Files show U.S. covered up Soviet guilt in Katyn massacre

World War II-era documents released today bolster the long-held contention that the U.S. government covered up Soviet responsibility for the infamous 1940 massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, the Associated Press reports.

The execution of about 22,000 Polish soldiers and other prisoners in and around Katyn was kept quiet because President Franklin Roosevelt did not want to anger Josef Stalin, whose forces were essential to defeating Adolph Hitler.

The documents, about 1,000 pages of declassified files put online by the National Archives, included coded messages from American soldiers captured by the Germans. They reported in 1943 seeing rows of partially mummified corpses in Polish officer uniforms in Katyn, proving they couldn't have been killed by the Nazis, who seized the western Russian region in 1941.

AP writes:

The Soviet secret police killed the 22,000 Poles with shots to the back of the head. Their aim was to eliminate a military and intellectual elite that would have put up stiff resistance to Soviet control. The men were among Poland's most accomplished — officers and reserve officers who in their civilian lives worked as doctors, lawyers, teachers, or as other professionals. Their loss has proven an enduring wound to the Polish nation.

In the early years after the war, outrage by some American officials over the concealment inspired the creation of a special U.S. Congressional committee to investigate Katyn.

In a final report released in 1952, the committee declared there was no doubt of Soviet guilt, and called the massacre "one of the most barbarous international crimes in world history." It found that Roosevelt's administration suppressed public knowledge of the crime, but said it was out of military necessity. It also recommended the government bring charges against the Soviets at an international tribunal — something never acted upon.

Despite the committee's strong conclusions, the White House maintained its silence on Katyn for decades, showing an unwillingness to focus on an issue that would have added to political tensions with the Soviets during the Cold War.

AP writes that the declassified documents "also show the United States maintaining that it couldn't conclusively determine guilt until a Russian admission in 1990 — a statement that looks improbable given the huge body of evidence of Soviet guilt that had already emerged decades earlier."

AP says historians who saw the material ahead of its released shared some highlights. Be sure to read AP's complete story.

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