Rood Eye
Thursday 13th June 2019 4:36pm [Edited]
4,103 posts
Quote: Billy Bunter @ 13th June 2019, 4:55 PM
A somewhat disingenuous view of Mr Macmillan's role in the matter, which was to oversee the implementation of the agreement reached at Yalta between Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin. These were prisoners of war, who had been fighting for the Germans, the repatriation of whom allowed the simultaneous release of Russian held British POWs. I don't suppose they & their families objected to the process. And, of course, it's all very well, with the benefit of 75 years' hindsight, to suggest that slaughter at the hands of Stalin was "certain knowledge". There is no evidence that that was "certain knowledge" at the time.
It's rather misleading to say that the Russian POWs had been fighting for the Germans. As the German army advanced on Moscow, countless Russians fled joyfully into the Germans' hands believing themselves to have been liberated from Stalin's oppression.
The British decision to forcibly repatriate the Russians was made before Stalin even mentioned the idea of repatriation.
However, as soon as repatriation was announced, Russian POWs began committing suicide rather than be returned to their homeland. The Americans have film of a Russian soldier stabbing himself repeatedly rather than be taken into custody by the Russians.
The first shipload of returned Russians were dealt with either by mass execution or by exile to forced labour camps: eyewitness reports and other reliable reports of these atrocities reached Britain in plenty of time for subsequent transports to be cancelled. The repatriation nevertheless continued unabated.
The USA said, quite correctly, that all Russians captured in uniform were protected by the Geneva Convention and could not be repatriated against their will. Unfortunately, the Americans' words fell on deaf British ears.
Hitler gets a lot of stick for his inhumanity to man - and quite rightly so, but history is as ever written by the victors and so British war crimes (and post-war crimes) tend not to feature in our school curricula.