Operation Keelhaul

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Betrayal of the Cossacks at Lienz, Painting by S.G. Korolkoff
Betrayal of the Cossacks at Lienz, Painting by S.G. Korolkoff

Operation Keelhaul was a program carried out in Austria by British and American forces in May and June 1945 that decided the fate of up to two million[1] post-war refugees fleeing eastern Europe.

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[edit] Yalta Conference

One of the conclusions of the Yalta Conference was that the Allies would return all Soviet citizens that found themselves in the Allied zone to the Soviet Union. This immediately affected the Soviet prisoners of war liberated by the Allies, but was also extended to all Eastern European refugees.

On March 31, 1945, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt concluded the final form of their plans in a secret codicil to the agreement. Outlining the plan to forcibly return the refugees to the Soviet Union, this codicil was kept secret from the American and British people for over fifty years.[1]

[edit] Name

The name of the operation comes from the practice of torture, keelhauling. In his book Operation Keelhaul, Julius Epstein states: "That our Armed Forces should have adopted this term as its code name for deporting by brutal force to concentration camp, firing squad, or hangman's noose millions who were already in the lands of freedom, shows how little the high brass thought of their longing to be free."

[edit] Treatment of refugees

The refugee columns fleeing the Soviet-occupied eastern Europe numbered millions of people. They included fascist collaborationists from eastern Slavic and other countries, many anti-communists of several categories, and assorted civilians, both from the Soviet Union and from Yugoslavia.

In particular, Soviet Cossacks of XVth Cossack Cavalry Corps of Waffen-SS with their relatives and Ustaše from Yugoslavia, including about 11,000 women and children, were forcibly repatriated from Austria to the Soviet occupation zones of Austria and Germany and to Yugoslavia (Slovenia) respectively.

Most of the refugees were summarily executed by receiving Communist authorities, sometimes within earshot of the British. One of the killings at the hand of the Yugoslav Partisans is known as the Bleiburg massacre. The majority were not killed in this incident, however, but were instead sent to prison camps.[1]

Among those handed over were White emigré-Russians who had never been Soviet citizens, but who had fought for Nazi Germany against the marxist Soviets during the war, including General Andrei Shkuro and the Ataman of the Don Cossack host Pyotr Krasnov. This was done despite the official statement of the British Foreign Office policy after the Yalta Conference that only Soviet citizens, who had been such after September 1, 1939, were to be compelled to return to the Soviet Union or handed over to Soviet officials in other locations.

[edit] Critics

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called this operation "the last secret of World War II." He contributed to a legal defence fund set up to help Nikolai Tolstoy, who was charged with libel in a 1989 case brought up by Lord Aldington over war crimes allegations made by Tolstoy related to this operation. Tolstoy lost the case.

The few historians who addressed the subject, have described the Operation Keelhaul as an act which currently would be classified a crime of war and punishable under international law. Not only because of the summary executions which took place as the consequences of the turning over of the military prisoners, but also because of the murder and rapes which took place against refugee women and children from anti-communist eastern European, Russian and Cossack families.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Jacob Hornberger Repatriation — The Dark Side of World War II. The Future of Freedom Foundation, 1995. [1]

[edit] Further reading

  • Tolstoy, Nikolai. Victims of Yalta, originally published in London, 1977. Revised edition 1979. ISBN 0-552-11030-2
  • Epstein, Julius. Operation Keelhaul, Devin-Adair, 1973. ISBN-13: 978-0815964070

[edit] External links