]]]]]]]]] FORCED REPATRIATION TO THE SOCIET UNION: [[[[[[[[
THE SECRET BETRAYAL (1/16/1988)
Nikolai Tolstoy
From IMPRIMIS, December 1988]
[Kindly uploaded by Freeman 10602PANC]
[Count Nikolai Tolstoy, heir to the senior line of the
world-famous literary family, is the author of a number of books,
including The Minister and the Massacres [1986], Victims of
Yalta, Stalin's Secret War [1981], The Tolstoys: Twenty Four
Generations of Russian History, the Quest for Merlin, and, The
Coming of the King: The First Book of Merlin. He is president of
the Association for a Free Russia and the Soviet Prisoners in
Afghanistan Rescue Committee. Inquiries regarding the forced
reparation defense case mentioned in this essay may be directed
to Messrs. Rubenstein Callingham, Z, Raymond Building, Gray's
Inn, London, WC1R 5BZ, England.]
Editor's Preview: At the end of World War II, two million
Russians -- including White Russians, Cossacks, Slovenians,
Croats and Serbs who were POWs or simply living in exile -- were
forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union. Men, women and
children were turned over to the Russian secret police at
gunpoint. Non-Soviet citizens were supposedly exempt, but
historian Count Nikolai Tolstoy charges that they were secretly
betrayed by a few key military officials, a future British prime
minister among them.
This tragedy, although nearly a half-century old, ought not be
forgotten. What happened in 1944-47 was more than a sinsister
episode. Even in this era of ``glasnost,'' the Soviet Union
still denies freedom of emigration, one of the most fundamental
human rights, to its people.
Our thanks to the U.S. Business and Industrial Council who
co-sponsored this Shavano Institute for National Leadership
lecture of the Hillsdale campus in the fall of 1987.
The last world war was a long time ago, and for many of us,
even those with first-hand experience, it does indeed seem to
have become a distant memory. Yet some images remain vivid.
Only a child at the time, I remember the London bombing raids as
if they happened yesterday. But the particular experience which
has occupied much of my adult concern, oddly enough, involved a
story which I understood very little of in the 1940s or for many
years afterward. I had heard people talking about it in the
Russian church where emigres and refugees gathered in London, but
the rest, for me, came later. Though the story is over forty
years old and may not be widely known, it is one which continues
to gain in significance -- and tragedy.
PRISONERS OF WAR
In 1941, after the demise of the brief cynical alliance
between Hitler and Stalin, Germany invaded Russia and advanced
very swiftly. The German forces took several million prisoners
in the first three months of their offensive. Mistakenly, many
of these prisoners and the inhabitants of the invaded regions
regarded the Germans as liberators who were expected to overthrow
the hated Stalin and restore their freedom. Some surrendered
Russian Army units marched to meet their supposed liberators with
bands playing, and Nazi propaganda films depict Russian peasants
cheering as the German troops paraded through their villages in
flower-strewn glory.
What happened to the Russian POWs after that, however, was far
from glorious. They were thrown into wired camps on the open
steppe. During the cruel winter of 1941-42, without shelter or
proper food, millions died. This is a Nazi war crime,
undeniably, but it is not one which should be laid exclusively at
Hitler's door.
During World War I, Russian prisoners received the same
treatment as the British, French and American troops; they were
all signatories of the Hague Convention. Ironically, it was not
Imperial Russia under Czar Nicholas II [1868-1918; r. 1894-1917]
which refused to be bound by the Hague agreement but the new
Soviet regime which supplanted it in 1917. Twelve years later,
the world powers reached a more detailed agreement, the Geneva
Convention, but the Soviets remained aloof. Throughout World War
II, Russian POWs were completely unprotected. Except on a few
rare occasions, the Red Cross was forbidden to enter the camps
and Stalin refused to discuss the issue even though Germany urged
Red Cross intervention.
