The Katyn Massacre 1940: History of a Crime

by Thomas Urban

In the spring of 1940, Stalin's NKVD executed 22,000 Polish officers, ensigns and state officials near the Russian village of Katyn and other places. When Wehrmacht soldiers discovered some of the graves three years later, the Soviets succeeded in convincing US President Roosevelt of the German perpetration.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had no clear picture of the crime, and therefore made no public comments. Using thousands of recently released US documents, this book refutes the popular thesis that the Western Allies deliberately lied about the Katyn case in order not to endanger the alliance with Stalin.

As well as consulting Polish and Russian documentation on this war crime, for the first time, the diaries of the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who wrote a great deal about Katyn, have been examined.

Completely new for research is the role that Hitler's opponents in the Wehrmacht played in solving the crime: at the Nuremberg trial they convinced the US delegation that the executors were not from the SS, but from the NKVD.

Nevertheless, it took until 1990 for Kremlin chief Gorbachev to admit Soviet responsibility. Today in Putin's Russia, however, there is a tendency once more to keep quiet about the crime or even to blame the Germans.

296 pages, Hardcover

First published January 30, 2021

Reviews

[Karina Padureanu · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carte dureroasă, aceasta tristă pagină din istorie provoaca un sentiment de greață existențială.
Mie mi-a amplificat neliniștea determinată de evenimentele din realitatea zilelor noastre și vă intrebați probabil de ce o recomand.
Pentru că...nu trebuie sa uităm, răul există încă, incredibil, ca intotdeauna, în lumea asta mai instrainată ca niciodată. Pare că ceva malefic, adormit, s-a trezit sa ne tulbure din nou, deși nu ne așteptam.
Mă intristează că generațiile mai tinere nu au cum sa înteleagă, este firesc, ce amenințare planează asupra noastră. Si mă simt neputincioasă ca nu le putem arăta unde se poate ajunge.
Doar ințelegând trecutul putem fii atenți la ce ne rezerva viitorul.
Foarte buna analiză face Urban, am înțeles atatea aspecte neștiute de catre mine privind contextul istoric al acestei inimaginabile grozăvii, cât și implicațiile politice și sociale.
Am trăit sentimente de dezgust si neputință aflând cat de puțin interes s-a acordat, de catre USA si Anglia, informațiilor documentate despre eveniment, ajungându-se sa fie chiar ignorate, de teama de a nu-l supăra pe "tăticul" Stalin, mulți fiind încredințați, fără sa se bazeze pe dovezi, că naziștii erau autorii...
Incredibilă, as always, manipularea URSS ! Thomas Urban pune un accent deosebit pe rolul aparatului de propagandă sovietic și pe impactul pe care acest masacru l-a avut asupra relațiilor dintre Polonia și Uniunea Sovietică, dar și asupra întregii Europe de Est.
Cartea combină documente de arhivă și o cercetare atentă pentru a reconstrui evenimentele și a arăta cum adevărul despre Katyn a fost manipulat. Oferă o viziune clară asupra unor aspecte adânc ascunse ale istoriei secolului XX, aducând în prim-plan atât victimele, cât și complexitatea geopolitică a vremii.
Se vorbește si despre indiferența marilor puteri față de rezistența anti-Hitler a unor oameni puternici si verticali, care, sprijiniți, poate ar fi reușit sa contribuie scurtarea războiului !
Trista concluzie este aceasta : "Katyn a ramas o crimă nepedepsită".

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Katyn Massacre 1940: History of a Crime - A Warning from History for Now

On 17th September 1939 the Russian Army crossed the border into Poland in aid of their Nazi allies and took the Eastern Borderlands. The Russians attacked Poland with the excuse they were saving people from the Polish ‘fascists’ while bombing towns and villages of no military value. Today it sounds vaguely familiar to some of the excuses being used for the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Katyn Massacre 1940: History of a Crime, from Thomas Urban, a German historian is an up-to-date investigation into the war crime. A war crime that nobody has ever been prosecuted for, though the Russians did try to have the Germans tried for it at Nuremberg. Coming from a Polish family who was affected by Katyn and the exile of families, I was told these stories as a child. Russia continued to deny they had any thing to do with the crime and it was down to the Germans. They only admitted their guilt in 1990.

Spring 1940, Stalin's NKVD, the forerunners of the KGB executed 22,000 Polish officers, ensigns and state officials near the Russian village of Katyn. When Wehrmacht soldiers discovered some of the graves three years later, the Russians succeeded in convincing US President Roosevelt of the German perpetration. Winston Churchill had no clear picture of the crime and made no comment.

Urban has used recently released US documents; this book refutes the popular thesis that the Western Allies deliberately lied about the Katyn case in order not to endanger the alliance with Stalin. As well as consulting Polish and Russian documentation on this war crime, for the first time, the diaries of Joseph Goebbels, who wrote about Katyn, have been examined. This is the first rounded investigation of all the facts.

