it looks like we can't even trust Joseph Goebbels.So you speculating meaninglessly. I see.

They weren't interested so much in clearing Communism's good name as much as they were with making sure they weren't associated with any massacre even by wartime alliance.No, they were interested in maintaining morale. They knew full well, as again plenty of documentary evidence proves (including testimony from their own intelligence agencies) but covered uit up and backed the Soviet claims they knew full well to be lies. Again, had it been the Nazis why would they have written that they secretly knew it wasn't them at all?

Have we not heard of the Burdenko Commission? Yes, and when the Soviet's attempted to make their case reagarding Katyn at the Nuremburg trials their evidence was dismissed out of hand, because it was utterly bogus and everyone knew it.

Do you think I'm saying nobody got killed?So you admit that these same POWs, and their families, were discussed in other Soviet documentation proving they were under Soviet, not Nazi, control, but still deny that the Soviet's committed the massacre? There is no reasoniong with some people.

And these secret documents are . . . ?Already posted. But doubtless, you will find some other blogger on the internet contending it too is a fake. :rolleyes:

"3 March 1959, Moscow
Special File
Top Secret
No. 632-sh[elepin]
To Comrade Khrushchev, N. S.
Since I940, records and other materials regarding prisoners and interned officers, policemen, gendarmes, [military] settlers, landlords and so on, and persons from former bourgeois Poland who were shot in that same year have been kept in the Committee of State Security of the Council of Ministers, USSR. On the basis of the decision by the special Troika of the NKVD USSR, a total of 2I,857 persons were shot; of these, 4,421 [were shot] in the Katyn Forest (Smolensk Oblast), 3,820 in the camp of Starobelsk, close °to Kharkov, 6,311 in the camp of Ostashkov (Kalinin Oblast), and 7,305 persons were shot in other camps and prisons of western Ukraine and western Belorussia.
The whole operation of liquidating the above-mentioned persons was carried out on the basis of the decision of the CC CPSU of 5 March 1940. All of them were sentenced to the highest order of punishment according to the files started for them as POWs and internees in 1939. From the time when the above-mentioned operation was carried out, that is, from 1940, no information has been released to anybody relating to the case, and all of the 21,857 files have been stored in a sealed location.
All these files are of no operational or historical value to Soviet organs. It is also highly doubtful whether they could be of any real value to our Polish friends. On the contrary, any unforeseen incident may lead to revealing the operation, with all the undesirable consequences for our country, especially since, regarding the persons shot in the Katyn Forest, the official version was confirmed by an investigation carried out on the initiative of the organs of Soviet authorities in 1944, under the name of the "Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Shooting of Polish Prisoner-of-War Officers in Katyn Forest by the German-Fascist Aggressors."
According to the conclusion of that commission, all the Poles liquidated there are considered to have been killed by the German occupiers. The materials of the inquiry were extensively covered in the Soviet and foreign press. The commission's conclusions became firmly established in international public opinion.
On the basis of the above statements, it seems expedient to destroy all the records on the persons shot in 1940 in the above-mentioned operation.
In order to answer possible questions along the lines of the CC CPSU or the Soviet government guidelines, the protocols of the meetings of the NKVD USSR Troika that sentenced these persons to be shot, also the documents on carrying out this decision, could be preserved. The volume of these documents is not large and they could be kept in a special file.
23
Attached is the draft of the [relevant] decision by the CC CPSU.
Chairman of the Committee for State Security of the Council of
Ministers of USSR
A. Shelepin
3 March 1959"

That's strange, because I have yet to see "overwhelming" evidence, just a few snippets here and thereWell, I've quoted in full three Soviet documents, a link to an entire archive of American material, a PDF to a score of other Soviet documents, and material from Goebbels diary. That is not 'snippets'.

I've also presented evidence to the contraryYou haven't presented a shred of 'evidence', what you have done is regurgitate some bullshit from some small time crackpots publishing transparant conspiracy theories on obscure websites nobody takes remotely seriously.

but that apparently makes me a crackpot and a Holocaust denier.No, I said, as you are well aware, that your tired droning was exactly the same as any other denialist garbage, be it moonlanding conspiracy nonsense to holocaust denial. I never said you were a holocaust denier. Why lie?

And consider that, in the question of the Holocaust, well before any camps were built, Hitler was pretty open that he had it in mind to try to wipe Jews off of the face of the planet. No such ideological precedence exists for shooting Poles.So, you admit your argument is contradictory?

I don't think that word means what you think it meansYou misrepresented my argument to make it appear that I had dismissed her based on some mindless smear, and then proceeded to attack that position I had never taken. It is a classic strawman.

In fact I dismissed her because of her obvious political agenda to distort the historical record. By the same token I dismiss David Irving out of hand, and see abolutely no reason to read a word of anything he writes, because he also has a political agenda to distort the historical record. There is nothing unreasonable about that, as you well must know or you wouldn't have misrepresented what I said.

This amounts to "You're like a Holocaust denier," and, again, that really isn't an argument of any kind.Actually it is. You deny the validity of otherwise universally accepted evidence based on the conspiracy theories of politically motivated crackpots posting unsourced speculation and unfounded claims published on the obscure blogs and websites - and uncritically accept their claims to expertese and present them as legitimate authorities on the subject when they, plainly, are nothing of the sort. In the meantime you reject actual accredited experts, and when asked to present some you babble tediously about 'state endorsement'.

What you indulge in is, indeed, madcap conspiracy theory - and it employs all the same logic, dismissal of evidence and appeals to false authority that make up the basis of any other ridiculous conspiracy theory - holocaust denial included. The fact that you produce the precise same calibre of argument, reasoning, logic and quality of source as a holocaust denier should tell you everything you need to know about your argument.

Rafiq

13th September 2012, 20:25

Are you trying to suggest that the POWs murdered at Katyn were the same individuals responsible for the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921?

According to your own evidence, these "POWs" were high ranking military leaders, members of the polish bourgeoisie and feudal aristocracy, and a large section of the former polish state (Polish Intelligence, Police officers, officials, etc.).

Why should I give ten shits about any of these people? According to released soviet evidence, just over 1,800, not 15,000 of them were actually executed. And how do you explain the German bullets?

Rafiq

13th September 2012, 20:27

The claim that it was the Nazis who committed the Katyn massacre begs the question: why would the Soviet union eventually (albeit late) admit that it was them who did it?

They admitted they executed 1,800 humans who composed the entirety of mass organs of the former polish state. Nothing else was "admitted".

Rafiq

13th September 2012, 20:33

Also, Zim, it's quite apparent to anyone who isn't a complete fucking moron that the systemic butcherings commited against the Jewish population as a whole on the basis of their ethnicity isn't comparable to the mass scale execution of the Polish Bourgeoisie, Feudal Aristocracy and Organs of the former polish state. Denying the former amounts to something else entirely, that "the Jews control everything" and therefore we are denyed the truth. The latter relies on the assertion that information regarding the Soviet Union is expressed in the form of propaganda in states who were enemies of the Soviet Union, which is extremely obvious (just as Information regarding the enemies of the Soviet Union was expressed in the form of propaganda there).

Камо́ Зэд

13th September 2012, 20:42

I did precisely that. I pointed out that, even if true and there is absolutely zero reason to believe it based on anything you have posted, using more than one typewriter and misfiling something are hardly prima facie evidence that the document is forged. I also pointed out that it in no way disproves the rest of the evidence, from multiple sources, multiple nations and of multiple types, all of which point to precisely the same thing.

Your evidence from "multiple sources" come, for the most part, from Closed Package No. 1. The rest of the "evidence" comes from people assigning blame long after the fact, like Khrushchev. You've conveniently ignored the rest of the counter-evidence which demonstrates that Closed Package No. 1 had been falsified, including, but not limited to the fact that the "official documents" therein are notably inconsistent with every other N.K.V.D. document. You've not mentioned one of these inconsistencies, but instead elected to seize upon two points that I had made about the Beria letter regarding the suspicious nature of the document. Not only that, but much of the evidence that exists in favor of assigning blame to the Soviet Union is inconsistent with itself, including, but not limited to the number of victims and the time of year at which they were killed. This is to say nothing of the forensic evidence discovered that implicates the Germans, such as the fact that the bodies were too well preserved to have been there since 1940, the fact that the bodies were in winter clothing, the fact that the bodies were discovered carrying documents dated after July 15th, 1941, the fact that the bodies still had fine leather boots on their feet, and that the fact that German bullets shot from German guns were found inside the bodies.