Often with nothing but a barbed wire fence to separate them,
the beleaguered Russians were forced to watch their British,
French and American counterparts receive food parcels, clothing
and letters from home. Still on record in the British Foreign
Office are documents discussing requests from White Russian
immigrants in Britain who pleaded for permission to help their
countrymen. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden [1895-1977] said, in
effect, ``Well, for some reason which we know nothing about,
Stalin is determined that nothing should be done for the Russian
prisoners'' and nothing indeed was done. It is significant to
note that Stalin did not oppose humanitarian aid for other Allied
POWs; only for Russians. For those who recalled his brutal
methods of subjugation in the Ukraine, the message is clear.
Thousands of Russians were drawn into the Third Reich
willingly or unwillingly. Many, of course, had opposed the
communist revolution of 1917 and desired autonomy, so they did
not consider it treasonable to work for the Nazis. Men, women
and children were also abducted from occupied zones by the
hundreds to work as forced labor in Germany. Great numbers of
refugees fled eastward for all sorts of reasons, not the least of
which was to get out of the line of fire during the German
retreat.
Consequently, at the war's end, some six million Soviet
citizens were located in Central Europe. The Allies were
completely unable to comprehend the scale of such a problem.
They had no way of assessing how many Russians were inside
Germany or anywhere else, for that matter, but huge numbers of
them showed up in North Africa, Persia, Normandy, and Italy too.
During the D-Day invasion in June 1944, British and American
military authorities estimated that one out of every ten German
soldiers captured was in reality a Soviet citizen. Of all the
nations in Europe, the USSR was to only one to witness nearly a
million of its subjects enlisting in the enemy army.
Many of the Russian prisoners were transported to Britain and
were held in training camps originally used for British troops.
Of politics, most of these men knew nothing. All their lives
they had been harried hither and tither in the name of confused
ideologies by commanders whose languages more often than not they
could not understand. Among the more educated, knowledge of
their precarious situation only contributed to a typically
fatalistic attitude.
Soon the British authorities received their first glimpse of
what it meant to be faced with the possibility of compulsory
return to the world's first Marxist state: Russian POW suicides
began in July of 1944. The matter was brought before the British
Cabinet (the Americans were only marginally involved at this time
because they had been delivering all captured Russians into
British hands), but already the decision had been made: All
Russian POWs would be returned to the Soviet Union, whatever the
fate in store for them.
One member of the government who spoke up for the unfortunate
prisoners was Lord Selborne, then Minister of Economic Warfare,
who was also responsible for occupied Europe's sabotage and
espionage operations under the Special Operations Executive.
Russian-speaking officers under his direction recorded dozens of
appalling stories of suffering from the POWs. Common to all of
them was an absolute dread of returning to the Soviet Union.
They were certain that they would be killed or, at the very
least, sentenced to the unspeakable horrors of the labor camps.
Selborne wrote to Winston Churchill [1874-1965], who promised to
consider the matter again. But at a second cabinet meeting,
Selborne, not being a Cabinet Minister, was barred from
presenting his evidence and Anthony Eden was able to convince the
Prime Minister that all Russian POWs must be repatriated,
forcibly if necessary.
RETURN TO THE USSR
In December of 1944, the first shipload of Soviet soldiers
sailed around the North Cape of Murmansk by the White Sea.
