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AP Exclusive: Memos Show US Hushed up Soviet Crime
Associated Press ^ | September 10, 2012 | RANDY HERSCHAFT and VANESSA GERA

Posted on 09/10/2012 10:25:03 AM PDT by dfwgator

The American POWs sent secret coded messages to Washington with news of a Soviet atrocity: In 1943 they saw rows of corpses in an advanced state of decay in the Katyn forest, on the western edge of Russia, proof that the killers could not have been the Nazis who had only recently occupied the area.

(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events; Russia
KEYWORDS: coldwar; fdr; katyn; katynforest; massacre; poland; soviet; wwii
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1 posted on 09/10/2012 10:25:12 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: dfwgator

Shame on FDR!


2 posted on 09/10/2012 10:26:25 AM PDT by dfwgator (I'm voting for Ryan and that other guy.)
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To: dfwgator

Which is why Patton was ‘let go’, imho.


3 posted on 09/10/2012 10:31:11 AM PDT by RushIsMyTeddyBear (Bocephus hits a home run! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_vjPqAVzI)
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To: dfwgator

Newsflash!

In periods of all-out war, atrocities happen.

We now return you to your regular programming.


4 posted on 09/10/2012 10:31:26 AM PDT by Bratch
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To: Bratch

And we rewarded those who committed the atrocities.


5 posted on 09/10/2012 10:33:06 AM PDT by dfwgator (I'm voting for Ryan and that other guy.)
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To: dfwgator

They were our allies. We needed them to do the bulk of the fighting.

Look at the Battle of Kursk. Can you imagine how many GIs would have been killed if we had to defeat German armies like that?


6 posted on 09/10/2012 10:34:13 AM PDT by proxy_user
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To: proxy_user

What choice did the Russians have? We could have stood up to them, what were they going to do, stop fighting the Nazis?


7 posted on 09/10/2012 10:35:43 AM PDT by dfwgator (I'm voting for Ryan and that other guy.)
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To: dfwgator; All
FDR was very sympathetic the Soviet Russia Goals / Stalin's xenophobia / paranoia
& the USSC / BoRs & the Voters' Conservative nature stopped it.

8 posted on 09/10/2012 10:39:27 AM PDT by skinkinthegrass (WA DC E$tabli$hment; DNC/RNC/Unionists...Brazilian saying: "$@me Old $hit; w/ different flie$" :^)
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To: proxy_user

The knowledge of Katyn should have given us significant bargaining leverage at Yalta and Potsdam with the Russkies.


9 posted on 09/10/2012 10:40:31 AM PDT by dfwgator (I'm voting for Ryan and that other guy.)
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To: dfwgator
The newly uncovered documents also show Stewart was ordered in 1950 — soon before the Congressional committee began its work — never to speak about a secret message on Katyn.

Why should be suprised that Truman, the president who let China go communist would suppress such information?

10 posted on 09/10/2012 10:41:27 AM PDT by fso301
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To: Bratch
Newsflash! In periods of all-out war, atrocities happen.

This wasn't a Lieutenant razing a village. This was the systematic mass murder, by the Soviet NKVD, of Polish officers, lawyers, doctors -- essentially the educated class of Poland who did not show signs of being convertible into supporting Communism.

11 posted on 09/10/2012 10:48:36 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (Charlie Daniels - Payback Time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWwTJj_nosI)
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To: dfwgator
Vasili Blokhin - chief executioner:

Blokhin initially decided on an ambitious quota of 300 executions per night, and engineered an efficient system in which the prisoners were individually led to a small antechamber—which had been painted red and was known as the "Leninist room"—for a brief and cursory positive identification, before being handcuffed and led into the execution room next door. The room was specially designed with padded walls for soundproofing, a sloping concrete floor with a drain and hose, and a log wall for the prisoners to stand against.