You are the one making an appeal to authority, not I. And a false authority at that. The people you cite have no easily apparent scholarly reputation, minimal academic qualifications, or any other basis to accept their authority. Until you provide some basis to accept them at their word they can be judged nothing more than politically motivated crackpots postulating long debunked conspiracy theories which are circulated on obscure websites populated by other crackpots.This is about as wrong as you've ever been. Not one time have I appealed to authority, but you have, persistently. You seem to be of the opinion that state-endorsed research is more valid than non-professional research. I never made an appeal to anyone's authority or credentials; I've noted the hard facts that these individuals had come to discover. Not once have I said "This evidence is more valid because of a doctorate of some kind," but you essentially have. That you could say that I'm the one appealing to authority while asserting the inherent validity of state-sponsored research over other research, and dismissing any and all such researchers "crackpots" (despite formulating precisely zero arguments against any of the facts presented in their research), is kind of petty, don't you think?

Furthermore, how is expecting that the authorities evidence minimal expertese a demand for "state endorsement". Additionally, it is again you who has based his/her entire argument on state endorcement - you will only accept the fallicious version of events with the official stamp of approval from the Soviet Government of the 1940s. On the basis of your fallicious line of reasoning any evidence that does not toe this line or have this seal of approval can go hang and is rejected out of hand.Aside from the fact that none of the research I've yet cited comes from the Soviet government of any time period at all, you're spot on.

What, so you have never had a printer malfunction, stopped a job and started on a different machine? I guess office, like archival work, isn't something you are familiar with. Because, again, this happens all the time.

I would drop the printer analogy, given the decade we're discussing.

And doubtless, in the days of typewriters, where errors and problems meant that entire pages had to be jettisoned it was even more common that individual pages would be written on individual machines. Again, familiarity with archival material would soon cure you of the expectation that everything has to come from the same machine. It is not at all uncommon to see various pages for documents to be different, be it an obvious change in print or typeface. So you're an old-fashioned typist, then? I'd hate to break it to you, but I'm quite familiar with printers, printmaking, and typewriters as a matter of being familiar with my field of art. You're ignoring one startlingly important detail: the typeface of the first three pages is inconsistent with any kind of typewriter located in Beria's offices. It isn't very likely at all that the man started typing in one building, got through three pages before deciding he couldn't continue on that particular machine, couldn't find a single other typewriter in the building, left, went to his own offices, and finished the very last page there.

I need to emphasize, though, that this is not nor has it ever been the keystone in the argument against Soviet blame for the Katyn Massacre. It has also never been the only thing strange about the document. The letter in question suggests the formation of an illegal troika, the execution of 25,700 people (with no account of the difference of roughly 3,700 people), describes 33,368 people as "inveterate enemies of Soviet power" but demands the execution of only 25,700 of them (with no account for the remaining 7,668 "inveterate enemies of Soviet power" who were not to be executed), has a date and number that do not correspond to one another, that there are two letters with the exact same number (one dated February 29 and the other with no date indication), that the resolution and the signatures of the Politburo members were written vertically, that the absence of a date is impossible by Soviet standards since the date is more important than the number and the date and number are the same note in the registration record, that the N.K.V.D. generals were written on the same line as the lieutenants (which makes this document the only N.K.V.D. document in which this has ever happened), that according to the registration board of the F.S.S. the letter 794/b was registered on February 29 and yet it contains record of Sopruneko's information from March 3, and that literally all of Beria's genuine letters from that period feature the typeface on page four but not one of them features the typeface on the first three pages. Even if all of this doesn't demonstrate that the letter in question was a forgery, it absolutely does obligate us to remove the letter from consideration as evidence until such time as it has been investigated more thoroughly.

In fact you remind of a very similar reaction by conspiracy theorists when met with archival evidence . . .It strikes me as hypocritical that, when met with counter-evidence, you dismiss it all as quackery and then claim I'm doing the exact same thing.

Also, "You're like Birthers" is no more an argument than "You're like a Holocaust denier." It's name-calling, plain and simple.

What are you babbling about? How is looking for evidence that this individual is indeed, as you implicity suggest by citing him as a reputable authority, a credible expert a demand for 'state endorcement'?Before I go any further, spell "endorsement" correctly, please. It's not as though you have to guess its spelling by ear.

Anyway, Molokov is a licensed forensics Q.D.E. in Russia who has worked with other respected forensic experts like Galyashina, Smotrov, and Shashkin.

And I see you have no answer to the fact that the only academic reference i could find for this guy notes that he is not a historian or expert in the period or events, but just another propagandist peddling a politically motivated conspiracy theory.It's easy to say I have no answer when you elect not to quote the answer I gave you in my last post. See above.

How is this individual, and his 'investigation', any different from the Leuchter report?Fred A. Leuchter demonstrably had no idea what he was talking about. It had nothing to do with any piece of paper from any institution. One of his biggest errors was not discriminating against iron-based compounds when looking for evidence of poison gas on bricks he stole from the camps. His problem was that, whether or not he had certification, he was provably lacking expertise; someone with a passing interest in cyanide could have looked at his "report" and said, "That's not even close." Pseudoscience is demonstrably pseudoscience. Now that we've established that, you're more than welcome to point out Molokov's errors in his analysis.

And no expert credibility. So your counter argument to the five primary sources I have provided is fallicious appeal to a false authority laughably questioning (on clearly faulty lines) the legitimacy of well known and often studied document that has been examined and rexamined by historians for the last two decades. Yet none of them have found a problem with it, but a conspiracy theorist with a political axe to grind has. Which side are we to believe? The world's experts or a random bloke posting noise on an obscure website?As I've shown, nothing I've done so far has appealed to authority, which is something of which you're guilty six ways from Sunday. Also, as I've shown, Molokov is no "random bloke," but I'm quite interested in some names. Maybe you could enumerate a few people who have studied 794/b? It'd be much more impressive to get a list of verifiable names than, say, just the assertion that oh-so-many people came to the exact same conclusions through meticulous examination. (Molokov's own methodology is described thoroughly in his report.)

Incidentally, I have commissioned a survey by an acredited expert, he has a diploma and everything, to study the prose in your posts. And he has concluded that they have been written by several people. The only explaination is that you must be a legion of fascist imposters trying to bring down the Communist movement from the inside.

What, don't believe me? But it's written on the internet, it must be true! Right?You keep blowing such gaping holes in my position, it's a wonder my computer monitor is still working. I've learned my lesson: demonstrable fact is no match for a piece of paper.

So you speculating meaninglessly. I see.Comrade Pot, meet Comrade Kettle.

No, they were interested in maintaining morale. They knew full well, as again plenty of documentary evidence proves (including testimony from their own intelligence agencies) but covered uit up and backed the Soviet claims they knew full well to be lies. Again, had it been the Nazis why would they have written that they secretly knew it wasn't them at all?Once again, I'm not convinced in the slightest that what they've written means they didn't know.

Yes, and when the Soviet's attempted to make their case reagarding Katyn at the Nuremburg trials their evidence was dismissed out of hand, because it was utterly bogus and everyone knew it.Which is why the Soviet Union was forced to pay for its crimes right then and there. Anything else would suggest some kind of conspiracy, and we all know how impossible those are.

So you admit that these same POWs, and their families, were discussed in other Soviet documentation proving they were under Soviet, not Nazi, control, but still deny that the Soviet's committed the massacre? There is no reasoniong with some people.Being discussed in Soviet documentation does not demonstrate that Smolensk was under Soviet control at the time.

Already posted. But doubtless, you will find some other blogger on the internet contending it too is a fake. :rolleyes:Yeah, people disagree. How about that?

