Soldiers of Misfortune: Washington's Secret Betrayal of American POWs in the Soviet Union

by James D. Sanders, Mark A. Sauter, R. Cort Kirkwood

Soldiers of Misfortune is the outrageous and compelling story of thousands of American POWs held captive by the Soviet Union and of the U.S. government officials who lied about their fate for half-a-century, keeping a lid on the most disgraceful cover-up in American history. Soldiers of Misfortune reveals for the first time that top U.S. officials, from Roosevelt to Bush, made the determination to write off America's missing sons, secretly held hostage in the Soviet Union. In an explosive revelation, Colonel Philip Corso, an intelligence aide to President Dwight Eisenhower, revealed exclusively to the authors that the president personally made the decision to abandon hundreds, perhaps thousands, of U.S. POWs from the Korean War. More than six years ago, Jim Sanders began his lonely quest for the truth about American POWs "liberated" by Soviet troops in Germany and Eastern Europe near the end of World War II. Then Mark Sauter and R. Cort Kirkwood joined in the search - sifting through thousands of formerly classified documents, interviewing military brass and escapees from Russia, and evaluating chilling eyewitness accounts. As the authors neared the truth, top level Pentagon officials attempted to "neutralize" and silence them in a desperate attempt to bury the truth from the public. At the same time a newspaper office and Sanders's car were surreptitiously entered, his apartment ransacked and crucial documents stolen. A secret covenant of the 1945 Yalta agreement provided that the U.S. and Britain would return Soviet citizens residing in the West. In exchange, Stalin promised to return Western soldiers who had been liberated by the Red Army. After the war, American and British authorities breached that agreement by secretly permitting Soviets to remain in the West. Stalin learned about the deception and retaliated by holding 23,500 American and 30,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers captive in the vast Soviet gulag system. The authors trace the fate of Ameri

Genres: History, Russia

352 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1992

Reviews

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please read this book. If you want some background on this issue and the betrayal of US soldiers this book is one you should read. There's no doubt soldiers have been left behind and abandoned from WWII right through to Vietnam. The political background is explained and makes sense. The research is irrefutable. I read this book a long time ago after the Senate Select Committee. John McCain and John Kerry covered up evidence and in fact betrayed the men left behind. If you care about the POW/MIA issue this is another book that you should read.

[Matthew Kresal · Rating 3 out of 5]

The late Carl Sagan once famously said that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Having delved into the issue of Prisoners Of War (POWs) and those listed as Missing In Action (MIA) during the Cold War era, I found myself tracking down this book. First published in 1992, Soldiers Of Misfortune proclaims to tell the story of “Washington's Secret Betrayal Of Americans POWS In The Soviet Union”. What it actually tells, on the other hand, is something more akin to a conspiracy theory than cold fact.

Soldiers Of Misfortune is essentially broken into a number of sections covering the Second World War, Korea, The Cold War, Vietnam, and the alleged cover-up from the 1940s through the early 1990s. The first third of the book is dedicated to the first of those conflicts and the situation that existed regarding American POWs “liberated” by Soviet troops in 1945. “Liberated” as the POWs became pawns in an early game of Cold War politics between East and West when British traitor Kim Philby revealed to Stalin that Churchill was planning on using anti-communist Russians. Stalin, in turn, used the POWs as hostages in a series of events nicely documented by the authors and well documented as ending in the forced return of many of the Russians in questions.

It is here that Sagan's quote comes into effect. The book makes the claim that approximately 25,000 POWs/MIAs were held after the war by the Soviet Union. This number is based on a series of documents making calculations before the Soviets returned those POWs they had “liberated”. There then follows a series of documents saying, in effect, that calculations had been wrong. The authors see this as proof of a conspiracy and subsequently a cover-up of the truth extending right up to the present day. The author's never seen to account for the possibility that the original numbers might have been inaccurate, to begin with, instead choosing to fall back on what I've quickly come to realize is a chestnut of this issue: eyewitness testimony from those coming out of Soviet gulags or refugees from behind the Iron Curtain. Even when there are claims of photographs, none are presented including one from an alleged reunion of soldiers from the famous Big Red One division.

Where the book is more successful and indeed compelling is in its later parts. The sections on the Korean War and Cold War era, often focusing on downed aviators but also Americans kidnapped in West Germany and West Berlin, presents compelling cases. There are countless aircraft shot down for examples and provable cases of abducted Americans whose fates were unknown though some managed to make their way back across the Iron Curtain. Yet even here the authors once again resort to documents listing cases of eyewitness testimony to back many of their more extraordinary claims including US military personnel helping out the Soviet space program in the 1970s. Yet there is plenty compelling enough to raise questions the book never answers.

Something which brings us to the final two chapters of the book. It is here that the authors themselves enter the narrative, listing their efforts to bring the issue of the 25,000 to public attention without much success. It is also here that the testimony of the late Philip J. Corso, a former military aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who claims that the President and former Allied Supreme Commanders essentially wrote-off POWs from both the Second World War and Korea. To the author's credit, the book was written before Corso also claimed in 1997 to have information about the Roswell UFO crash and later still the JFK assassination, which even those with an interest in those equally controversial events have raised questions of Corso's believability. The book's author's also seem intent on making themselves the heroes of their own narrative, bravely struggling against a bureaucracy that has written off reports of Americans forced to stay behind the Iron Curtain for a half-century or more. Given the passage of another quarter-century that has led to not a single American returning from Russia mentioned in the book (and the remains of others being returned from Korea and Vietnam), it's a narrative that is also hard to believe.

At the end of more than three hundred pages, Soldiers Of Misfortune is compelling but not convincing. While I can not discount the possibility of some Americans being left behind, the case made in Soldiers Of Misfortune for thousands and thousands doesn't seem to hold up to a more objective look at the facts presented even without the book's pages. Perhaps, in the end, it depends on how much stock one places in eyewitness testimony without further evidence to back it and if those in government and military should be considered complacent or even treasonous for choosing not to.

If this is the best evidence that can be provided, I can't say I blame them for not doing so.

[Katie Marino · Rating 5 out of 5]

So very sad and tragic how our government abandoned thousands of our soldiers to the gulags, and covered up and lied for decades about it. Now I understand what the POW/MIA bumper stickers actually mean.

[Dave Knecht · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever wonder what happened to our POW's from WWII, Korea and Vietnam?
This book is the tell all story based on declasified documents and personal accounts.
The events are both epic and tragic and documents how over 20,000 US and 30,000 British
soldiers died in the Gulags of Russia.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story that needs to be told. If the facts of this book and the inferences from those facts are true - that the U.S. abandoned its soldiers to the Soviets after WWII and Vietnam, and then lied to their families, it is a shameful, ongoing conspiracy.

[Mike Blades · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books written about a very shameful American issue...the abandonment of Americas Prisoners of war. A definite must-read!