Nothingly overtly terrible was witnessed on this occasion, but
rumors of the fate that awaited the Russians abounded and were
verified later by first-hand and other reliable accounts of mass
executions in abandoned quayside warehouses and factories. The
prisoners were marched to these after disembarking and divesting
themselves of the clothes and possessions the Allies had given
them. Many were allowed to live, and were sent to
``educational'' camps. Regarding the other group, however, here
is one British observer's account:
The disembarkation started at 1830 hrs. and continued for
4 1/2 hrs. The Soviet authorities refused to accept any of
the stretcher cases as such and even the patients who were
dying were made to walk off the ship carrying their own
baggage. Two people only were carried off, one man with
his right leg amputated and left one broken, and the other
unconscious. The prisoner who had attempted suicide was
very roughly handled and his wound opened up and was
allowed to bleed. He was taken off the ship and marched
behind a packing case on the docks; a shot was then heard,
but nothing more was seen. The other 32 prisoners were
marched or dragged into a warehouse 50 yards from the ship
and after a lapse of 15 minutes, automatic fire was heard
coming from the warehouse; twenty minutes later a covered
lorry drove out of the warehouse and headed towards the
town. Later I had a chance to glance into the warehouse
when no one was around and found the cobbled floor stained
dark in several places around the sides and the walls badly
chipped for about five feet up.
These were not the only victims in this incident. Altogether,
about 150 Russians were separated from the rest and marched
behind sheds on the quayside. There they were massacred by
executioners, many of whom appeared to be youths aged between 14
and 16.
REPATRIATION POLICY
It must be remembered that the early debate over the Russian
prisoners had been won on Eden's insistence (1) that it was vital
to placate the Soviet government if British POWs liberated in
Russian-controlled zones were to be safely returned and (2) that
Stalin would not help them win the war unless his demands were
met. What is surely suspicious, however, is the fact that Eden's
detailed plan for forcible repatriation was formulated before
Stalin or any other Soviet official had raised the issue.
When Churchill and Eden traveled to Moscow in October 1944 to
meet with Stalin, the Foreign Secretary offered the unconditional
return of all Russian POWs. To Vyacheslav Molotov's [1890-]
suggestion that Soviet citizens should be returned regardless of
their personal wishes, Eden replied that he had no objection. At
Yalta in February of 1945, however, the Americans balked. All
prisoners captured in German uniforms were considered protected
by the provisions of the Geneva convention. U.S. Secretary of
State Cordell Hull [1871-1955; Sec. State, 1933-44] telegraphed a
message to Ambassador Averell Harriman [1891-; amb. to USSR,
1943-46] in Moscow the previous September to state unequivocally
what had been American policy since December of 1943: No Russian
POW could be returned by force. After the Yalta Conference it
was agreed, however, that those designated as Soviet citizens
would be forcibly repatriated. [Footnote: Only one country stood
firm against Stalin's demands: tiny Liechtenstein, with an entire
population of less than 13,000 people, most of them farmers, no
army, and a police force of eleven men. No refugees, Soviet
citizens or otherwise, would be sent back to Russia by force, the
government of Liechtenstein courageously declared to the Soviet
delegation which came to claim them in 1945.] With the surrender
of the Nazis in May of 1945, the logistics of repatriation became
much easier. The Russians liberated in Germany were simply
handed over to Soviet troops on the spot.
Altogether, some two and three quarters of a million people
were repatriated. Most did not have to be physically forced --
all their lives they had been used to following the orders of the
state, and Stalin had, after all, broadcast a general
``amnesty.'' But many brutal scenes did take place.
A particularly grim experience for American soldiers involved
the notorious extermination camp, Dachau. After the Nazis were
defeated, the Americans used it for an internment center. When
they handed the Russian POWs over to the Soviet authorities, they
discovered to their horror that a number hand hung themselves
from their bunks in the barracks. In another camp, soldiers were
ordered to break up a religious service; they dragged Russians
out of a church and threw them into trucks. A rare American Army
film showed a POW stabbing himself 56 times to avoid being taken
into custody by SMERSH officers.
In the British zone, as in the American-controlled territory,
SMERSH operatives were allowed to roam freely and on frequent
occasions they resorted to kidnaping and murder. Their blatant
violence, combined with the obvious injustice and illegality of
their actions, eventually led military commanders Eisenhower,
Montgomery and Alexander to unilaterally issue orders outlawing
forced repatriation. This placed the British and American
governments in an awkward position. Individual soldiers refusing
to carry out orders was embarrassing enough, but this amounted to
a mass revolt at the highest level of command, and was further
complicated by the fact that if the unpleasant details of the
Russian repatriation effort were made known to the public, there
would certainly be a huge uproar.
