While Polish troops unsuccessfully tried to stop the advance of the Wehrmacht, on September 17, 1939, without a prior declaration of war, the Red Army invaded the east of the country. Moscow issued a statement stating that the operation had been carried out to: “…liberate the Polish people from the unfortunate war into which they have been dragged by their reckless leaders…, and to protect the Ukrainians and White Russians living on Polish territory ”.
In reality, it was the application of the secret supplementary protocol to the German-Soviet pact signed in August of that year by the respective foreign ministers, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Viacheslav M. Molotov, by which both powers divided up Poland.
As expected, the Polish army could do little against such arrogant enemies, and on October 6 the campaign was terminated. Some 220,000 prisoners remained in Soviet hands, of whom about 15,000 were chiefs, officers and policemen. In this last group, given the general mobilization decreed, there were not only career soldiers, but also the most florid of Polish society, from professionals to civil servants.
Contrary to the provisions of the Geneva Convention (which, on the other hand, the USSR had not ratified), the Red Army transferred these characters to the Directorate of Prisoners of War of the NKVD, the body in charge of State security, created exprofeso on September 19 and directed by Piotr K. Soprunenko.
The treatment of the officers, separated from the beginning of their men, was up to a certain point correct, given the circumstances. Transferred mainly to the Kozelsk (4,500), Starobilsk (3,920) and Ostashkov (6,567) camps, they would be filtered and subjected to long indoctrination sessions. About a thousand, considered politically sympathetic, were released. The rest remained hospitalized, allowing them limited and censored correspondence with their families.
Apparently, the head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), Lavrenti P. Beria, was in favor of his “re-education”, since he believed that he could count on obedient administrators with whom to organize a Soviet Poland. But it was not like that. The pure nationalism and Catholicism of those officers frustrated the plans of the Georgian politician. Hence consideration of the principle was transformed into hatred.
In any case, after the spring of 1940 they were not heard from again. When relatives inquired of the occupation authorities about their location, they received the strangest responses. Since they had been released to when they were in the transfer process.
Curiously, around the same time, the NKVD began to arrest relatives who had maintained contact with the prisoners, deporting them to remote parts of Soviet geography, such as Siberia or Kazakhstan. They would be joined by a broad spectrum of businessmen, professionals, and priests, branded as counterrevolutionaries.
But when German troops invaded the USSR on June 22, 1941, the situation changed. Stalin needed every available man to deal with the attackers, and Polish prisoners, with experience of war, were a good resource. Hence they were released to form Polish units that fought alongside the Red Army. The lack of officers soon became apparent, and when Zygmunt Berling, the head of the Polish First Army, raised the need to enlist them, Beria himself apparently replied: “He won't be able to count on them. We made a serious mistake."
This new phase of the war also brought about the normalization of relations with the Polish government in exile, based in London on July 30, 1941. Since then, the government of General Władysław Sikorski has questioned Moscow up to 49 times about the fate of the war. from Polish officers, always receiving evasive answers.
What's more, the former prisoner of the Soviets Józef Czapski, in charge of inquiring about the fate of his former comrades, found some ten thousand officers missing from the lists presented by the USSR. Not even in the interview held by General Sikorski with Stalin was it possible to clarify the matter. The war went on its way, and for non-Poles the matter fell into relative oblivion.
On April 13, 1943, at 3:15 p.m., Radio Berlin announced in various languages the discovery of eight graves with numerous bodies of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, 16.5 km from Smolensk. Two hours later, the information was expanded, indicating that said soldiers had previously been interned in the Kozelsk camp, near Orel.
The discovery was, to some extent, accidental. In order to verify the rumors that circulated about macabre finds in the aforementioned forest, the German intelligence officer Rudolf-Freiherr von Gersdorff led a military party to investigate it in February 1943 and found human bones that, apparently, wolves had dug up. From there an investigation was opened by the German military police (Feldgendarmerie).
Unsurprisingly, in order to spread the news for propaganda purposes, Minister Joseph Goebbels wasted no time. He not only ordered the dissemination of the information to the four winds, but also organized an international commission of investigation, chaired by the Swiss Leonard Conti, which included forensics from various countries allied or sympathetic to the Germans. Moscow reacted.
