Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

the Battle of Stalingrad over the Nazi’s, considered by many historians to be the greatest battle of the war. It was not only the Foreign Office which denied Soviet culpability to the massacre. Regarding Katyn, even renowned historian and revisionist A.J.P Taylor has said that “ historians had to keep an open mind and to refrain from Anti-Soviet insinuations.” (Davies, 2007) British and Soviet relations were not affected by the massacre, a deterioration in relations was truly against the British governments and Foreign Office’s interests. US-Soviet relations were not affected by the massacre during the war, even though Soviet culpability in the massacre had been proven by many different factors. These factors included eyewitness accounts from Professor Swianiewicz and the findings of the Red Cross investigation which found all documents, diary entries and possessions were not dated beyond April 6 and April 20, 1940 which was during Soviet, not German, occupation of East Poland (Cia.gov, 2017). During the late 1940s, the US State Department in addition to the British Foreign Office continued to avoid and suppress any official mention of the Katyn massacre. During the war the Allies rejected Nazi claims of Soviet culpability because it was in the best interests of the war effort. (Coatney, 1993) It was a sound move, politically and strategically by the Allies to reject any claims of Soviet culpability because there was still a need for Soviet intervention against the Nazi’s and the Japanese. After the conclusion of the war however, in the United States of America the Katyn massacre had become a shibboleth in US politics due to the Korean war and America’s foreign policy of containment. During the 1950s the significance of the Katyn massacre to the American people and government swelled (Materski, 2007). The “Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre” was formed by the US House of Representatives on the 18 th of September 1951. There were two main reasons for this unprecedented renewal of Congressional interest in Katyn. The most important of these reasons is likely due to the Communist atrocities taking place in Korea where US Prisoners of war were being murdered in a very similar method to that of the Katyn massacre and related mass murders (Coatney, 1993). Additionally, the American people were shocked and enraged at these crimes so the government had to act. The significance of the Katyn massacre tainted American-Soviet relations as time passed. A separate investigation into the Katyn massacre by the Epstein-Lane committee in the late 1940s, spurred interest in the massacre in America especially amongst Polish Americans. The Katyn massacre proved to be a key issue for democrat congressmen to prove their fierce opposition to Leninist-Stalinist Communism. This massacre proved to be a key issue due to the change of Democrat administrations in Eastern Europe and China in favour of Communism. Politically. It was a sound move to investigate the issue because it would also gain voting support of Americans of East European descent (Coatney, 1993). The committee began hearings on the 11 th of October 1951 (Materski, 2007). Lieutenant Colonel John H. Van Vilet, Jr was the senior American prisoner of war who accompanied the Red Cross investigations at Katyn during the initial investigation. Following his release from German captivity, on the 22 nd of May 1945 when Vilet arrived in Washington, D.C, he immediately filed a report to Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Major General Clayton Bissell which announced Soviet culpability to the crime. The report was classified as top secret and was deep-sixed, both the