But under strong pressure from the British Foreign Office, the
U.S. State Department reluctantly agreed to pursue the policy.
American resistance was sufficient only to severely limit the
categories of repatriation candidates. Previously, mere Soviet
citizenship, regardless of age, sex, career, or war record, meant
mandatory repatriation, but now in late 1945, stipulations were
made that only citizens who had actually lent aid and comfort or
wore a German uniform were to be returned. The trouble was,
almost all who fit these categories had either been repatriated
already or had escaped, often with the help of sympathetic Allied
soldiers, including officers, who provided them with false papers
or simply looked the other way at the right moment.
In 1946 and 1947, the policy known in Italy as Operation
Keelhaul was typical. Unlike earlier repatriation efforts
carried out in the chaotic final days of the war, Operation
Keelhaul was very carefully executed. The officers who actually
conducted the screening felt privately that it was up to them to
shield as many Russians as possible. But it was made clear to
them that they were to fill their ``quota,'' else the SMERSH
agents would take things into their own hands.
In May of 1947, Operation East Wind handed over its final
contingent of repatriates, bringing the long sad story of forced
repatriation to a close, for the moment. Ironically enough,
another simultaneous operation in the British Army, code named
Highland Fling, was assisting Soviet soldiers to defect as the
Cold War Commenced.
FORCED NON-SOVIET REPATRIATION
Over thirty years later, I wrote a book on the history of
forced repatriation called Victims of Yalta, which appeared in
the U.S. as The Secret Betrayal. At the time, I thought that my
research, based on numerous documents and eyewitness accounts,
had also drawn to a close. I never dreamed that within a decade,
I would be publishing an even longer book on a single
repatriation operation.
The new book, The Minister and the Massacres (1986), describes
the fate of some 40,000 Cossacks, White Russians, Slovenes,
Croats and Serbs, including many women and children, who were
interned in Austria after the British military authorities
accepted their surrender in 1945. One group, the Fifteenth
Cossack Cavalry Corps, had been fighting in Yugoslavia against
Tito [1892-1980; pres. Yugosl., 1953-1980]. Large numbers within
this group and others were not Soviet citizens. They had escaped
Russia during or before the Revolution, rescued in British and
French warships. They had taken new citizenship or possessed
League of Nations passports attesting to their stateless status.
Throughout the repatriation campaign, both British and
American authorities had adhered to an extremely legalistic view
of their obligations. Even the British Foreign Office stated
after the Yalta Conference that only Soviet citizens, i.e[.],
residents of the Soviet Union after September 1, 1939, were to be
compelled to return. This order was echoed in writing by the
Supreme Allied Headquarters. Field Marshall Alexander
accordingly issued stringent orders against the use of force.
But in May of 1945 the British Army in Austria handed over
thousands of non-Soviet citizens, men, women and children, by the
most brutal means imaginable. How did it happen? Was it an
accident -- a case of mislaid orders and fouled up communications
-- or was it a deliberate act, covered up these past forty years?
After examining the relevant evidence and talking to the
soldiers involved, I came to the conclusion that the ``accident''
theory was untenable. First, it was clear that the presence and
status of the non-Soviet Cossacks was well known to all levels
within the British Fifth Corps, the unit to which they had
surrendered at the close of hostilities. Second, all orders
relating to the handover of the Cossacks emphasized that
non-Soviet citizens were to be screened and retained in
accordance with policy laid down by the British government.
Given these indisputable facts, how could the surrender of
Tsarist exiles be attributed to an oversight?