The document in question was sent through the K.G.B. office since it has the mailing number (N-632-sh) and the date (March 3, 1959). But there is no sign of inward registration at the C.C.C.P.S.U., inconsistent with every other document ever mailed to it. There are no notes or directives in the letter from anyone in the C.C.C.P.S.U. This would mean that, if the letter were genuine, not one C.C. secretary saw the letter, which came from the chairman of the K.G.B. The letter describes a decision made by the Politburo but attributes it to the Central Committee, something that isn't likely of the chairman of the K.G.B. The letter also describes this decision as having been made by the C.C.C.P.S.U., rather than the A.U.C.P.(B.). The second sentence of the letter says:

Altogether 21 857 people were executed after a decision from a special troika at the NKVD USSR, of them: in the Katyn forest (Smolensk oblast) 4 421 people, in the Starobelsk camp near Kharkov 3 820 people, in the Ostashkov camp (Kalinin oblast) 6 311 people and 7 305 people were executed in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia.The fact is that, even in the official version of events condemning the Soviet Union, thousands of documents indicate that in April and May of 1940, all of the Polish prisoners were transported from the camps in question alive. The letter also describes Starobelsk as being near Kharkov. The camp in question isn't even in the Kharkov oblast. It was in Voroshilovgrad oblast and two hundred fifty kilometers way from Kharkov. What are the sheer odds that Shelepin fucked up that seriously? Also, the letter is stamped with an ingoing registration number from 1965, which is weird.

Well, I've quoted in full three Soviet documents . . .See above. They weren't that impressive.

. . . a link to an entire archive of American material. . . If there's one government we can trust with objective Soviet history, it's the U.S.

. . . a PDF to a score of other Soviet documents . . .Would you post the link again, please?

and material from Goebbels diary.Like I said before, it's a dark, dark time when we can't take Joseph Goebbels at his word.

You haven't presented a shred of 'evidence', what you have done is regurgitate some bullshit from some small time crackpots publishing transparant conspiracy theories on obscure websites nobody takes remotely seriously.I guess it's within your rights to arbitrarily redefine what constitutes evidence when it suits you, but it's not conducive to debate.

No, I said, as you are well aware, that your tired droning was exactly the same as any other denialist garbage, be it moonlanding conspiracy nonsense to holocaust denial. I never said you were a holocaust denier. Why lie?You're 100% correct and I'm sorry. You never once called me a Holocaust denier. You merely insinuated on more than one occasion that I was like a Holocaust denier.

You misrepresented my argument to make it appear that I had dismissed her based on some mindless smear, and then proceeded to attack that position I had never taken. It is a classic strawman.You explained quite excellently what a strawman argument is, but you forgot to explain how what I said is like that in any way.

In fact I dismissed her because of her obvious political agenda to distort the historical record.This was exactly my point. Because of her political association, you decided that not one thing she says can ever be factual. You did so without addressing any of the actual claims she made.

By the same token I dismiss David Irving out of hand, and see abolutely no reason to read a word of anything he writes, because he also has a political agenda to distort the historical record.A lot of people take that position, which is a shame, because if they didn't, we'd have a wealth of publications addressing denialist claims directly, much in the way that there are books that articulate arguments against creationist nonsense.

Actually it is. You deny the validity of otherwise universally accepted evidence based on the conspiracy theories of politically motivated crackpots posting unsourced speculation and unfounded claims published on the obscure blogs and websites - and uncritically accept their claims to expertese and present them as legitimate authorities on the subject when they, plainly, are nothing of the sort. In the meantime you reject actual accredited experts, and when asked to present some you babble tediously about 'state endorsement'.Wrong. See above when I addressed this same basic argument at least eighteen thousand times.

Invader Zim

14th September 2012, 03:38

Your evidence from "multiple sources" come, for the most part, from Closed Package No. 1.

So? You have yet to provide any reason, beyond hysterical claims of forgery (that you have still yet to provide a credible source for), why these should be discounted.

You've conveniently ignored the rest of the counter-evidence which demonstrates that Closed Package No. 1 had been falsified,

See above.

but not limited to the fact that the "official documents" therein are notably inconsistent with every other N.K.V.D. document.

And how would you know. You ever set foot in a Soviet archive? Systematically gone through NKVD files? No. You haven't. As noted in my previous post, you are just regurgitating what some conspiracy theorist bloggers have asserted on the internet. Yet you ignore the fact that these documents have been in the sphere of the public record for years, yet no actual historian of any repute or known credentials in the field has spotted these apparent discrepancies. You wanted to appeal to an authority - well provide one that isn't a joke.

You've not mentioned one of these inconsistencies, but instead elected to seize upon two points that I had made about the Beria letter regarding the suspicious nature of the document

Yes the first two, and your source was to an obscure Russian language conspiracy theory website. After that there seemed very little point continuing to read your paraphrased regurgitation of other people's points on subjects that you are evidently wholly ignorant. The fact that you base your critiques on points regarding the minutia of Stalinist-era bureaucratic clerical practices, when, as you admitted earlier you don't have a strong grasp of the Russian language, is simply farcical. So as noted, clearly you are just plagiarizing the "arguments" you found on some conspiracy theory bloggers website. Yet you no way of knowing whether these factoids, from a wholly dubious source, are accurate or not, but you uncritically accept them as gospel anyway. Sorry, but I don't. Until you can provide some corroboration from an accredited expert with a history of publishing in the field I call bullshit. It comes down to Occam's Razor. Either the entire international community of professional historians who have covered this topic are telling lies, are too stupid or inexpert to observe the realities of the documents - or your source, which we already know has a blatant political agenda, is misrepresenting the facts.

This is to say nothing of the forensic evidence discovered that implicates the Germans, such as the fact that the bodies were too well preserved to have been there since 1940,

And you're an expert in the decomposition of the human body are you? And all this has been dealt with in the source I posted earlier - which, unlike yours, was written by a known quantity with a lengthy history of publishing in the field of Polish history - which concludes that the Soviet's did commit the murders. That British Intelligence sources investigated the German Red Cross inquiry and found it to be largely accurate. That the Swiss forensic expert, also included in the inquiry, stood by its claims. That a Polish investigation conducted shorty after came to the same overall conclusions. That the bodies had been there since 1940 and that they had been murdered by the Soviets. Incidentally, the Polish investigation was headed by Marian Wodzinski, a secret anti-Nazi resistance member, who after the war continued to stand by his conclusions.

the fact that the bodies were in winter clothing

Which is an idiotic claim to make given that the Soviets initially contended that they had been murdered some time in the late summer and early autumn of 1941. However, in April the average temperature in the region is only 6 degrees C.

the fact that the bodies were discovered carrying documents dated after July 15th, 1941

Well so the fallacious Soviet inquiry, which didn't stand up in court at Nuremburg, and which was admitted in secret Soviet documents in 1959 to be fraudulent, contended. However, as Danish investigator Dr. Helge Tramsen, a member of the Danish resistance group Holger Danske, told his British intelligence contact when he returned home, none of the documentary evidence on the bodies he saw dated after 1940.

So why, we might ask, would the Swiss Dr. Naville lie in the report, and then after? Why would Wodzinski continue the lie after the war? Why would Tramsen, an anti-Nazi resistance member, also lie to to British intelligence agents? Simple. Because it was true.

the fact that the bodies still had fine leather boots on their feet

So your argument is the fact that the NKVD killers did not rob their boots is prima face evidence that it can't of been them? Well, hells bells Son. Let's get that argument in written up as an article post-haste, Slavic Review will be itching for that issue resting argument.

and that the fact that German bullets shot from German guns were found inside the bodies.

And Russian bullets from Russian Nagan pistols. However, we know that one of the reasons they often used German weapons was because they had reputedly less recoil and that the Nagan had a tenancy to malfunction under heavy use. The cold-blooded bureaucratic considerations for the well-being soldiers committing the murders is an interesting phenomenon. It is, as it happens, one of the reasons that the Nazis mobile gas-trucks were disbanded - because the screams, choking and banging were, over lengthy periods of time, uncomfortable for the SS murderers.

This is about as wrong as you've ever been.

You're the one who cited a document neither of us could read, by an unknown author with no easily identifiable credentials, as part of an 'investigation' launched by a conspiracy theory website, as evidence that a particularly famous document was forged. How is that not an appeal to authority - and an extremely dubious one at that?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as yet you've not posted a single piece of original evidence. No documents, no original quotes. Nothing. In fact, everything you have posted has been to obscure websites, some of which are in a language I certainly cannot read and you also contend, not to be anything like an expert in. Yet everything you have written here is a quote from, or paraphrases, that website, an article on the Stalin Society website, or from a blogger on the internet (my guess is that Grover Furr's website is also one of your 'sources'). So everything you have written here is, effectively, an appeal to false authority. You expect us to discount the documentary record (because it is, according to your dubious sources replete with forgeries), and rather than believe the documents believe some cranks on the internet. Well, no. Isn't going to happen.