Blokhin would stand waiting behind the door in his executioner garb: a leather butcher's apron, leather hat, and shoulder-length leather gloves. Then, without a hearing, the reading of a sentence or any other formalities, each officer was brought in and restrained by guards while Blokhin shot them once in the base of the skull with a German Walther Model 2 .25 ACP pistol. He had brought a briefcase full of his own Walther pistols, since he did not trust the reliability of the standard-issue Soviet TT-30 for the frequent, heavy use he intended. The use of a German pocket pistol, which was commonly carried by Nazi intelligence agents, also provided plausible deniability of the executions if the bodies were discovered later.

An estimated 30 local NKVD agents, guards and drivers were pressed into service to escort prisoners to the basement, confirm identification, then remove the bodies and hose down the blood after each execution. Although some of the executions were carried out by Senior Lieutenant of State Security Andrei M. Rubanov, Blokhin was the primary executioner and, true to his reputation, liked to work continuously and rapidly without interruption. In keeping with NKVD policy and the overall "black" nature of the operation, the executions were conducted at night, starting at dark and continuing until just prior to dawn. The bodies were continuously loaded onto covered flat-bed trucks through a back door in the execution chamber and trucked, twice a night, to Mednoye, where Blokhin had arranged for a bulldozer and two NKVD drivers to dispose of bodies at an unfenced site. Each night, 24 to 25 trenches, measuring eight to ten meters total, were dug to hold the night's corpses, and each trench was covered up before dawn. Blokhin and his team worked without pause for ten hours each night, with Blokhin executing an average of one prisoner every three minutes. At the end of the night, Blokhin provided vodka to all his men.

12 posted on 09/10/2012 10:49:18 AM PDT by Sax
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To: Sax

Katyn (Not for the squeamish)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F09AC4UohJE


13 posted on 09/10/2012 10:51:43 AM PDT by dfwgator (I'm voting for Ryan and that other guy.)
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To: dfwgator

I hate to say this but this lends more credence to the theory that the Soviet statistics on the number of Jews killed during the holocaust is overblown. The Soviets provided a vast majority of the numbers that were used. This news doesn’t help.


14 posted on 09/10/2012 10:52:37 AM PDT by TheRhinelander
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To: dfwgator

Hope ya’ll are taking notes on how Marxists “assimilate” those who don’t seem to be getting with the program...


15 posted on 09/10/2012 10:52:42 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: Bratch
I forgot to add, "... mass murder of 22 THOUSAND members of the college-educated class". In addition, between 320 thousand and one million Polish citizens were deported into the Soviet Union, with a large percentage of those deported dying in the Soviet gulags.

What FDR was worried about was, if the full scope of Soviet atrocities were made known, the American public might decide that maybe we should support the Germans AGAINST the Russians.

16 posted on 09/10/2012 10:54:11 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (Charlie Daniels - Payback Time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWwTJj_nosI)
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To: TheRhinelander

How so? Three million Jews in Poland before the war, where did they all go?


17 posted on 09/10/2012 10:54:21 AM PDT by dfwgator (I'm voting for Ryan and that other guy.)
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To: PapaBear3625

“This wasn’t a Lieutenant razing a village. This was the systematic mass murder, by the Soviet NKVD, of Polish officers, lawyers, doctors — essentially the educated class of Poland who did not show signs of being convertible into supporting Communism.”

Yeah, like the North Vietnamese did. But let’s ignore that, and beat ourselves up about Calley.


18 posted on 09/10/2012 10:54:51 AM PDT by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: PapaBear3625

The Nazis took care of the enlisted men, the Russkies took care of the officers.


19 posted on 09/10/2012 10:55:10 AM PDT by dfwgator (I'm voting for Ryan and that other guy.)
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To: TheRhinelander
I hate to say this but this lends more credence to the theory that the Soviet statistics on the number of Jews killed during the holocaust is overblown. The Soviets provided a vast majority of the numbers that were used. This news doesn’t help.

I would not be surprised to learn that some number of the deaths attributed to the Nazis, were actually killed by the Soviets.

20 posted on 09/10/2012 10:56:54 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (Charlie Daniels - Payback Time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWwTJj_nosI)
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