January 02, 2005
FROM THE ARCHIVES: DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH WAITING FOR THEM EITHER:
Historians Have Yet to Face Up to the Implications of the Katyn Massacre (Adam Scrupski, 5/17/04, History News Network)
I can recall an incident at Rutgers when the most prestigious of our professors of education actually lamented the absence of a movement to re-establish Josef Stalin's reputation as a positive force in human affairs. Today such a disposition is complemented at secondary education levels by history teachers who, according to my own experience in New Jersey, refuse to countenance any criticism of the Soviet Union. Walter McDougall has called the effects of such teachers' ideological persuasion "a quiet conquest of America's schoolrooms."To illustrate the "denial," Klehr and Haynes cite liberals' continuing repression of the Katyn Forest massacre, Stalin's World War II extermination of the core of the Polish elite, regular and reserve officers who had been made prisoners as a consequence of the collaboration between Stalin and Hitler that began the war. I recently experienced the denial first-hand when, in a conversation with a west coast history professor, I suggested that we had had enough discussion of the number of those executed by the Soviets and that historians should begin to examine the cover-up of Katyn on the part of the Roosevelt administration. There was no response to my suggestion. I had touched a sensitive ideological nerve; I had had the temerity to impugn one of liberal academe's most dearly embraced historical memories, the integrity of the Roosevelt administration in its alliance with Stalin during World War II. Nevertheless, I suggest that Klehr and Haynes's treatment of the American response to Katyn be extended somewhat to include the significance of the American cover-up in later years.
No one who was not alive and aware in the United States during the war can imagine the deference to the Soviet Union and its war effort exhibited by Franklin D. Roosevelt's war-time administration and the American media. For example, not only did the Office of War Information blame the Katyn executions on the German army; OWI also implicitly threatened to remove licensure from the Polish language radio stations in Detroit and Buffalo if they did not cease broadcasting the details of the executions. In all the long years when Alan Cranston served as U.S. Senator from California no one mentioned his part as an OWI functionary in the intimidation of the Polish-American radio station managers. The London-based Polish government-in-exile, whose leaders had requested a Red Cross investigation of the affair, was characterized as having "stupidly walked into Goebbels' trap". Was that the initial manifestation of what later became America's favorite ethnic stereotype?
It was the heroic Sidney Hook who responded to the discoveries at Katyn, not with the fear of displeasing Stalin that characterized Roosevelt and his advisers, but with the hope that the revelation of the identity of the Soviet perpetrators would in some way slow the accumulating adulation of the Soviet Union among the American citizenry. [...]
Probably, the worst directly effective consequence of the refusal to publicize the truth about Katyn was Franklin D. Roosevelt's accommodation of Stalin's post-war imperialistic aims at the Teheran Conference, held in fall 1943. It was at that conference that Roosevelt secretly agreed with Stalin to allow him to retain the pre-war Polish territory that he had been granted in 1939 by Hitler. Roosevelt actually took the Soviet leader into his confidence, committing Stalin to secrecy over the Polish settlement because he was facing a presidential election the following year and needed the Polish-American vote. Note the comments of the British journalist Kevin Myers:
[I]t was statecraft at its most pusillanimous to allow those lies [about Katyn] to become a cornerstone of the relationship between the Western allies and the Soviet Union. That is what happened when the three leaders -- Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin -- met at Teheran in November 1943. Far from berating the Soviet leader for the massacres, the two democratic leaders propitiated him, awarding him the Polish land he had stolen even as he seized his future murder victims . . . . Teheran was the true nadir of international diplomacy, morally far more ignoble and strategically far more catastrophic than either Munich five years before or Yalta a year later. And the key to Teheran was Katyn; once Stalin had got away with that, he realized he could get away with anything.
One almost wishes that we could blame FDR's increasing enfeeblement for his disastrous blindness to the real Soviet Union and Stalin, but he seems instead to have just been a dupe. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 2, 2005 08:48 AM
I think FDR was not so much a dupe of Stalin, but one of himself. He seemed to have believed that it was his own personality that could sway -even charm - Stalin into good behavior. I don't think he ever really believed that Stalin meant what he said. Not an unusual occurence among American politicians of the left.
Posted by: Brandon at May 21, 2004 11:54 PMReagan and Bush the Younger have also felt the Svengali-like charisma of Russian leaders...
They're hardly "politicians of the left".
Perhaps Americans can't comprehend the fundamental sense of paranoia that inhabits the brooding Slavic soul; We stride about the Earth as though impervious to harm.
Russians know better.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 22, 2004 12:15 AMFDR knew exactly what he was doing. He believed that defeating the Nazis was more important than defeating the Communists, so he made common cause with Stalin. We can criticise the decision and wonder how to what extent he was guided by the leftists and Communists around him, but from his perspective he was trading hundreds of thousands of American lives for millions of German, Russian and, ultimately, eastern European lives. In theory, I agree that our government should make such trade-offs.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 22, 2004 08:54 AMWhat the heck?
