What did your enlightened professor give as an excuse for why Stalin ordered the Katyn massacre?
The professor was asking the students to see things from Stalin’s view. This is a valid inquiry as to why Stalin did what he did. Anyone who wants to understand why people do what they do needs to ask about the context in which they make decisions. This is simply a teacher teaching good historical analysis.
> What did your enlightened professor give as an excuse for why Stalin ordered the Katyn massacre? <
As I noted earlier, this professor was a fierce anti-communist. So it is a bit misleading to call him “enlightened”. He was an old school anti-communist. Probably none of them left in universities today.
The Karyn massacre was not discussed. I’m sure that was because of time. The course covered the entire 20th century, not just the eastern front in WW2.
So as horrible as the Karyn massacre was, it was not a major event like, say, Pearl Harbor was.
Sorry, Katyn not Karyn, in my post #5. Autocorrect sure messed that one up.