Among the worst atrocities committed by our side was OPERATION KEELHAUL. In 1947, Truman’s watch, hundreds of thousands of Soviet POW were still being held in western Europe. In an effort to curry favor with Stalin and his cutthroats, a great many of these poor devils were forcibly repatriated to the USSR where they were imprisoned in Siberia or executed. Many of them committed suicide rather than go back to the USSR.
Part of the Yalta agreement was that nationals of the SU
would be repatriated regardless of their wishes.
The result was that the various formations such as Cossacks,
Latvians, Russians were returned to Soviet custody. Otherwize Allied POW in Soviet hands might have been held.
Even Sweden gave up refugees to the SU, I believe it was
Estonian SS who made it across the Baltic. Forced to board Soviet vessels and sent back to Mother Russia.
The lives lost in these repatriations pale in comparison to the numbers killed during the flight of Germans from East Prussia and Silesia and the Czech lands.
My dad was German and the U.S. wouldn't allow him in the service during WWII, so he took a job at the Seaman's YMCA in NYC. Right after the war he said the seamen were telling him about "Russians jumping off the ship or slitting their wrists." and how Russia must really be so bad that people did this.
It wasn't until years later I read how Stalin gulled the U.S. into repatriating all Russians "who belonged back in the Motherland". He wanted revenge on those who were captured, since many were fighting in German regiments.** Others were "contaminated" by being exposed to Western Ideas and needed to be exterminated.
**[excerpt from long article]:
Deprived of their fatherland, scorned by their protectors, regarded generally as traitors, although in their consciences they were not traitors, they fought often for an alien and hateful cause; the only reward which they eventually received for their pains was toil and death, mostly in a foreign land, or "repatriation" to the hell from which they had tried to escape."