It was openly known that Stalin was a genocidal monster.
Katyn was just another in a long, long, long line of communist atrocities.
Stalin was molly-coddled because the Red Army was needed to kill Germans. He was accomodated because of Russia's contribution to the war effort and the reality of Russian military strength.
If there was a cover-up about Katyn it was done for prudent military reasons. Not that anyone who needed proof about the evil nature of the Soviets would have lacked proof about how monstrous the regime was.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at May 22, 2004 09:42 AMThe Stalinist claptrap regarding "encirclement" was bought hook,line and sinker by FDR. Communists had infiltrated the Roosevelt administration. Much of the popular culture of the time,under the guidance wartime information control, was sympathetic as well. If FDR's infatuation with Bolshevism was purely a question of whatever works to win the war,why did his domestic policies reflect the socialist program? Roosevelt believed in Stalin as a somewhat misguided but never the less inevitable example of government based on scientific, rationalist principles. FDR and his brain trust would only do it with less bloodshed.
Tom:
I'd think FDR's brains trust were more influenced by the Progressives than by Karl Marx.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at May 22, 2004 11:06 AMI don't think FDR had much in the way of an ideology. His economic policy in the depression was more or less keep trying things until something works. The fact that nothing worked is the fault of their assumption that there was something the government could do.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 22, 2004 11:23 AMAli-
Progressivism is Marxism.
David-
If FDR had no ideology' why the four terms? He was either supremely self-interesetd or attempting to alter the Republic along so-called progressive and statist lines. I believe it was a combination of both. The Depression and World War II provided the justification for implimenting most of the ivory tower schemes of contemporary "intellectuals". They were certainly "soft" Marxists, fellow-travelers. Nothing wrong with being caught up in the dreams of Marx, just acknowledge it.
Posted by: Tom-C.,Stamford,Ct. at May 22, 2004 11:47 AMI can understand the reasons for what happened in the mid-40s, but the truth about Katyn wasn't just hushed up during the war, it was suppressed for decades.
For example in his "Six Presidents, Too Many Wars" (pp. 95-100), Bill Lawrence, the former NY Times and ABC News correspondent who visited Katyn in 1944, was still following the Soviet line in 1972.
Until the late 80s, many people would only go so far as to refer to Katyn as "controversial" and the culpability as "unresolved." Of course these were generally the same people who ridiculed Reagan's "evil empire" rhetoric.
Posted by: George at May 22, 2004 12:04 PMIf it was covered up, how do I know about it?
FDR's Brain Trust was devotedly capitalistic, and not state-capitalistic, either.
It's true that they didn't really get his ear until after the election of '32, which Roosevelt fought on a budget-cutting platform.
Seems to me that there's more than the Katyn massacre that some people seem to know little about.
(To answer my own question, I know about Katyn because I've seen Goebbel's newsreels in which the bodies were under trees too old to have sprouted when the Germans controlled the area. Even professional liars sometimes find the truth an ally.)
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 24, 2004 02:04 AMHarry:
It goes without saying that Goebbels was more accurate about Katyn than FDR.
Posted by: oj at May 24, 2004 09:30 PMYes Harry, and Roosevelt saved capitalism (freedom) by suggesting the central government should restrict liberty. That well-worn argument is inane.
Posted by: Tom Corcoran at May 25, 2004 10:37 AMMy studies of aerial imagery and other documents bearing on Katyn revealed that the American and British Governments had, in late 1945, ineluctable evidence of Russian responsibilty by analysis of the Luftwaffe imagery of Katyn. The transfer of the entire imagery archive to allied intelligence was called Project Dick Tracy.
You would be most interested to read the testimonies of Kathleen Harriman, daughter of the US Ambassador to The Soviet Union. She was among a delegation of American journalists to the so-called Soviet Burdenko Commission. And of course she found the Germans culpable. Further discourse on the subject is in my study, comments on which I append nelow:
PRIMARY EVIDENCE OF THE KATYN MURDERS
Katyn: An Interpretation of Aerial Photographs
Considered with Facts and Documents
Waclaw Godziemba-Maliszewski.
Fotointerpretacja w Geografii 25 (Special Edition), edited by J. R. Oledzki and T. Pienkowski; Uniwersitet Warszawski, 1995 - published September 1996. [Wydanie specjalne z okazji 55 rocznicy zaglady polskich oficerow w Katyniu, Charkowie i Miednoje] In English and Polish on facing pages. 18 maps and 47 photographs. This is a primary source document.
“Maliszewski’s study cuts through the fog of political obfuscation. Here are the empirically validated data -the smoking gun of the Katyn Forest murders. No serious investigation of this subject can be written without it.”