DECEPTION AND BETRAYAL
Among the Cossack officers were many famous heroes who had
lead the White Russian Army in alliance with the British, French
and Americans during the Russian civil war. One, General Andrei
Shkuro, had been honored for gallantry by King George V with the
Companionship of the Bath, whose cross he still wore on his
uniform alongside others awarded by King George's cousin, Emperor
Nicholas II. SMERSH operatives, significantly, had detailed
lists of all former White Russian officers on which they checked
off the names as the British relinquished custody of them. These
same operatives arranged to have Shkuro detained in secret by the
British before he was forcibly repatriated. When he was handed
over, the General tore the cross from his chest and threw it at
the feet of the attending British officer. He and the Ataman of
the Don Cossacks, Peter Nikolaevich Krasnov, one of the most
famous Russian leaders of all, were hung together in the
Lefortovo prison courtyard. Beyond a brief notice in Pravda,
their passing went unnoticed. Their helpless compatriots lie
buried in mass unmarked graved in Gulag forced labor camps.
It seemed that two versions of the event existed. According
to the official record, preserved among War Office files, the
non-Soviet Cossacks were screened and retained in British
custody, and nothing in the files suggests that any thing but
this took place. In reality some two or three thousand Tsarist
emigres, holding foreign or League of Nations passports and for
the most part dressed in flamboyant Tsarist uniforms, were
deceived into traveling to the Soviet lines at Judenburg. We
seem to be inhabiting two different worlds: one fiction and one
tragic reality.
Further research revealed that elaborate precautions had been
taken to ensure that the Soviets regained this particular group
of their most inveterate enemies, and that equally skillful
measures had been adopted to prevent this aspect of the operation
from becoming known outside the Fifth Corps. In short, the
evidence suggests strongly that the tragedy resulted not from the
muddle or oversight that one could so readily envisage in the
chaotic circumstances of the time, but was planned and
implemented throughout with great care and forethought in
deliberate contravention of orders from above.
But if this view were correct, who could have been responsible
for flouting undeviatingly clear government instructions in order
to perpetrate an atrocity greatly beneficial to the Soviet
government, but of no perceptible advantage to British interests?
What was the motive for such action? These were questions which
I was unable to answer in Victims of Yalta, and I was compelled
to conclude my investigation with the admission that, ``whether
we shall ever know the full story is questionable.''
For the time being matters were left in this unsatisfactory
state. Some years later I discovered that Winston Churchill
himself, with all the resources of the Cabinet and War Office at
his disposal, had been similarly unable to penetrate the secret.
In the spring of 1953, disturbed by allegations received from an
emigre Cossack general, he ordered a full enquiry. After an
exhaustive search among the files, Brigadier Latham of the
Cabinet Office was obliged to confess that ``though we know most
of the details of what happened we are at present unable to say
why these events took place.''
On first launching into research for Victims of Yalta, I
addressed appeals for information to all the surviving
protagonists. The response was fruitful, with one remarkable
exception. As Minister Resident in the Mediterranean in 1945,
Harold Macmillan bore responsibility for providing political
advice and decisions in British occupied Italy and Austria. In
view of his high authority in a region where many thousands of
Russians fell into British hands and were subsequently
repatriated, he was an obvious person to consult. At the same
time I had no reason to believe that he had been directly
involved in the business with which I was concerned, since the
decision to repatriate Soviet citizens had been made at the
Cabinet level. His task, on the face of it, had merely been to
transmit and explain that decision to the Supreme Allied
Commander, Field-Marshall Alexander.
It was with some surprise, therefore, that in April 1974 I
received a curt reply from Mr. Macmillan, informing me simply
that, ``I am sorry that I cannot be of help to you.'' Though he
was clearly under no obligation to assist every historian
approaching him, this refusal appeared perplexing and, as I was
later to learn, unusual. My suspicions were aroused, and his
name moved to the forefront of my concern.
At the time of the public outcry which greeted the appearance
of Victims of Yalta, I was approached on different occasions by
Yugoslav emigres, who urged me to write about the parallel plight
of thousands of their compatriots handed over to be slaughtered
by Tito at the time of the Cossack tragedy. I was strongly
sympathetic to their cause, but had to reply that as the
Yugoslavs did not come under the Yalta agreement, and as my field
of study lay largely if not exclusively in Russian affairs, I
felt their story should be told by a Yugoslav specialist.