On April 14, the TASS news agency noted that the prisoners were building roads when the Wehrmacht invaded the USSR in 1941 and that they all fell into Wehrmacht hands. Therefore, always according to Moscow, the Germans were responsible for his death.
Certainly, most of the ammunition found at the scene had been manufactured in the Reich by the company Gustav Geschow GmbH (GECO 7.65 mm D), but the state of the corpses, their clothing and belongings (they were wearing winter clothing and did not carry any documents after the fall/winter 1940) suggested that they had been killed during the winter of 1940, when the territory was still in Soviet hands. The dating of the coniferous forest planted on top only corroborated it.
The Polish government in exile requested a commission of inquiry from the International Red Cross, which Moscow considered an affront, and on April 26, 1943, it broke off diplomatic relations with the USSR. Both the British and American governments came forward. They did not want to antagonize their Soviet ally and pressured Sikorski, who was forced to retract. The Polish premier died shortly after in a plane crash near Gibraltar.
With the recovery of the Katyn area by the Red Army, the USSR created a new commission to investigate the case. Directed by the prestigious forensic Nikolai N. Burdenko, after examining 925 corpses, it came to the conclusion that, once it occupied the Smolensk region, the Wehrmacht took several Soviet camps where the Polish officers were, who were executed. Such premises were presented without success in the Nuremberg trials (1945-1946).
In 1946, the Polish attorney general Roman Martini, who was investigating the Katyn crimes and had come to the conclusion that the ammunition found in Katyn had reached the NKVD through various channels, was assassinated in Krakow.
In September 1951, the United States House of Representatives created a committee to investigate the matter chaired by Ray J. Madden who, despite reaching interesting conclusions, was unable to present them to the UN International Court of Justice for political reasons. . Other initiatives followed a similar path.
Nothing was clear, and few knew what had happened to the Polish prisoners. Not even Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev was aware until, on March 3, 1959, the then KGB director, Aleksandr N. Shelepin, handed him a compromising memorandum dated March 5, 1940 in which Beria addressed to Stalin to suggest the execution of the Polish prisoners. Apparently, the measure was approved by the dictator himself and five other members of the USSR Politburo: Molotov, Mikoyan, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Kalinin.
With the passing of the years and the opening of the USSR, information was leaked that allows us to know how the dramatic events happened –especially the copy of Stalin's order delivered by Boris Yeltsin to the Polish president Lech Walesa in 1992–, which have led to a remarkable consensus among historians, except in Russia, where, as of 2004, all research came to a standstill and rejection by some academics.
Between April 3 and May 19, 1940, always in small groups, 4,421 prisoners were transferred alive from the Kozelsk camp to the Katyn Forest, with the promise that they would be released. They were even given some food for the trip to reinforce the idea. After crossing the gate of the field the situation changed.
In fits and starts, they were taken to the railway station and crammed into prison cars. Upon reaching their destination, they were put on buses with the windows covered up to the forest. When getting out of the vehicle, their hands were tied behind their backs with a sliding knot that was attached to their necks, so that if they tried to free themselves they would drown.
Several important individuals, indicated in the NKVD lists, were separated from the rest and taken to a small building known as the Dnieper castle. The others were approached to one of the eight pits previously dug in the place known as the Hill of the Goats. But the fate was the same for almost all: a shot in the neck from a 7.65 Walther pistol, wielded by an NKVD executioner, although, in some cases, the bayonet or drowning was used.
The entire process was carried out from sunset until sunrise, in order to avoid unexpected visitors. If the executions were carried out in closed places, as happened in other places, they were accompanied by the sound of various machines to avoid the noise of the detonations.
Curiously, precious objects (feathers, watches, etc.) were not taken from them, nor were their uniforms or other personal belongings, which contributed to their later identification. The graves were between two and four meters deep, and the corpses were deposited on various levels covered with earth.
The procedure originated not only from Kozelsk, but also from other camps (Starobilsk and Ostashkov) and various prisons (Kharkov and Kalinin). Nor was the destination limited to Katyn, since there were other graves, such as Piatykhatky and Médnoye. A total of 448 prisoners were not transferred and saved their lives. It is unknown why.
As always, pinpointing an exact number of victims is difficult. The most usual figure is usually 21,768 dead, including civilians. But it continues to be the subject of debate.