Prof. Janusz K. Zawodny
The Institute For Advanced Study, Princeton
“. . Maliszewski’s contribution to our knowledge of the massacres committed by both the Nazis [Babi Yar]
and the Communists [Katyn] on Soviet territory is unique and has added greatly to our ability to make fuller analysis than had previously been possible. Moreover, his techniques can, and will, I hope, be used by him to examine sites not yet covered in this way. He deserves the world’s gratitude.”
Dr. Robert Conquest The Hoover Institution of War Revolution & Peace;Stanford University
“I congratulate you most heartily on this accomplishment. It is a truly impressive work, which provides an important new dimension to the tragic history of the Katyn Forest massacre. I was particularly impressed by the meticulous character of your aerial photo interpretation.”
Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski
Center for Strategic & International Studies
Washington D. C.
“Godziemba-Maliszewski . . . discovered much additional imagery, new collateral evidence and eye-witness testimony, resulting in important new conclusions about what actually happened at Katyn. . . The new evidence put additional pressure on the Soviet Union, and later the Russian Federation, to reveal the full truth.”
Benjamin B. Fischer
Central Intelligence Agency
Center for the Study of Intelligence
“Undoubtedly it is going to be an eminent source among the scientific literature concerned with Katyn . . . . I remember vividly the contacts and long conversations with Mr. Godziemba-Maliszewski in Washington in 1991 [&1990], especially the efforts to send the priceless photographs from the Polish Embassy, where I was the Education Attaché.”
Dr. Jerzy Jaruzelski
Institute of Journalism
University of Warsaw
“We are very impressed with this well-researched book. It is a valuable publication for the Wiener Library and I am sure it will be much appreciated by our many readers and researchers.”
Dr. Julie Woodland
Institute of Contemporary History & Wiener Library, London
ORDERS
First edition: Send a check or postal order in the amount of $ 65.00 inc. postage and packing, $8.00 extra for international; [members of Rodzina Katynska 50% discount of price of book, plus postage]; to the name and address of:
Waclaw Godziemba-Maliszewski 94 Dodgingtown Road Bethel CT 06801
e-mail: katynwgm@mags.net
PRIMARY EVIDENCE OF THE KATYN MURDERS
Katyn: An Interpretation of Aerial Photographs
Considered with Facts and Documents
Waclaw Godziemba-Maliszewski.
Fotointerpretacja w Geografii 25 (Special Edition), edited by J. R. Oledzki and T. Pienkowski; Uniwersitet Warszawski, 1995 - published September 1996. [Wydanie specjalne z okazji 55 rocznicy zaglady polskich oficerow w Katyniu, Charkowie i Miednoje] In English and Polish on facing pages. 18 maps and 47 photographs. This is a primary source document.
“Maliszewski’s study cuts through the fog of political obfuscation. Here are the empirically validated data -the smoking gun of the Katyn Forest murders. No serious investigation of this subject can be written without it.”
Prof. Janusz K. Zawodny
The Institute For Advanced Study, Princeton
“. . Maliszewski’s contribution to our knowledge of the massacres committed by both the Nazis [Babi Yar]
and the Communists [Katyn] on Soviet territory is unique and has added greatly to our ability to make fuller analysis than had previously been possible. Moreover, his techniques can, and will, I hope, be used by him to examine sites not yet covered in this way. He deserves the world’s gratitude.”
Dr. Robert Conquest
The Hoover Institution of War, Revolution
& Peace; Stanford University
“I congratulate you most heartily on this accomplishment. It is a truly impressive work, which provides an important new dimension to the tragic history of the Katyn Forest massacre. I was particularly impressed by the meticulous character of your aerial photo interpretation.”
Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski
Center for Strategic & International Studies
Washington D. C.
“Godziemba-Maliszewski . . . discovered much additional imagery, new collateral evidence and eye-witness testimony, resulting in important new conclusions about what actually happened at Katyn. . . The new evidence put additional pressure on the Soviet Union, and later the Russian Federation, to reveal the full truth.”
Benjamin B. Fischer
Central Intelligence Agency
Center for the Study of Intelligence
“Undoubtedly it is going to be an eminent source among the scientific literature concerned with Katyn . . . . I remember vividly the contacts and long conversations with Mr. Godziemba-Maliszewski in Washington in 1991 [&1990], especially the efforts to send the priceless photographs from the Polish Embassy, where I was the Education Attaché.”
Dr. Jerzy Jaruzelski
Institute of Journalism
University of Warsaw
“We are very impressed with this well-researched book. It is a valuable publication for the Wiener Library and I am sure it will be much appreciated by our many readers and researchers.”
Dr. Julie Woodland
Institute of Contemporary History & Wiener Library, London
ORDERS
First edition: Send a check or postal order in the amount of $ 65.00 inc. postage and packing, $8.00 extra for international; [members of Rodzina Katynska 50% discount of price of book, plus postage]; to the name and address of:
Waclaw Godziemba-Maliszewski 94 Dodgingtown Road Bethel CT 06801
e-mail: katynwgm@mags.net