He also names some of those ‘guilty’ British journalists who were supportive of the regime in Moscow, amazingly all middle or posh upper-class elitists who thought they knew better. Who also attacked the Polish Government-in-exile for its stance on Katyn, such as the BBC’s and Sunday Times Alexander Werth, who accused the Government of not showing enough gratitude to the Russians. Or Ralph Parker of The Times who was an enthusiastic support of Stalin, with friends like these no wonder it took 50 years for the Russians to admit their guilt.

This is an excellent book and if reading during 2022, will look like the playbook of the Russian leadership, the Army and the Secret Police.

[Lumi D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This history book reads almost like an action movie, but with a soft violin playing in the background, a mix of urgency and sorrow that stays with you. Beyond the facts, it feels like an alarm signal for today, reminding us that the search for truth never really ends. What I appreciated most was how accessible the writing is: easy to follow, yet still deeply moving, considering we’re dealing with real lives and real politics.

[Teodor Hossu-Longin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un volum excepțional despre bestialitatea bolșevică și despre tradiția rusă în "arta" minciunii transformată în politică de stat.

[Phil Curme · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cold blooded killing of 22,000 Polish officers, ensigns and state officials near the Russian village of Katyn and various other places is now known to have been perpetrated by the Soviet People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (the NKVD) on the orders of Joseph Stalin and his odious police chief, Lavrentiy Beria. The atrocity was committed shortly after the Red Army had attacked and occupied eastern Poland in the autumn of 1939, an outrage which was facilitated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - a marriage of convenience which enabled the partitioning and subjugation of Poland by two competing dictatorships. Post Barbarossa, in April 1943, the mass graves were discovered and Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany's maleficent Reich Minister of Propaganda disclosed the massacre to a sceptical world, pointing the finger at the Soviet Union. This, of course, created a dilemma for the USA and Great Britain who had no wish to antagonise their ally and in any case were doubtful of the veracity of the message given Goebbels' penchant for lying and rumour mongering. Whether through expediency, lack of evidence or an unwillingness to believe the German authorities, the Soviet assertion that the atrocity was perpetrated by Germany's occupying army in 1941 gained considerable traction. Indeed, it wasn't until 1991 that the Russian Federation confirmed Soviet culpability for the murders and the subsequent cover-up.

In this superb book German journalist Thomas Urban provides a detailed account of the massacre and the aftermath. What makes it a real page turner though, is the story of the conflicting post-war investigations. The author's meticulous research uncovers the fabrication of evidence, the persecution of annoying witnesses and the politically motivated establishment of contradictory narratives - many of them false. The chapters, all of which are comprehensively cross- referenced with footnotes, follow a logical time-line starting with the 1939 attack and the atrocity itself before moving on to cover the search for the missing officers, the discredited Burdenko report, the attempts to attribute blame during the Nuremburg Trials, the way in which Katyn was used as a political tool during the Cold War era and the manipulation of the remaining evidence. The final chapters cover the Russian admission of guilt, the modern day disputes about memorialisation and the search for the remaining graves. As the author says, "as long as the last graves are not known, as long as monuments are not erected to the last victims, the Katyn case will not be closed".

This reviewer is old enough to remember the protracted post-war controversary and the sense of satisfaction that many felt when responsibility for the crime was eventually acknowledged by the perpetrators. This book leaves no stone unturned in getting to grips with the whole story up to and including the watershed moment when the truth was properly acknowledged. The author brings a journalist's eye to the topic and every line of investigation is stitched into a compelling narrative which makes this book a riveting read. One is left with tremendous sympathy for the families of the victims - those who were murdered in 1940 and the witnesses who were hounded, tortured and sometimes killed during the years that followed. It is an extremely comprehensive piece of research that must rank as the definitive account of an appalling crime that continues to arouse passions, even today - not just in the act itself but also in the cynical manipulation of the facts afterwards. Recommended.

[Mannie Liscum · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The Katyn Massacre 1940’ by Thomas Urban is a solid, and up to date, examination and exploration of the murder of >20,000 Poles by the Soviet NKVD in the early spring of 1940. Outside of the Holocaust, which really has no comparator, Katyn is one of the most fascinating, disheartening and disturbing stories of crimes committed during WWII. The mass grave site in the Katyn forest near Smolensk was discovered by the German army in early 1943. German and Red Cross investigations determined that the Poles, all former POWs of the Soviets from 1939, had been murdered in the spring of 1940 by the Soviets. The Soviets responded with counter charges that the Germans had killed the Poles in the summer of 1941; a charge they later provided ‘evidence’ for after retaking the Smolensk region in late 1943/early 1944. The British and Americans, ostensively allies with both Poland and the USSR, sided with the Soviets. Why not? It was by 1943 well known that the Germans were murdering Slavs and Jews with abandon in Easter Europe. Why not the flower of Polish society? The true nature of the crimes only came fully to light in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, but as Urban makes clear the pendulum has swung again in Putin’s Russia to develop a revisionist history that blames not the Soviet state (and thus the successor Russian state) for the crimes - and certainly not the Russian people, but limited rogue totalitarian elements of Stalin’s state. Moreover, that the Poles represent a small (tiny relatively) portion of souls murdered by these totalitarian forces, most being soviet citizens. The story of Katyn is still not complete 80 years out! 4 stars