Not one time have I appealed to authority,

Right, so when you discounted evidence on Ella Rule's say so, Molokov and Strygin's say so, and demanded that we discount other documentary evidence based on the contents of some blogger's '49 signs of falsification of “Closed package no. 1”, you weren't citing these individuals as legitimate authorities?

but you have, persistently.

I have provided one book for you to look at. The rest has been primary sources, entirely.

You seem to be of the opinion that state-endorsed research is more valid than non-professional research.

Again you produce the 'state endorsed' red herring. It is totally fallacious. The only historians 'endorsed' by the state are the ones who produce official histories. The fact is that you don't want to produce a work by a reputable historian who supports your view is because you know full well that they don't exist.

And while we are on the subject, no, professional research is not necessarily what I am after. A PhD is not necessary to produce good work. Some of the best history I've read has been produced by independent scholars. They have had no bar in publishing their research in major peer-reviewed journals and their monographs with major academic publishers. However, I want to you to provide scholarly endorsements of the arguments you have made. I want to know why this 'research' appears only on obscure websites and not in research papers published in major historical peer-reviewed academic journals, why serious historians are not writing about it in their books. In short, I want you to provide a reason why this 'research' should be uncritically taken at face value, despite the fact that there absolutely no reason to trust it any more than you would the talk page on Wikipedia or indeed comments posted on this very board.

I've noted the hard facts that these individuals had come to discover.

Which is, of course, your problem. You assume that they are hard facts when there is absolutely no reason to do so. At least, no more than you have reason to trust something published by the inaptly named 'Institute for Historical Review', or any one of thousands of 9/11 'truth' websites. At least what you, erroneously, describe as 'state endorsed' research has been through the very basic process of peer-review.

Not once have I said "This evidence is more valid because of a doctorate of some kind," but you essentially have.

Except, of course, you have. Historians have been using these documents for years. So, by accepting these claims, you are, in effect, saying that these non-entities plying their wares on their very tiny corner of internet, are correct and everyone else is wrong. You are citing their authority as being superior to everybody else's.

and dismissing any and all such researchers "crackpots" (despite formulating precisely zero arguments against any of the facts presented in their research), is kind of petty, don't you think?

Except, of course, I pointed out precisely why the major objections Molokov was making, regarding changing type writer (assuming it is even true) is hardly 'evidence' of anything. So you are wrong on that score. I did take issue with what I could gather, by looking across the internet and doing your job for you, they were saying. But, of course, you linked to a conspiracy theory website written in a foreign language containing a document written in a foreign language. I had to find out, through my own independent searching around, that the website was a platform for Katyn conspiracy theories and the basic gist of the report you linked to. So it is a bit stupid of you to complain that I haven't dealt with the 'facts' that these people present (though there is no reason you, or they, have presented to make that assumption that these people are presenting facts) when you present a source you must be fully aware that 99% of their board cannot read. Of course, you must also be aware that if these views had any kind of traction then you would have been able to find an English language Grover Furr, or David Irving, equivalent presenting a pseudo-academic representation of them. Yet they don't even have that.

Aside from the fact that none of the research I've yet cited comes from the Soviet government of any time period at all, you're spot on.

Except, of course, the 'research' you cite, categorically accepts the Soviet report without question, critique or even perfunctory analysis. So effectively, you do indeed only accept those 'facts' which have the Stalinist State's seal of approval.

I would drop the printer analogy, given the decade we're discussing.

Given that you have obviously never set foot in an archive, it seems necessary to present this kind of issue into a context you will be able to fathom.

So you're an old-fashioned typist, then?

Actually I'm a professional historian of the 1940s, and have seen more of precisely these type-written documents than you have had hot dinners. And, as I said, document s are classified all the time and there is nothing sinister about an author apparently switching machine mid-way through a lengthy document. Type-writers suffer malfunctions, ink runs out, people go home to bed and start the next day on a different machine, senior figures have more than one secretary. The list is practically endless.

I'd hate to break it to you, but I'm quite familiar with printers, printmaking, and typewriters as a matter of being familiar with my field of art.

Your field of 'art'? Ha. QED.

You're ignoring one startlingly important detail: the typeface of the first three pages is inconsistent with any kind of typewriter located in Beria's offices.

No, I don't ignore it at all. The fact is that, as stated, unless an individual has systematically gone through every document ever produced by Beria's office, including those documents lost/destroyed (which will be many), and subjected it to detailed forensic analysis in order to find out precisely which typewriters were employed under the Stalinist bureaucracy, then the claim is worthless.

It isn't very likely at all that the man started typing in one building, got through three pages before deciding he couldn't continue on that particular machine, couldn't find a single other typewriter in the building, left, went to his own offices, and finished the very last page there.

And it is significantly less likely (in fact impossible) that anybody has done a detailed, systematic and exhaustive analysis on the clerical equipment used in that office to make any such determination.

The letter in question suggests the formation of an illegal troika, .... noise

Yes, so you said earlier. Yet, given your obvious lack of familiarity with Soviet bureaucratic procedure, or indeed archival documents full-stop, how, precisely, do you know any of this to be 'fact'?

It strikes me as hypocritical that, when met with counter-evidence, you dismiss it all as quackery and then claim I'm doing the exact same thing.

You haven't presented any archival evidence. All you have done is regurgitate what you have read on teh interwebz.

Also, "You're like Birthers" is no more an argument than "You're like a Holocaust denier." It's name-calling, plain and simple.

It is also accurate. If it quacks like a duck, etc.

Anyway, Molokov is a licensed forensics Q.D.E. in Russia who has worked with other respected forensic experts like Galyashina, Smotrov, and Shashkin.

So you are appealing to his authority after all. I see. Well, if you would kindly present evidence that he is an expert in 1940s type writers and fonts, then, now is the time.

It's easy to say I have no answer when you elect not to quote the answer I gave you in my last post. See above.

Well, I was actually referring to Sergey Strygin who commissioned the report and contextualized its findings.

Fred A. Leuchter demonstrably had no idea what he was talking about. It had nothing to do with any piece of paper from any institution. One of his biggest errors was not discriminating against iron-based compounds when looking for evidence of poison gas on bricks he stole from the camps. His problem was that, whether or not he had certification, he was provably lacking expertise; someone with a passing interest in cyanide could have looked at his "report" and said, "That's not even close." Pseudoscience is demonstrably pseudoscience.

Yet you have failed to give me any reason to believe the report you set so much stock by. You claim it to be worthy of serious attention yet provide no reason to do so. I guess you are familiar with the concept of burden of proof. It isn't up to me to corroborate or determine the intellectual validity of your sources - that is your job. And given the obvious bias and propagandist motive at the heart of the 'institution' that commissioned this investigation then obviously you have your work cut out.

As I've shown, nothing I've done so far has appealed to authority, which is something of which you're guilty six ways from Sunday.

An irony given that just a few sentences above you were singling the credentials of Molokov. And, of course, as noted you are wrong. I have cited only one secondary source in this whole thread. I am not appealing to their authority alone, rather I have provided primary source evidence to support my arguments. However, I'm not willing to accept the individuals you present as authorities until you provide reasonable grounds to view them as such. And thus far you have abjectly failed in that task.

Also, as I've shown, Molokov is no "random bloke," but I'm quite interested in some names.

On the contrary, you have shown no such thing. We still only have your word, and the source which you initially presented, on that account. No independent corroboration what-so-ever. Furthermore, no independent corroboration of Molokov's alleged findings, let alone acceptance of them by the wider field of scholars investigating the issue. When you can present evidence on all of these scores then I will happily accept that I was wrong, until then - no.

Maybe you could enumerate a few people who have studied 794/b?

Well, for a start, the authors of this book (http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300108514).

(Molokov's own methodology is described thoroughly in his report.)

Given that no translation, of this apparently ground breaking report which should, by all rights, have rewritten this chapter of entire history of the Second World War, appears in English then you will, I presume, forgive for not knowing the slightest thing about his methodology - because you don't tell me.

Once again, I'm not convinced in the slightest that what they've written means they didn't know.

And again, you only prove your ignorance. Why would they lie in their own highly classified intelligence reports to government Ministers? Unless, of course, the individual agent was looking for the sack, what possible reason would there be?

Which is why the Soviet Union was forced to pay for its crimes right then and there. Anything else would suggest some kind of conspiracy, and we all know how impossible those are.

