Posted on 04/13/2010 2:01:04 PM PDT by Winged Hussar
Today, the facts about Katyn are not in doubt. In the spring of 1940, 22,000 Polish prisoners of war—most of them army officers, but also thousands of leading members of the Polish intelligentsia—were systematically murdered by the Soviet secret police on direct orders from Joseph Stalin.
...In one of history's richer ironies, the massacre was first discovered and publicized by the Nazis in 1943. That made it that much easier for the Soviets to dismiss the revelation as German propaganda to cover up a German crime, a line the U.S. and Britain were only too happy to adopt to propitiate their wartime ally. The behavior of the Roosevelt administration was particularly disgraceful: As Rutgers Professor Adam Scrupski has noted, the U.S. Office of War Information "implicitly threatened to remove licensure from the Polish language radio stations in Detroit and Buffalo if they did not cease broadcasting the details of executions."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Jawohl, Herr Roosevelt, Katyn did not happen, the Russians were not there, the Russians did not know about it, and they were only following orders anyway.
The more I learn about Roosevelt, the more I distrust the MSM - who perpetrated lies about this looser since the beginning. Interesting that we’re just now learning that congress rejected this idiot’s proposal for more government screwing up following WW2.
Is there nothing that a liberal can do that is correct?
Well, he did need the Russians to not only hamper the Germans on their eastern front, but to also provide a diversion to occupy Japan. Basically, the enemy of my enemies is my friend, so I can understand the downplaying of this.
Soooooo, bearing false witness against an entire country is OK, if it’s expedient?
How does this reconcile with your tagline?
Now we’re supposed to believe that the Russians will honor treaties. Riiigghhht. We were bitten once during Glasnost, and yet no wise, because we have a Progressive in the White House.
It is not like our country has not overlooked things before or since fdr. Crap, look at all the trash countries we are in bed with today, whether it be for business or the war on terror.
Yet you feel compelled to apologize for FDR.
Not apologizing, it is just the way things are, and it is something done by presidents on both sides of the isle.
And it’s not any more right now than it was then.
I came to the conclusion a long time ago that FDR was one of our worst presidents ever. It was hard getting there, since even Repubs make a habit of publicly genuflecting in his memory. But there it is.
Worst president ever. Turned an economic downturn into a cataclysm. Watched the Japanese and Nazis prepare for war for eight years and did nothing to prepare. Hid what he knew about the Nazi death camps. Hid what he knew about Katyn.
Worst president ever.
I’m like you, shell-shocked everyday by new revelations that shatters every taken for granted assumption I used to hold. Suddenly night is day and light is dark and up is down and good is so so so bad and ugly that it’s unbearable!
Well, they did say Obama was just like FDR.
“And it’s not any more right now than it was then.”
I agree, but by raising a stink over 20,000 Pols may have caused many times that in American/Allied lives, if not the war. I don’t envy those that sit in the big chair in the slightest.
If the stink had been raised when Russia invaded Poland, the issue would not have come up.
FDR and Churchill should have restrained the Allied war effort (and aid to the USSR), allowed the Nazis and Communists to fight to the death, and then finished off whichever was left standing (with atomic weapons if it lasted into late 1945). Millions of lives that were lost during the Cold War would have been saved.
Close race with the current resident...
“Soooooo, bearing false witness against an entire country is OK, if it’s expedient?”
You mean the Nazi Germans? Anything that helped them go down faster seems to be ok. Besides, lies are absolutely standard as a war tactic. What do we have, what did we do, where are we attacking.
Lots of false news reports were filed as the Gulf war kicked off. 82nd airborne parachuting deep inside, Marine amphib landings on the coast, etc etc,,, all false. All helped deceive the enemy.
Exposing the soviets then would have only played into nazi hands. Our soldiers would have paid the price. The eastern front was pretty much where the German soldier died in that war. Not even close. Besides,, whats it matter, the Germans mass murdered uncountable Poles, so why not smear em with it?
FDR was a deeply flawed man, and ranks at the bottom as far as presidents go. However, while it is clear that FDR ignored Katyn, it must be acknowledged that Churchill did also. In fact, since Poland was a close ally with England, it could be argued that Churchill is more central to the cover-up in the West.
I greatly admire Churchill. The Katyn cover-up was not his best moment, even for the motive to defeat Hitler. From what I understand of him, I cannot assign the same motivation to FDR.
The NappyOne
Then there’s the SS St. Louis. By the way, Roosevelt knew about the camps in 1942. But didn’t say anything because he didn’t want it to be “a Jewish war”.
Dr. Joseph Goebbels who headed the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda said in his diary on April 14, “We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, murdered by the GPU, for ant-soviet propaganda on a grand style. We sent neutral journalists and Polish intellectuals to the spot where they were found. Their reports now reaching us from aboard are gruesome. The Fuehrer has also given permission for us to hand out a dramatic news item to the German press. I gave instructions to make the widest possible use of this propaganda material. We shall be able to live on it for a couple weeks.“
I wonder where people such as FDR and Harry Hopkins ever concocted a perception they could develop a personal relationship with the Soviet’s any more than they could with the Nazi’s?
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