[Sebastian Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A darkly fascinating study of not just the Katyn massacres themselves, but even more so their legacy, in the propaganda wars between both the two murderous regimes of Hitler's Nazi Germany and Stalin's Communist Russia, and ramifications for war-time unity against fascism, and the post-war international community.

The bulk of the text is given over to the arguments over the apportioning of blame: Goebbels' macabre glee at news of the Wehrmacht discovering mass graves filled with Polish officers, and his track record of mendacity as mouthpiece of Nazi propaganda initially played into Soviet hands. But ultimately post-Soviet Russia conceded what many knew or had deduced from almost the time of the killings: the butchery was the work of the NKVD.

The massacres themselves, of about 22,000 Poles, took place in several locations, but came to be known collectively by the name Katyn, in whose forests the first discoveries of mass graves were made, by the invading Germans. Urban swiftly moves from the events of the killings themselves to the incredibly complex and tortured aftermath, as firstly other Poles repeatedly enquire as to the victims' whereabouts (hundreds of thousands of Poles were exiled across Russia), and then the Germans discover the grave sites.

Not long after the Germans exploit these grim events with a view to splitting Russia from the Western Allies, Russia recaptures the area, and immediately a typically Stalinist re-writing gets underway. Much of the book is then given over to following how the British and American and other allies decide to see the story. Initially Stalin's ploy works, particularly with the Americans. But as time goes by and the evidence mounts, the picture changes.

Urban skilfully relates all of this and much more, the bloody tendrils reaching into all sorts of areas, and with repercussions that echo to this day, Russia's eventual admissions of guilt coinciding with the demise and disintegration of the Soviet Union...

Originally published in Germany, around the 75th anniversary of the events (2015), this English translation is very well done. Urban has written a fascinating and thorough account not just of the events themselves, but of their considerable fall-out.

[Jason Born · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrifying true story of how amassing too much power in the hands of a few leads to terrible certainty that may justify dreadful actions at all costs. Germane to today's powers as much as those of the early and mid 20th century. There were one or two errors (D-Day date off by a couple days, for example). But they weren't enough to detract from the overall detail and tragedy of the all involved. I was especially shocked at how each witness or medical expert or anyone who dared to speak the truth was in danger for many decades to come even if they were fortunate enough to escape the USSR. Read this!

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Istoria unui masacru notoriu al rusilor care, la comanda lui Stalin, in primavara anului 1940 au executat sumar mii (cifra desi contestata este de peste 20,000) de ofiteri ai armatei poloneze ca si alti intelectuali in invazia ruso-germana a Poloniei. Un masacru care, din nefericire pt stabilirea si acceptul adevarului de catre opinia publica mondiala, a fost descoperit de catre nazisti si folosit ca sursa de propaganda de Goebbels pt a semana discord intre aliatii vestici si rusi cand pactul ruso-nazist s-a incheiat si Germania a atacat Rusia.

Acest fapt pe care autorul il subliniaza ca una din temele centrale ale tezei sale este acela ca un al falsificator notoriu al genocidului si crimelor naziste este cel care aduce crimele sovietice la suprafata. Ceea ce urmeaza dupa stabilirea faptelor este un intreg sir al anchetelor incepute de catre nazisti si dezmintirile si contra-anchetele facute de catre sovietici care pana in momentul actual au acoperit, dezmintit si obfuscat adevarul cu privire la vinovatia lor.

Ceea ce autorul subliniaza este faptul ca si aliatii, englezii ca si americanii, din propiile motive, unii naiv din convingere si simpatie pt Stalin (Roosevelt), altii din motive geopolitice (Churchill) au tinut acest secret pana mult dupa ce faptele au fost stabilite. Nu stiu daca a fost traducerea sau stilul de ancheta repetitiva cu multe nume si amanunte jurnalistice si desi subiectul este fascinant si oripilant, (nu ca am mai avea nevoie de alte dovezi ca rusii au mintit si continua sa minta de a lungul istorie in care au savarsit si continua sa comita unele dintre cele mai oribile genocide si crime din istoria moderna si in ciuda acestui fapt continua sa aiba simpatizanti internationali) dar cartea a fost un pic monotona, o insirare de caractere si fapte care nu aduc mai mult la suprafata decat faptele stabilite in primele cateva capitole.