The prosecutors never charged Soviet officials with the crime (as we know from the documentary evidence, both the British and US governments covered it up), so why would the Soviet Union have to pay anything? And, of course you are playing apples and oranges. A conspiracy theory is only mindless when it lacks acceptance or basis (as yours does). However, we know full well from masses of evidence and legion of historical expertise (the kind you reject, incidentally) that the Nazis conspired to kill 6 million jews and at least a further 5 million others. Likewise, we know that the NKVD committed the Katyn Forrest Massacre and the Soviet state then proceeded to cover it up.

Being discussed in Soviet documentation does not demonstrate that Smolensk was under Soviet control at the time.

I suggest you read the documents. It is about as close to an archive as you are ever likely to come.

Yeah, people disagree. How about that?

Yes but there are legitimate scholars and then there are propagandists set on distorting the historical record. You support on one side, I support the other.

Altogether 21 857 people were executed after a decision from a special troika at the NKVD USSR, of them: in the Katyn forest (Smolensk oblast) 4 421 people, in the Starobelsk camp near Kharkov 3 820 people, in the Ostashkov camp (Kalinin oblast) 6 311 people and 7 305 people were executed in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia.
The fact is that, even in the official version of events condemning the Soviet Union, thousands of documents indicate that in April and May of 1940, all of the Polish prisoners were transported from the camps in question alive. The letter also describes Starobelsk as being near Kharkov. The camp in question isn't even in the Kharkov oblast. It was in Voroshilovgrad oblast and two hundred fifty kilometers way from Kharkov. What are the sheer odds that Shelepin fucked up that seriously? Also, the letter is stamped with an ingoing registration number from 1965, which is weird.

The fact that you have provided zero sources for these assertions is more than enough to dismiss them out of hand. The fact that I know you got them from websites whose authors have a manifest desire to distort the historical record places them beyond serious consideration. Again, provide me with reputable sources.

If there's one government we can trust with objective Soviet history, it's the U.S.

So we can't trust formerly classified US files, because even then they MUST be lying. Well, there goes decades worth of research into US history.

Like I said before, it's a dark, dark time when we can't take Joseph Goebbels at his word.

Well, historians of the holocaust and Nazi Germany have been managing it for some time. Why, all of a sudden, should his private thoughts be 'off limits'?

I guess it's within your rights to arbitrarily redefine what constitutes evidence when it suits you, but it's not conducive to debate.

'Evidence' is what people wrote 'at the time', we historians call it 'primary' evidence. You have not produced any primary material. I have.

You merely insinuated on more than one occasion that I was like a Holocaust denier.

Which is perfectly accurate.

This was exactly my point. Because of her political association, you decided that not one thing she says can ever be factual. You did so without addressing any of the actual claims she made.

Yet that isn't what you wrote. You implied that I dismissed her because I believed she was a idiot. When, in reality, I dismissed her because she is an obviously a crass and dogmatic propagandist who fails to present a representative view of the facts.

You did so without addressing any of the actual claims she made.

See what I said about Irving.

A lot of people take that position, which is a shame, because if they didn't, we'd have a wealth of publications addressing denialist claims directly, much in the way that there are books that articulate arguments against creationist nonsense.

This, given your earlier grammartarian position, is rather odd. Firstly, plenty of real historians (the kind whom you describe as being subject to 'state endorsement') have already done so. Secondly, holocaust deniers had actually made an impact which necessitated a serious response from the community of historians.... you bullshit, not so much.

Wrong. See above when I addressed this same basic argument at least eighteen thousand times.

Why lie when we can see, for a fact, that you haven''t addressed the inherent problem at all. The reality is that you can not produce a single, not one, peer-reviewed article to justify your dismissal of the vast evidence disproving your position. So, instead, you rely on random material, whose authorship or validity you have absolutely no gauge for measuring, to make your point.

I'm glad you do art, because you would fail in history.

Камо́ Зэд

14th September 2012, 04:22

There's plenty wrong with your post, not the least of which is that you seem to have no idea what an appeal to authority is and that you've mocked me for being an artist and dismiss out of hand anyone that doesn't have credentials you like. That being said, I'm going to concede the Katyn Massacre. I'm still very suspicious, but this whole debate is ridiculous, and the blame for its ridiculousness lies almost entirely with me. I apologize for dragging this out. I'm rethinking my position on the massacre, and I can admit that I assumed my original position because I am supportive of the Soviet Union under Stalin rather than based on evidence I'd seen. But I think it would be appropriate for you to apologize about the comments you made about my work in art.

fug

14th September 2012, 05:25

Only anticommunists and Polish nazis whine about this.
Some reactionaries were erased and that's it.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

14th September 2012, 09:44

Only anticommunists and Polish nazis whine about this.
Some reactionaries were erased and that's it.

Go away you genocidal fuck.

Seriously, are you a troll or just some kid who's never experienced Socialism outside of hearing the russian national anthem on Call of Duty?

Pathetic. :rolleyes:

fug

14th September 2012, 09:53

Go away you genocidal fuck.Shut the fuck up.
Killing some reactionaries, aristocrats and the elite of a quasi-fascist regime is no "genocide".
These people were the enemies of Polish and international socialism, terrorists and murderers and they were justly erased.

Seriously, are you a troll or just some kid who's never experienced Socialism outside of hearing the russian national anthem on Call of Duty?
Unlike you I lived in a socialist country.

Invader Zim

14th September 2012, 14:53

not the least of which is that you seem to have no idea what an appeal to authority is

The fact is that you tried to dismiss documents, that have been used by professional historians for years, based on the say so of an obscure Russian website, whose authors you know nothing about, whose 'research' you know nothing about, and whose claims to expertise you know nothing about. Their 'research' has not been through any of the basic quality-assurance tests that are absolutely bog standard in what you fallacious describe as 'state-endorsed research'. If that isn’t an appeal to false authority then I wonder what you would concede is.

and that you've mocked me for being an artist

I mocked the idea that because you’re an artist you must have some kind of specialised expertise in 1940s era Soviet office apparatus, clerical procedure, popular fonts and type-writers - which is what you claimed. I'm mocking that claim, not your profession. When you have an art project that requires that your prior research involves trawling through several thousand 1940s NKVD office circulars, memoranda, policy documents, minutes, and letters, then I will grant that your field of artistry does grant you legitimate expertise into 1940s Soviet office routines.

and dismiss out of hand anyone that doesn't have credentials you like.
Given that you have provided no corroborative evidence that they actually have any credentials at all, or that the inquiry they made was in any way a scientifically valid one, or that the results and methods employed in that inquiry have stood up to the rigour of peer-review… well, your comment is plainly misleading. I’m not demanding anything special, just some reason why we should trust the research of these individuals on their online soapbox. It is hardly an unreasonable request.
Think of it this way, if you are ill do you go to a clinic, GP, hospital or any place with qualified medical practitioners? Or do you go to a market staff far off the beaten track to receive unknown medicines, whose effects are untested, from a shady individual with no obvious expertise or medical training? Do you not concede that you would want at the very least some reasonable basis to put your trust in the knowledge and abilities of this individual and the wares he is plying?

That being said, I'm going to concede the Katyn Massacre. I'm still very suspicious, but this whole debate is ridiculous, and the blame for its ridiculousness lies almost entirely with me. I apologize for dragging this out. I'm rethinking my position on the massacre, and I can admit that I assumed my original position because I am supportive of the Soviet Union under Stalin rather than based on evidence I'd seen.
Well, it seems I misjudged you. Props to you for being willing to concede an issue while debating on the internet. That takes more intellectual honesty than most people on this board could muster.

But I think it would be appropriate for you to apologize about the comments you made about my work in art.
Well, as noted above, I think you got the wrong end of the stick. But I certainly wasn’t trying to belittle your profession, so I’ll gladly apologise if that is how it came across.

Only anticommunists and Polish nazis whine about this.
Some reactionaries were erased and that's it.

http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/10200000/kitten-cute-kittens-10224184-500-445.jpg

Ocean Seal

14th September 2012, 17:50

The claim that it was the Nazis who committed the Katyn massacre begs the question: why would the Soviet union eventually (albeit late) admit that it was them who did it?
Gorbachev admitted that Stalin did it... I wonder why?

Conscript

14th September 2012, 18:28

Go away you genocidal fuck.

Seriously, are you a troll or just some kid who's never experienced Socialism outside of hearing the russian national anthem on Call of Duty?

