Katyn American’s Analysis Paul

Katyn: Stalin’s Massacre and the Triumph of Truth, by Allen Paul. 2010

Katyn Was Genocide. The Sikorski Airplane “Accident”. Kresy Misconceptions Need Correction

Allen Paul not only discusses the genocidal Katyn massacre itself in considerable detail, but also gives a thorough review of Polish history in WWII and the immediate aftermath. Unfortunately, his work is cheapened by rather glaring misconceptions, and I address some of them.

1939 WAR OFT-REPEATED FABLES REFUTED

German-Soviet collaboration and mutual military assistance had long predated Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 (p. 57). Paul is perceptive in his repudiation of oft-repeated canards regarding Polish conduct during the German-Soviet attack in 1939. He realizes that the Polish Air Force was not destroyed on the ground in the first days of the war (p. 23). (Functional Polish airplanes had earlier been scattered throughout secret airfields for this very contingency). He knows that Polish cavalry did not charge German tanks (p. 30). It was simply a canard from German propaganda that became “true” through retelling.

ALTHOUGH NOT DESCRIBED AS SUCH, THE KATYN MASSACRE PARTOOK OF GENOCIDE

Paul provides graphic detail on the Katyn massacre itself. It was not just a cold-blooded shooting of captive enemy officers, but a systematic destruction of the very cream of Polish society–in effect a “beheading” of Poland. (Being unmistakably a nation-destroying act, it was clearly a form of genocide). Some Poles valiantly resisted getting shot point blank, as indicated by the tied-up corpses (p. 353). Forensic evidence alone put the blame for this crime squarely on the Soviets (p. 229). There is riveting testimony provided by Stanislaw Swianiewicz, one of the few surviving eyewitnesses (pp. 103-on).

THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF WLADYSLAW SIKORSKI

Paul provides a good description of the “airplane accident” that claimed the life of Wladyslaw Sikorski on July 4, 1943: “Coming when it did, only weeks after the discoveries at Katyn, Sikorski’s death seemed too convenient. Evidence of sabotage was not found, but conclusive proof of an accident was not found either. Continuing doubts persisted. On November 12, 1952, Sumner Welles, who was U. S. under secretary of state at the time of the crash, told a House committee investigating the Katyn murders, `I have always believed that there was sabotage.’ Welles noted that Sikorski had narrowly escaped death in a similar incident the year before in Montreal. `To put it mildly, it would be an odd coincidence,’ Welles concluded.” (pp. 239-240).

EXCUSING THE TEHERAN-YALTA CHURCHILL-ROOSEVELT BETRAYAL OF POLAND

Unfortunately, there is an undercurrent of blame-the-circumstances thinking behind Paul’s depiction of the sellout of Poland by Churchill and Roosevelt in the events leading up to and including Teheran and Yalta. Yes, the Soviet Union had done the largest share of the fighting, but that does not entitle her to criminally deprive other nations of freedom. Yes, there was little the western Allies could have done once the Red Army had re-entered Poland (1944), but the Soviet Union was also heavily dependent upon western Lend-Lease aid, which could have been judiciously dispensed to force Stalin to recognize Poland’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Yes, the west feared the possibility of a Soviet-Nazi separate peace if Stalin did not get his way, but Stalin was saddled with an identical fear of a western-Nazi separate peace!

BLAMING THE VICTIM

Paul also implies that the Polish government-in-exile should have been more flexible, and more willing to compromise with Stalin. But, apart from the repulsive blame-the-victim character of the premise, what evidence is there that Poland’s postwar fate would have been any different had it in fact been more “realistic”? With Hitler in 1939, the real issue had not been Danzig and the Polish Corridor, but the existence of Polish sovereignty. Likewise, with Stalin in 1941-onwards, the real issue had not been the location of the Soviet-Polish border but the existence of Polish sovereignty.

REPEATING THE SOVIET LINE ON THE KRESY

Paul has a mistaken understanding of Poland’s prewar eastern half (the Kresy) (p. 248). He says that, in principle, the Soviet Union had just as much right to the territory as Poland because it “had been neither Polish nor Russian”. That is manifestly incorrect. The Kresy had been part of Poland for centuries before the Partitions, and parts of it had a large ethnic Polish minority going back to prehistoric times. The prewar Kresy had hardly been “non-Polish”: It had a 20-40% ethnic Polish minority (depending upon whose figures one believes). In contrast, the percentage of Russians, outside of western Byelorussia (if one counts Byelorussians as Russians), was negligible. Nor is it correct that the non-Poles of the Kresy had “chafed under Polish rule.” This was true only of some of them. In any case, few of them willingly preferred to be part of the Soviet Union.
Ironically, Paul demolishes his own argument when he cites Sikorski, who, in retort to Maisky’s assertion about Poland needing to be strictly limited to so-called ethnographic frontiers, pointed out that the Soviet Union was itself a multi-ethnic, multi-national federation! (p. 158). Touche!

ONLY 50 YEARS LATER, THE USSR ADMITS ITS GUILT—BUT WITHOUT ANY SUBSTANTIVE ACTION

At the time this book was written, the Soviet Union had finally acknowledged blame for the Katyn Massacre. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national-security advisor to then President Carter, said in December 1990: “Recently, several direct participants in the mass murder of the defenseless Polish officers in Katyn and elsewhere–15,000 of them [now known to be 22,000] shot one by one in the back of the head–have been identified. If Gorbachev has totally broken with Stalinism, why has not a single one of them been put on trial? The Eichmann of the operation, a former NKVD major by the name of Serepenko who was in charge of the `logistics’ of the operation, lives comfortably in Moscow.” (p. 340).

NAZI MASS MURDERERS AND COMMUNIST MASS MURDERERS—THE STANDARD DOUBLE STANDARD

Numerous Nazis have been found and punished for their crimes, but not a single Soviet Communist has been punished for his crimes. THAT is perhaps the greatest, and cruelest, legacy of the Katyn massacre.