But then it happened that my friend David Floyd wrote an
important article on the subject at the end of 1979, published in
the magazine Now. I read it with detached interest until I came
across this quotation from a report by a Foreign Office Official:
``The handing over of Slovenes and others by the Eighth Army in
Austria to Tito's forces at the end of May was, of course, a
ghastly mistake which was rectified as soon as it was reported to
headquarters.''
It was the phrase ``a ghastly mistake'' which attracted my
attention. Two ``ghastly mistakes'' occurring at the same time
and place appeared an improbable coincidence. I saw at once that
the Yugoslav tragedy represented not only a subject in itself
worthy of study, but one which might open up fresh avenues in an
investigation which for some time seemed to have reached a dead
end.
Examination of the relevant Foreign Office and War Office
files revealed anomalies even greater than those attending the
Cossack handovers. The Cossacks were divided into two
categories, Soviet and non-Soviet, repartriable and
non-repartriable, which might (but for the evidence I uncovered)
suggest a source of confusion. In the case of the Yugoslavs,
however, there existed no ambivalence of any sort. The British
and American governments had throughout maintained a consistent
policy that no Yugoslav citizens falling into British hands were
to be returned against their will. Despite this, thousand had
been surreptitiously handed over. Something was very wrong, and
it looked as if the twin operations might represent aspects of a
single covert exercise. So at least I reasoned.
Gradually, the evidence began to accumulate. It soon began to
look as if some hand had been at work, altering and removing
documents, with the apparent purpose of implicating
Field-Marshall Alexander. By this stage, however, the existence
of what could only be a deliberate false trail merely provided
further evidence of the extraordinary thoroughness with which the
real culprit had covered his tracks. Slightly unnerving was the
discovery that a crucial public document which I had actually
handled had some time after been removed or destroyed.
Then came the moment in a hotel room in Toronto when my
friend, The Croatian scholar Dr. Jerome Jareb, handed me a copy
of Alexander Kirk's revealing report of May 14, 1945. Now I felt
I knew who my man was! But the manner in which he deceived not
only his Cossack and Yugoslav victims but not his own colleagues,
at Fifth Corps Headquarters in Austria and Allied Force
Headquarters in Naples, the Foreign Office and the Cabinet, was
so complex and ingenious that it was still no easy task to
unravel the skein of events.
Patiently I built up a circumstantial case which proved, to my
satisfaction at least, that Harold Macmillan (later, Lord
Stockton and Prime Minister of Great Britain) had himself largely
engineered the whole affair. I published the fresh evidence,
such as it was, concerning the Cossacks in Stalin's Secret War
(1981), and on the Yugoslavs in an article in Encounter (May
1983).
The case I presented was admittedly circumstantial and
speculative, leaving considerable room for differing
interpretation even if the salient points appeared clear enough.
It also included a number of errors of commission and omission.
I would regret what proved to be a jejunely premature venture
more than I do, were it not that publication stimulated anew
public interest in the matter. As a result I began to receive a
fresh flow of information, some of it implicating Toby Low, at
the time Brigadier-General of the Fifth Corps: the man who signed
the orders arranging the handovers of Cossacks and Yugoslavs.
Today, Toby Low is Lord Aldington.
Harold Macmillan died several years ago without answering the
charges leveled against him in The Minister and the Massacres.
Reluctantly, Toby Low has been pressured into a court case to
which I am a party. The full facts will, I hope, come to light
in the near future. Whatever vindication come for the victims of
forced repatriation, it comes too late.
[Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the monthly journal of
Hillsdale College, featuring presentations at Hillsdale's Center
for Constructive Alternatives and at its Shavano Institute for
National Leadership.]
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