Pathetic. :rolleyes:

Those poor, poor polish officers. :rolleyes:

The same thing will happen probably happen to officer corps across the world. They are the worst face of the state.

Or is there such a huge difference when we tell soldiers to shoot their commanders and desert?

Vladimir Innit Lenin

14th September 2012, 23:12

Those poor, poor polish officers. :rolleyes:

The same thing will happen probably happen to officer corps across the world. They are the worst face of the state.

Or is there such a huge difference when we tell soldiers to shoot their commanders and desert?

Violence should be our last, not our first resort. It's inevitability should not change this outlook.

Sadly, some people on the left (or, 'on the left') seem to have some fetish for violence and murder.

I suspect that it's just big talk on the internet, from call of duty or some tankie Stalinnnnnnnnnnnnn forum, because in reality, whether you're killing 20,000 workers, state officers or politicians, it's genocide if you are not doing so in self-defence. To say otherwise is pretty twisted logic, and I shudder to think what sort of Socialism you envisage.

Positivist

14th September 2012, 23:27

The claim that it was the Nazis who committed the Katyn massacre begs the question: why would the Soviet union eventually (albeit late) admit that it was them who did it?

This is a very stupid question, and I'd hope that I don't have to explain why.

GoddessCleoLover

14th September 2012, 23:31

Isn't Poimandres basically just asking why the Soviets would admit to a false charge?

Yuppie Grinder

14th September 2012, 23:42

Do you Stalinists denying the red army committed the massacre know anything about war? In war innocents die, people are raped, crops are burned down and cities are destroyed. Every side in every war does these things. It is in the nature of war for these things to happen. If you deny whatever side you have a sentimental attachment to does these things, you are a fool.
At least if you were Russian and had been brought up a patriot, you would have the excuse of having been taught to believe your country's military did not do those sort of things.

Positivist

14th September 2012, 23:59

Isn't Poimandres basically just asking why the Soviets would admit to a false charge?

Yes, and in this question he assumes the Soviet government to be a homogeneous series of leaders with common interests. By 1990, the Soviet government was mostly interested in appeasing the west and this involved rejecting pretty much all previous policies.

Камо́ Зэд

15th September 2012, 00:12

Rafiq

15th September 2012, 01:35

Is it genocide now, because the officers were all concentrated in a single area, when they were shot? Because it looks uglier? The katyn incident did not attack the interests of the proletarian class, though, it didn't enhance the forfillment of their interests, either.

To conclude, there is no reason any communist should denounce this act. Especially considering a proletarian revolution could be even uglier in this regards.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

Ismail

16th September 2012, 10:07

"Millions of Poles were killed in German death camps throughout the war, and with considerably less sustained outcry from the London government. Indeed, only that very month the Germans were annihilating some 50000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion, and far less was heard from London on this matter. Katyn was an infinitely more sensitive issue because the men killed there, as Polish underground leader Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski described them, 'had been the elite of the Polish nation . . .,' that is to say, the friends and family of the exiles in London. Whoever destroyed the officers at Katyn had taken a step towards implementing a social revolution in Poland, and on the basis of class solidarity, the London Poles felt one officer was worth many Jews or peasants."
(Gabriel Kolko. The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945. New York: Random House. 1968. p. 105.)

Not to mention that Kaganovich recalled in the 80's a number of those killed were done so in retaliation for the murder of Soviet POWs captured during the Polish-Soviet War.

Also, as Furr points out:

One of the many very interesting questions is this: Why would the Polish government "believe" the German story of Katyn in the Spring of 1943, when the Germans were still massacring Poles and the war was far from over?

Why didn't they reject the story as propaganda and resolve privately to get back to it after Germany had been defeated?

The Polish government (in London) had to know that their going along with the Nazi story would do exactly what the Nazis wanted it to do -- drive a wedge between the Allies.

So the Polish government could have done what the US government did. They could have said: "This is a Nazi propaganda stunt. We are sticking with our allies, the USSR." And quietly decided to figure it all out for real after the Nazis had been defeated.

But the Polish government didn't do this. Instead they played right along with Hitler and Goebbels (Hitler's propaganda minister).

Invader Zim

16th September 2012, 13:38

Millions of Poles were killed in German death camps throughout the war, and with considerably less sustained outcry from the London government.

I can only assume that by 'London government' Prof. Kolko is talking about the Polish government-in-exile. However, its reaction, which Kolko obviously finds remarkably duplicitous, was requesting a Red Cross investigation. Naturally this didn't please the Soviet Regime, which of course being responsible didn't want any such thing, and severed its relations with the Government-in-exile.

Kolko also doesn't point out that the Government-in-exile had rather a good reason to be even more concerned was that by decapitating the Polish military, which was unfortunate given that Government-in-exile was attempting to prosecute a war, only to discover that its new ally had, during a moment of previous imperialism, severed the head of what remaining military it had to command. As well, as murdering thousands of enlisted men promoted to NCO ranks. So not only had the Soviet regime decapitated the surrendered Polish forces, but proceeded eviscerate it and purge it of experienced enlisted men. Which, of course, was the point of the massacre. The Soviet regime had prevented any serious future military challenge to the 'Fourth Partition'.

One of the many very interesting questions is this: Why would the Polish government "believe" the German story of Katyn in the Spring of 1943, when the Germans were still massacring Poles and the war was far from over?

Well, the Polish inquiry that examined the mass-graves corroborated the findings of the Red Cross inquiry, that found that Soviets had committed the atrocity (which we know is true), but refused to support or engage with the Nazi anti-Soviet propaganda. Maybe Furr should try reading some books on Katyn, if he did he might learn something.

Why didn't they reject the story as propaganda and resolve privately to get back to it after Germany had been defeated?

So the very act of asking for a Red Cross investigation is, according to Furr, a hostile anti-Soviet measure? And this is from the same man who denies that the Soviet state was guilty of the atrocity. This is, of course, a thoroughly contradictory position for Furr to take. If Furr genuinely believes that the Soviets were not guilty, why would he reject out of hand (as did Stalin also did for that matter), even the suggestion of a Polish Red Cross investigation?

As Furr must be well aware, if it were really the Nazis who had committed the atrocity the Polish Red Cross Investigation would have discovered that fact, and even if the Nazis had repressed that information, the truth would have still filtered back to the Government-in-exile, and the rest of the Allied governments - as, in fact, actually happened regarding the guilt of the Soviet government.

So the Polish government could have done what the US government did. They could have said: "This is a Nazi propaganda stunt. We are sticking with our allies, the USSR." And quietly decided to figure it all out for real after the Nazis had been defeated.

Yet Furr conveniently ignores the fact that the actual Polish Red Cross inquiry, and the original Nazi investigation, included Allied informants and Anti-Nazis and that through these channels the American and British governments were well aware that the line they were taking was bullshit. They had no need to 'come back to the issue' after the war - they knew the truth at the time. They just chose to suppress it. Basically Furr is arguing that the capitalist government's were right to suppress the truth about an act of mass murder, because it was politically convenient for propaganda purposes to lie to their people and keep up the myth of the benevolent kindly Uncle Joe. Maybe he's right, maybe given the importance of unity in the Allied war effort that was more important than the truth. But as ever, Furr doesn't present the issue at all honestly - and that is because he isn't honest.

Ismail

16th September 2012, 17:42

Kolko also doesn't point out that the Government-in-exile had rather a good reason to be even more concerned was that by decapitating the Polish military, which was unfortunate given that Government-in-exile was attempting to prosecute a war, only to discover that its new ally had, during a moment of previous imperialism, severed the head of what remaining military it had to command. As well, as murdering thousands of enlisted men promoted to NCO ranks. So not only had the Soviet regime decapitated the surrendered Polish forces, but proceeded eviscerate it and purge it of experienced enlisted men. Which, of course, was the point of the massacre. The Soviet regime had prevented any serious future military challenge to the 'Fourth Partition'.Of course the Soviets had reason to be concerned about the Poles too. Stalin, after all, had privately noted to Dimitrov that he considered Poland to have been a fascist state (which was the general view among leftists as well.) The Poles had still some ambitions over the Ukraine and were clearly more anti-Soviet than anti-German.

The Home Army and other "patriotic" Polish groups engaged in anti-semitism and, as the war progressed, became increasingly anti-Soviet since it became increasingly obvious that the old government wasn't coming back to power.

