Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

massacre was Stalin’s ideological belief that Poland should be liquidated and merged into the Soviet bloc. One of the only other men who detested the existence of Poland as much as Stalin was Hitler (Lightbody, 2004) Their joint ambitions of a political non-entity Poland resulted in much suffering and death in Poland. According to German-born, American diplomatic and military historian, Gerhard Weinberg, one of the motives for the massacre was to castrate the leadership of Poland (Weinberg, 2005). Stalin’s intentions to authorise the massacre was to exterminate Poland’s technical elite, the intellectual class and military leaders. This was because Stalin anticipated that after the war concluded, the best and brightest of Polish society would not allow Poland to be partitioned for a fourth time and would contest the new Soviet- Polish border in accordance with the Curzon Line. The massacre is consistent with the standard definition of genocide because of the methodical and articulate nature of the destruction and extermination of Poland’s leadership classes with the intention of destroying all elements of Polish society and culture in the present and future. It was not hard for the Soviets to round up Poland’s intellects and technical elites because of the Polish conscription policy “required every non-exempt university graduate to become a military reserve officer” (Polish Government, 1938), so a large portion of Poland’s educated class was conscripted into the army as reservists. Approximately 250,000 Poles became Soviet Prisoners of War by 1942 (Satter, 2012), this understandably soured Polish-Soviet relations. The revelations about the massacre made to the world by the Nazi propaganda machine that were intended to significantly corrode British-Soviet relations, had a relatively small impact on them. Britain entered the second world war because of Germany’s invasion of Poland and their subsequent refusals to withdraw. However, when the Soviet Union invaded Poland Winston Churchill stated in his speech, We Will Deal in Performances, Not Promises –It is Not for Hitler to Say When the War Will End “We could have wished that the Russian Armies should be standing on their present line as the friends and allies of Poland, instead of as invaders. But that the Russian Armies should stand on this line (the Curzon Line) was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace.” ( Churchill, 1939). Soviet belligerence was met by approval by Churchill. As such, Churchill’s attitude to Soviet actions sets a foundation for why British-Soviet relations were unaffected by the massacre – the Soviets were too valuable an ally to denounce. The German discovery and global broadcast of the massacre resulted in both Poland and Germany contacting the Red Cross to investigate the massacre. The coincidence of the applications of inquiry allowed the Soviets to claim that the Nazi’s and Poles were collaborating against the Soviet Union. On the 19 th of April 1943, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Pravda, attacked 'Hitler's Polish collaborators' (Sanford, 2006) It can be seen that the massacre did not affect British- Soviet relations during the war because Churchill supported Stalin's opposition to the Red Cross investigation and similarly to Stalin believed that given the investigation would be under German control, the findings were bound to be fraudulent and intended to affect the unity of the allies to the Reich’s benefit (Sanford, 2006) This episode of British-Soviet relations can be summed up by Britain’s passive acquiescence in the Sovietization of Eastern Europe, which allowed for such a massacre to take place. Another reason that British-Soviet relations were relatively unaffected by the massacre was due to the timing of the German discovery. The revelations made by the Nazi’s were in the wake of the Soviet Union’s monumental victory in