The Katyń massacre in the UK and US politics

On 13 April 1943, the German radio agency Transocean broadcast an announcement about the discovery of the remains of Polish officers in Katyń. The Katyń crime has become a focus of the international politics. Since the Western Allies did not want to jeopardise their alliance with Stalin, they quickly fell into the trap of their own policy. Had they openly accepted Soviet responsibility for Katyń, they would have had to publicly admit their cynicism. They were left with no choice but to remain silent about it and to encourage the Poles to do the same.

            The sustainability of the anti-German coalition was of paramount importance to the Anglo-Saxons. The British preferred to remain silent even within their own circle, as evidenced by the failure to raise the issue of Katyń at the War Cabinet meeting of 13 April 1943.

Churchill suspected that it was the Soviets who had committed the crime. When he met Prime Minister Sikorski on 15 April 1943, he admitted that the German revelations were, sadly, perhaps true. However, he immediately added that there were things which, while true, are not fit for public discourse. On 17 April, the Polish authorities requested the International Red Cross to investigate the crime scene. It was unfortunate that the Germans came up with the same idea at the same time and the ICC received two requests at the same time: a Polish and a German one. Meanwhile, the diplomatic note from the Polish government, although drawn up on 17 April, was handed over to the Soviet ambassador in London three days later. This gave an impression of Polish-German cooperation against the USSR. This gave the authorities in the Kremlin a premise for an aggressive response. Stalin was in control of the situation on both the military and diplomatic front, and he was not going to miss the opportunity to isolate Sikorski's government. On the night of 25-26 April, the USSR severed diplomatic relations with the Polish government in London. This not only freed him from the accusations of the Polish government of the Katyń crime, but also allowed him to ignore
them unpunished. He also saw clearly that the Allies were unable to effectively oppose him, which undoubtedly influenced the dictator's later attitude in Yalta.

On 4 May 1943, Minister for Foreign Affairs Eden declared in the House of Commons that the severance of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Poland was the fault of the Germans, but he did not go into the details of the Katyń case. He saw the immediate cause of the crisis in the Poles' request for an ICC investigation. He did not take these words back even after reading the report of the Ambassador to the Polish Government, Owen O'Malley, which left no doubt about Soviet responsibility for the massacre. Eden banned O'Malley from discussing the report with any outside parties. Over time, the contents of the document became known to all leaders of the British Empire, including the governors of the colonies and King George VI himself. A copy was also presented to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. No one argued with O'Malley's conclusions, but the silence on Katyń was never broken.

WE KNOW, BUT WE STAY SILENT

This was not enough for Stalin; the dictator decided to completely cleanse his reputation and punish the guilty. In the winter of 1944, the Red Army pushed the Germans out of the Smolensk area, which gave rise to a new USSR propaganda attack about Katyń. A special medical commission chaired by Nikolai Burdenko has concluded that the Germans were to blame for the
killings. To substantiate this thesis, the Soviets invited a group of Western diplomats and journalists to the site. The attempts to win the friendship of the guests, who were served elaborate food and alcohol, were met with distrust. Between meals, the Soviets presented compiled medical evidence and questioned frightened witnesses. British diplomats did not take part in this staged visit.

While the Soviet propaganda roared about German guilt, the British were confronting the truth about Katyń in the privacy of their offices. In February 1944, at the request of Churchill and Eden, O'Malley prepared a second report in which he challenged the findings of the Burdenko commission. The parliamentarian Professor Donald Savory, who published his own report, has reached similar conclusions. However, a third document, drafted by Benedict Humphrey Sumner, which took the most cautious approach to the issue of Soviet guilt, was released publicly. It can be assumed that the British in 1944 had the knowledge to identify the real perpetrators of the crimes. However, they remained silent fearing Stalin's reaction.

At that time, London's main objective in the Polish cause was to secure an agreement between the USSR and the government of Stanisław Mikołajczyk, Sikorski's successor as Prime Minister of Poland. They were two steps behind Stalin. By the summer of 1944, the USSR was already forming a pro-Soviet Polish government and had increasingly less reason to discuss anything with Mikolajczyk's government.

The Nuremberg trial, in which the USSR tried to blame the Germans for the murder of Polish officers, was the final chord of London's involvement in the wartime history of Katyń. The British failed to participate in the Katyń stage of the trial, thus avoiding any potential conviction of innocent people for the crime. However, the Soviet accusation, based on forced testimony and fabricated evidence by the Burdenko commission, was refuted by German lawyers. Washington's policy on Katyń war history was not much different from the British position. The
testimony of Lt. Col. John Van Vliet, an American prisoner of war who inspected the Katyń graves in April 1943, has been lost in unexplained circumstances. It seems no coincidence, as the report indicated that the USSR was to blame.