Edit: I asked Grover Furr to reply to your post. This is what he said:

In-re Kolko, he adds that his account is "very much out of date, of course." On your quote, however, he says, "None of this is true either -- even if the Soviets did kill the Poles in question. It's obvious from this and from what follows that this poster has not kept abreast of the last 20 years of developments regarding the Katyn issue, much less with the last 2 years' developments, which have been crucial." He says about the Red Cross stuff that he's never written anything about this. As for the "Allied informants" and such, Furr states that, "This is completely false -- unless by 'Allied' and 'Anti-Nazi' he means Poles. Sure, the 'Polish Red Cross' included Poles. I have not looked into the backgrounds of every person on the Nazi-appointed commission. No doubt some of them were not pro-Nazi. Gajek, the Czech, who was on it, retracted his findings after the war and said the Germans had forced them to sign whatever it was they signed. He also said that the Germans had killed the Poles."

Invader Zim

17th September 2012, 17:03

"None of this is true either -- even if the Soviets did kill the Poles in question. It's obvious from this and from what follows that this poster has not kept abreast of the last 20 years of developments regarding the Katyn issue, much less with the last 2 years' developments, which have been crucial."

Given that undoubtedly the most important English language work on Katyn of the last 20 years is:

Cienciala, et al. (eds.), Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment (Yale University Press, 2007).

Furr's questioning of the Soviet Union's guilt is quite frankly bizarre. The evidence presented within the collection places the issue beyond question. Furthermore, there is also a similar, though considerably longer collection in four volumes, written in Polish. Unfortunately I do not read Polish so have not read the book, but as I understand it that too destroys the claims made by the Soviets during the 1940s and beyond.

In regards to Furr's contention that British Intelligence did not have contacts within the International Medical Commission, he, to put it crudely, does not know what he is talking about. The fact is that it is well known among historians that the SOE (Special Operations Executive) had an agent in contact with the Danish member of the Nazi's investigation into the Katyn Massacre, Dr. Tramsen. The evidence is still preserved within the British Public Record Office - The National Archives at Kew, London. I suggest he starts with the following file:

HS 4/212 (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=134670&SearchInit=4&SearchType=6&CATREF=HS+4%2F212)

Furthermore, it is hardly a great revelation that the SOE was in contact with Dr. Tramsen. In fact, it was remarked upon in George Sanford's 2005 work on the topic:

Sanford, Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940 Truth, Justice and Memory (Routledge, 2005), p. 131.

In short Furr needs to take his own advice and delve into the historiography.

Gajek, the Czech, who was on it, retracted his findings after the war and said the Germans had forced them to sign whatever it was they signed. He also said that the Germans had killed the Poles.

Firstly, I assume that Prof. Furr is referring to the International Medical Commission Czech member Hájek, I am not aware of another member of the commission called Gajek. Secondly, given that following the war Prague was under the Soviet Sphere of influence, that he reversed his position is hardly surprising. The same occurred in the case of Markov, the member from Bulgaria. Markov, for instance, was threatened with imprisonment by the regime unless he recanted his original testimony. I imagine that most people would do the same when threatened with a decade stint in a correction facility.

That returns us to the fact that Tramsen confirmation of the report to British intelligence, as well as the independent Swiss Dr. Naville confirmation of the report. It also returns us to the Polish Red Cross investigation, the result of the Polish reaction to the charge against its new Ally, allowed by the Nazis - which also confirmed the International Medical Commission's findings, and the Polish inquiry, included Dr. Marian Wodzinski, whom we now know was an anti-nazi and had no reason to persist after the war to stand by his findings. But he did anyway.

Ismail

18th September 2012, 15:10

His reply:

Calling my opinions "bizarre" is just name-calling, not evidence.

I never said "the Soviets didn't do it." Or, "the Germans did it."

I never said anything about "British Intelligence and the IMC", anywhere.

He has imagined this.

In addition, he has not studied the Katyn materials that are available.

Cienciala et al. are ferocious Polish nationalists. The documents in this book are useful -- but they have all been available for years.

There are plenty of problems with Cienciala's book too. This guy is unaware of them.

Naturally! If you haven't studied all the materials, including from the Soviet / Russian side, how would you know?

He does not seem to know anything about the Polish Red Cross, either. Nor that the Poles were of course "anti-Nazi", but also anticommunist. Nor that the Polish Red Cross could only see what the Germans showed them -- just like everybody else.

He makes no reference to the Burdenko Commission (the Soviet counter-commission). Does he even know it took place?

I do have two questions, however.

1. What is his evidence that Hajek and Markov were forced to retract their testimony? I'd be interested in such evidence.

BTW, I never said I "believed" them. Or, disbelieved them. Let's get the evidence!

2. What are the "similar, though considerably longer collection in four volumes, written in Polish", to which he refers? I think I know -- and that these volumes are also available in Russian, and that I have them and have studied them. But without knowing the titles of the Polish works, I can't be sure.

I can read Polish, though I read Russian a lot better.

IF this guy is really interested in what I think about the Katyn business, he should check out my Katyn "Whodunnit" page:

http://www.tinyurl.com/katynthetruth

If he studies it, he'll see why I only get more and more puzzled by this fascinating historical question, and why I am more and more suspicious of ANYBODY on any side who claims they "know what happened."

Sincerely,

Grover Furr

rednordman

18th September 2012, 16:02

Thing is why is it so important that this massacre is brought to the for? At times i do often wonder if the polish are more concerned about this, than they where about what the nazis did to their country. This is what really knarks me about alot of these historians who go on about it being a soviet massacre: they seem to make this seem like its the worst ever thing to happen to poland in its history ever. Sure it was dreadful and a huge trajedy, but er, what about the nazis?...oh wait, there are plenty of those in poland right now. I guess we don't want to offend their sensitivities right?:rolleyes:

Invader Zim

18th September 2012, 17:31

1. I discribed an opinion as 'bizarre'. I am at a loss as to see how I called Prof. Furr a 'name'.

2. I stated that Prof. Furr 'questions' the Soviet guilt in the matter. While it is true that Prof. Furr does not explicity take a 'side', an examination of his website leaves the reader little doubt which one he favours.

3. Which 'materials' would these be? The evidence in the British Intelligence archives? The evidence provided to Poland by the Russian State in 1990 (and yes, I've read all about 'Iliukhin's' 'bombshell')? The German evidence? etc?

4. Surely describing Anna Cienciala, and her colleagues, as a 'ferocious Polish nationalists' is, in fact, 'name calling' and not evidence? But whatever. And Prof. Furr appears to be mistaken anyway, Natalia Lebedeva (who I gather also co-edited the four vols. of documents in Polish), from a cursory glance on the internet is a Russian academic. And of course the documents have been available for years, which makes the recent contention that many of them are fakes difficult to credit. How many historians have passed their gaze over them in the last two decades? Yet none of the seasoned professionals (including the three who edited the published collections discussed earlier) noticed, but people with noted political predispositions towards downplaying the significance of Katyn and absolving the Kremlin of responsibility, just happened to have picked up on it? A happy coincidence, no doubt.

See Mariya Melentyeva, 'The Katyn Case in Russian-Language WebPages', Past Imperfect, Vol. 15 (2009), for an intersting discussion of the websites that have published the 'findings' regarding the key Beria document.

Regarding the 'problems' with the book, that may well be true. Perhaps I didn't pick up on them. But, by the same token, neither apparently did most historians when it came to reviewing the book, which a quick glance on JSTOR reveal to be generally glowing.

