Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

To what extent did the Katyn Massacres of 1940 effect international relations with the Soviet Union?

The Second World War, from a Soviet observation was a continuation of the many disputes left unresolved and unsettled during and following the end of the First World War, such as the Polish-Bolshevik War and the resulting border disputes. Key Soviet historian, Aleksandr Nekrich suggests that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were accountable for the outbreak of the Second World War and entered the war as a belligerent party (Neckrich, 1997). Even though Polish-Soviet relations have had a turbulent history, the Katyn massacre significantly affected international relations between Russia and Poland. Both nations have demonstrated their belligerence over one another for centuries. In recent centuries Poland was been far less powerful and influential than Russia, but it has not always been this way, the Polish-Muscovite war of 1605-1618 saw the Polish occupation of Moscow. (Rickard, 2007). Beginning on the third of April and spanning into May of 1940, 4,421 prisoners from the Western Soviet Union labour camps in Kozelsk, 3,820 from Starobelsk, 6,311 from Ostashkov, and 7,305 from Byelorussian and Ukrainian prisons were organised into killing sites such as at Katyn forest. In total 21,857 mostly Polish prisoners of war were methodically murdered. (Departmental Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, 2004). One of the most infamous of these massacres, was the Katyn forest massacre. Among the victims of this great tragedy were: “ an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 3,420 NCOs, seven chaplains, three landowners, a prince, 43 officials, 85 privates, and 131 refugees ” (Cia.gov, 2017). The executions at Katyn as well as the other killing sites resulted in the elimination of almost half of the Polish officer corps. The executions targeted the intelligentsia of Polish society (Cia.gov, 2017), “ 20 university professors; 300 physicians; several hundred lawyers, engineers, and teachers; and more than 100 writers and journalists as well as about 200 pilots.”, were executed at Katyn (Cia.gov, 2017). No one knew about the massacre until 2 years later. News of the massacre was broadcast to the world on the 13 th of April 1943 by Reichssender Berlin in wake of the German discovery of a mass grave that was “ 28 metres long and 16 metres wide [92 ft by 52 ft], in which the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers were piled up in 12 layers " (Engel, 1993). Joseph Goebbels’ intention of the broadcast was to create a division between the Allies (especially the United States of America and the United Kingdom), Poland and the Soviet Union (Balfour, 1979). Goebbels’s intentions failed to come to fruition, American and Soviet relations were scarcely effected during the war as a direct consequence of the massacre. The Soviet Union was an invaluable Ally in the war aligning against the axis powers and Soviet culpability to the crime was initially dismissed and even supressed in the United States (Coatney, 1993). British relations with the Soviet Union were similarly unaffected. Winston Churchill did not entirely trust the Soviets but he certainly did not trust the Nazi’s, he suspected “ German propaganda has produced this story precisely in order to make a rift in the ranks of the United Nations ” (Marxists.org, 2017) In contrast to the Western Superpowers, Polish and Soviet relations were seriously affected because of the massacre. Though the Soviet Union denied all Polish allegations pertaining to the massacre, many Poles believed that the Soviet Union were responsible. This seriously complicated Polish-Soviet relations and undermined