INVESTIGATION OF THE U.S. CONGRESS

When the Second War became just a painful memory in 1945, the Americans were surprised to see a powerful enemy - the USSR - emerge at the junction of Europe and Asia. Faced with the post-war turmoil in Europe and the crisis of the British empire, they had to face it alone. The Cold War began.

That was when the Katyń case returned to the international forum. In 1949, former US ambassador to Warsaw Arthur Bliss Lane and Austrian expatriate and journalist Julius Epstein founded the American Katyń Committee. It was funded by donations from the American-Polish community and received no government support. The Katyń Committee has done a great deal to make the American elite aware of the Katyń massacre. It was dissolved in 1951, when the authorities of the American state began to solve the Katyń case. After all, the war in Korea, waged since 1950, has reawakened Washington's interest in the situation of prisoners of war. If the Communists in Katyń behaved in a way that was typical of them, then the fate of the American soldiers in the North Korean camps may have been sealed. At the same time, raising the Katyń issue again could have been useful in the US-Soviet propaganda battle. On 18 September 1951, the US Congress formed a Special Committee to Conduct an Investigation of the Facts, Evidence and Circumstances of the Katyń Forest Massacre. It was chaired by Democrat Ray John Madden, with Democrats on the committee in addition to him: Daniel L. Flood of Pennsylvania, Thaddeus M. Machrowicz and Foster Furcolo of Massachussetts, and
republicans: George A. Dondero from Michigan, Alvin K. O'Konski from Wiscounsin and Timothy P. Sheehan from Illinois. The Committee was an institution typical of the American legal order, concluding the investigation with a final report and recommendations for the administration's future actions. Its members came from states with a substantial share of Polish minorities.

The first session of the Madden Committee took place in Washington on 11 October 1951 and was dominated by the testimony of Col. Donald B. Stewart, who, as a prisoner of war, had been brought to inspect the Katyń crime scene by the Germans in 1943. The second session featured the questioning of John Van Vliet, author of the famous lost report on Katyń. The second round of hearings took place in Chicago. Testimony was then taken from Kazimierz Skarżyński, who was in Katyń on behalf of the Polish Red Cross in 1943. The subsequent rounds of testimony featured Gen. Clayton L. Bissell and Julius Epstein, among others.

In the winter of 1952, the Congressional Committee asked the governments of the USSR, Poland (in Warsaw and the government-in-exile) and the Federal Republic of Germany for assistance in the investigation. The reactions were easy to predict. The Kremlin found the request 'insulting' and sent the congressmen back to read the Burdenko commission report, a copy of which was handed over to the US diplomats. Unfazed, the Americans included it in the case file and then analysed its errors and contradictions. The Warsaw communists, who were not used to being independent, refused to cooperate, following the example of the USSR. By contrast, the Polish government in London and the West German authorities were keen to cooperate with the Madden Committee. The former agreed, because naming the guilty of the crimes was close to its heart and being treated on a par with Warsaw raised its diplomatic profile. The latter participated because the idea of discussing non-German crimes
with representatives of democratic countries appealed to it very much.

Further work was carried out in Europe. In April 1952, the committee met in London and Frankfurt, so that it could hear the witnesses who had not been able to appear in the USA before. The London testimonies included Generals Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, Zygmunt Bohusz-Szyszko and Władysław Anders. In Frankfurt, the congressmen heard from members of the international medical commission that investigated the Smolensk region in 1943, and from Józef Czapski, a prisoner of Starobelsk and relentless seeker of Polish officers during the formation of Anders' army in the USSR.

The committee members heard testimony from a total of 81 witnesses, collected around 100 written statements and examined 183 items of material evidence. It can be considered that, faced with the denial of cooperation from the USSR and its satellites, with limited evidence and without access to the crime scenes, the congressmen drew far-reaching and accurate conclusions. They estimated the number of the murdered at around 15,000 (in fact there were around 22,000) and blamed the USSR authorities for their deaths. In closing, the commission recommended transferring the Katyń investigation to the UN and prosecuting the USSR at the International Court of Justice for the crime.

KATYŃ DROPS OFF THE AGENDA

However, the committee's recommendations have not been implemented. The Katyń case, revisited as a result of US domestic politics and the international situation, dropped off the agenda for the same reasons. In January 1953, Dwight Eisenhower became president by promising voters an end to the Korean War. The pursuit of the Katyń issue may have harmed this objective. In addition to that, Joseph Stalin died on 5 March 1953 and the new USSR leadership, with Nikita Khrushchev as their new face, sought - at least initially - a break with Stalinism and the policy of inevitable confrontation with the West. In its efforts to achieve peaceful coexistence, the Kremlin met Washington halfway.

It can be considered that with the completion of the Madden Commission's work and the White House administration's failure to implement its recommendations, the Katyń chapter in the policy of the Western powers was ultimately closed. At the same time, the history began of the struggle for memory, which the Poles have waged and are waging themselves.