5. Regarding the Polish Red Cross, does Furr have any actual evidence that these alleged 'anti-Soviet' sentiments influenced their work while, apparently, their anti-Nazi sentiments did not? Or is this just conjecture? Furthermore, individuals like Tramsen, when reporting to British intelligence, contended that the Nazis gave him a 'free hand' in his investigation. Of course, that might have been a clever ruse, but the Nazis also highly publicised the ‘independent’ investigation and allowed observers to examine proceedings. This was, of course, one of the points noted by the Madden Report in the 1950s, which described the Burdenko Commission in amusingly dismissive terms:
‘While the testimony heard by this committee is conclusive in itself to establish that the Polish officers were massacred by the Soviets, nothing appears as incriminating against the Russians as their own report published in 1944 following an investigation of Katyn by an all-Soviet commission.’
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE KATYN FOREST MASSACRE, FINAL REPORT (House Report No. 2505) - December 22, 1952
APPENDIX - Excerpts from Interim Report, July 2, 1952 (part IX)

6. Regarding the Burdenko Commission, there is a considerable literature, not limited to the Sanford book I cited earlier, that wholly critiques Burdenko’s 'findings'. Not least the contemporary British investigation conducted by Owen O'Malley. Even if O'Malley had his doubts, those must certainly have been erased when the British captured the Luftwaffe's files in 1945 and found clear evidence that the ground at the sites had been disturbed prior to 1941 and the German invasion of the region. But perhaps Prof. Furr is unaware of these findings? And again, knowledge of these discoveries are not limited to Intelligence historians, they, again, also appear in Sanford's book. (p. 146). Also see the Madden Report, which details numerous problems with the Burdenko Commission many of which remain as valid now as they did then. Incidentally, Goebbels also accurately predicted that the Soviets would try to pin the massacres on Germany. So the Burdenko Commission was transparent before it was created as well as after. As it remains.

7. Regarding the retraction of testimony. See FO 371/48166, pp. 2866; 2867; 3839; 4257, PRO:TNA, Kew, London.

8. The Polish edited collection:

Materski and Lebedeva (eds.), Katyń: Dokumenty Zbrodni (KDZ/Documents Concerning the Atrocity), 4 vols. (Warsaw, 1995-2006).

Ismail

19th September 2012, 01:47

His reply:

He [Invader Zim] does not know much about the Katyn issue. He pretends he does.

Iliukhin's documents are evidence, like any other evidence. Either the "Closed Packet No. 1" documents are forgeries; or Iliukhin's documents are forgeries. Or they are all forgeries.

Cienciala omits everything that doesn't fit the "Soviets-did-it" scenario. And there is a great deal that doesn't fit.

Why would she do that? Well, she is in fact a Polish Nationalist. I think that is why.

Lebedeva is a super right-wing anticommunist. There are lots of them in Russia.

And of course the documents have been available for years, which makes the recent contention that many of them are fakes difficult to credit.It's not a question of "crediting" -- i.e., of believing. You can't discover the truth by "believing."

But isn't trying to discover the truth. He thinks he knows it already!

There is a very large literature by people who have rejected the "smoking gun" documents as forgeries, and has been since the mid-1990s.

See Mariya Melentyeva, 'The Katyn Case in Russian-Language WebPages', [I]Past Imperfect, Vol. 15 (2009), for an intersting discussion of the websites that have published the 'findings' regarding the key Beria document. Sure -- but so what? Reading a short survey article like this one is not a substitute for studying the evidence.

Regarding the 'problems' with the book, that may well be true. Perhaps I didn't pick up on them. But, by the same token, neither apparently did most historians when it came to reviewing the book, which a quick glance on JSTOR reveal to be generally glowing.The truth is not constituted by the consensus of experts, much less the consensus of anti-communist experts.

There are plenty of Russian researchers who reject the "Soviets-did-it" position. The truth isn't constituted by _their_ consensus either.

The only way to discover the truth is to do the research.

Regarding the Polish Red Cross, does Furr have any actual evidence that these alleged 'anti-Soviet' sentiments influenced their work while, apparently, their anti-Nazi sentiments did not? Or is this just conjecture?They were only allowed to see what the Nazis showed them.

has not studied the Burdenko Report. Or, a lot of other materials, either.

Regarding the Burdenko Commission, there is a considerable literature, not limited to the Sanford book I cited earlier, that wholly critiques Burdenko’s 'findings'. Not least the contemporary British investigation conducted by Owen O'Malley.So what? [Invader Zim] has not read the Russian literature that "wholly critiques" the "Soviets-did-it" position.

Even if O'Malley had his doubts, those must certainly have been erased when the British captured the Luftwaffe's files in 1945 and found clear evidence that the ground at the sites had been disturbed prior to 1941 and the German invasion of the region.The photographs I have seen are not detailed enough to draw any conclusions at all. The reviewer in Slavic Review (1999, p. 895) agrees.

Mr X may -- MAY -- have read the Madden Report, but he hasn't read the Burdenko Report.

He has, maybe, read "Sandford's book." But he hasn't studied the evidence.

Regarding the retraction of testimony. See FO 371/48166, pp. 2866; 2867; 3839; 4257, PRO:TNA, Kew, London.Nonsense!

The Polish edited collection:
Materski and Lebedeva (eds.), [I]Katyń: Dokumenty Zbrodni (KDZ/Documents Concerning the Atrocity), 4 vols. (Warsaw, 1995-2006).This is in Russian as well. Sure, I've read through it. The problem is that these documents do not prove that the Soviets "did it."

There's no substitute for reading all sides of the issue and studying the evidence. [Invader Zim] hasn't done this.

I have done so -- though I am sure I have missed some things. I make no claim to being an expert about the Katyn issue.

But --

* I don't lie, like [Invader Zim] does.

* I don't pretend that reading secondary sources is enough to discover the truth in this or any other historical question.

Over and out on this subject.

Sincerely,

Grover FurrI believe he's not really interested in replying further.

Invader Zim

19th September 2012, 13:54

Well, that was interesting. Furr's responses are littered with fallacies and contradictions, some of which I will list below.

1. Prof. Furr discounts much of the archival evidence he doesn’t like as potential 'forgeries' (that squarely places the blame on the NKVD) despite the fact that no actual expert on Katyn, that at least I have been able to discover, has ever seemed to have noticed this embarrassing 'discovery'. Furthermore, he accuses the individuals who edited these documents into handy and meticulously annotated volume, of what is, in fact, serious academic misconduct. According to Furr they omit key evidence that challenges the conclusion that the Soviet State was guilty. That is quite a charge. Yet Furr fails to tell us what these documents are and where they are held.

2. He seemingly relies on the Burdenko Commission Report, which as I have shown, was not even convincing in the 1940s let alone with what we know now. Interestingly, this is the only document he has actually cited, despite all of his claims that there is a ‘great deal’ of evidence that does not ‘fit’ the accepted narrative of events.

3. In the same vein as above, Prof. Furr contends that all manner of research has been conducted that challenges the accepted accounts of the massacre that have emerged since 1990, yet fails to provide any bibliographical details. Instead he points us back to the same individuals posting conspiracy theories on obscure websites. Yet, ironically enough, the same charge of ‘nationalism’ Furr used to dismiss Cienciala, can certainly be squarely pinned on Sergei Strysin et al. It would appear that Prof. Furr is employing a double standard. Why does he reject Cienciala as a Polish nationalist, the clear implication being that her alleged nationalist politics distort her research, while not also dismissing Stysin, and co, for their own obvious political agenda?

4. He demands that we forsake the extensive secondary literature and instead turn to the archives, yet when I point him to archival files regarding the strong arming of Markov, his response is 'Nonsense'. Why it is 'nonsense' is never explained. I guess this is more of what we saw in point 1. Of course, Furr's dismissal of the secondary literature, as point 3 establishes, does not extend to either the writing on his own website, or that of obscure Russian nationalists with an agenda to downplay the significance of Katyn as well as shift responsibility for the massacre.

5. He insults anybody who doesn't share his views, and rejects their research based on judgements regarding their character.If they disagree with his views they must be a 'Polish nationalist' or 'super rightwing anti-communist', thus he can reject them out of hand. Yet Furr provides zero evidence to show precisely how and where this political agenda has corrupted their findings. He also contends that I don't know what I'm talking about, yet fails to provide any suitable literature in which to correct this alleged ignorance (though, as we have seen, Furr doesn't like the literature on the topic save for that which he has discovered floating around on online blogs). Furthermore, disagreement with Furr apparently makes one a ‘liar’. After that final insult he then bows out, apparently unwilling to have his views subjected to any kind of analysis from a person actually willing to test them against the available literature and sources. I wonder if that is how he treats his students of Medieval literature?

Basically, Mike Ely (http://www.revleft.com/vb/mike-ely-grover-t157009/index.html?t=157009) was right.

And you uphold this guy as an 'expert' on the Soviet Union? He can't even put an argument together that cannot be pulled apart by anyone who owns a library card and the energy to actually compare what he says against the facts.

You can send this to him if you like. I don't care either way. He says he doesn't want to respond, which is fine by me - I shouldn't have been feeding a troll of the historical profession anyway. It only gives them a false sense of legitimacy.